LLM Mindset Myth # 3, Part 1: AI is a REPLACEMENT -

There are many voices alleging that Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI-based systems are moments away from performing much of the work presently carried out by humans. This usurpation, once it happens (any day now, we’re assured by doomsayers,) will be permanent and irreversible - work till now done by us will forever forward be done by generative AI. The idea is that AI has gotten so adept, so capable, so quickly, that its work product is effectively indistinguishable from that of actual people. Which stirs up lots of feelings.

In most cases, the LLM is quicker, surely, than you or I at “composing” a sentence. But that’s not what it’s doing, not in the way you or I do. Where you or I must deliberate a bit, to ensure that the sense of what we’re attempting to say is conveyed in a sentence, LLMs are freed of any such burden; where you or I will furthermore consider the tone and style of the sentence we’re building, LLMs lack the discernment necessary to make such determinations. An LLM is a gifted mimic, certainly, and can often imitate your style or mine pretty convincingly, but it isn’t arriving at sense-making and tone-setting decisions the way you or I do.

Which isn’t to say that LLMs will not one day - perhaps one day soon, given the pace of their development - be capable of convincingly mimicking these meaning-making functions. Therein lies a crucial distinction, however: the approximation carried out by LLMs of devising text, of constructing sense and style will be exactly that, an approximation.

My name is Ian. I’m a human person. Like all of us, I have certain characteristics that define and individuate me: blue eyes, seasonal allergies, caustically funny. Perhaps my most bedrock trait, the one I’d reckon is most intrinsic and foundational to my sense of self, is that I’m a writer. My (fragile, most days) sense of worth and my (flimsy-feeling, usually) sense of purpose are bound up in this peculiar pursuit. Any belief I might have about the contribution I can make in this world is built atop whatever audacity and ingenuity I can summon with language. For me, to write is to venture something. As with any sustained endeavor, there is a failure rate that necessarily attends its pursuit - faltering and falling are an unavoidable consequence of attempting.

Being a writer is integral to what I imagine myself to be, at least as much as any of the relational things I am - husband, father, citizen, neighbor, etc. - writing is something I am, as much as something I do, as much a livelihood as a life. The voiceover for the nature documentary about me might go: “The North American Great Lumpy Ian is an expressive mammal who barters with other creatures, exchanging bits of language for nuts and berries and the occasional bit of carrion…”

So when voices in the culture, in the tech press and elsewhere, keep hollering “Stand aside, Scrivener - these bots can awreddy do your job!” and then push you to the ground and kick you in the face while cackling like they’ve long been itching for this Day of Retribution, I’m not gonna lie, it can feel a little hurtful. And personal. Which clouds my beliefs about AI.

For emphasis: factually speaking, I know that no one is pushing me to the ground and kicking my face. And while there may be cackling from some quarters, only a small percentage of it is directed at me. But the FEELINGS I experience in response to headlines and think pieces and social media ruminations that I have ALREADY BEEN replaced, that the functions I’ve grown adept at carrying out CAN ALREADY be executed AS WELL OR BETTER by this technology - these feelings can be intense. My rational self might still be going “Is that even true, though?” while my emotional self has snatched his go bag and is off in the deep woods, setting man traps along the perimeter of his prepper cabin, haunted as an imagined chorus echoes inside my skull “The gleaming killbots write at LEAST as well as you ever have, AND they don’t have all that nose hair.”

Hearing you might get REPLACED means getting confronted by the reality that you are replaceable. Which is discomfiting, and even scary.

Next up, in LLM Mindset Myth # 3, Part 2: AI is a REPLACEMENT - while the FEELINGS are real, is the THREAT?