I am more than a little alarmed at how utterly dependent I’m seeing business people, and IIT people specifically, becoming on LLMs for their work. And not in a “let’s design a cute avatar” kind of way.

It’s funny, the vision I and many people had about AI was more like what we see in Star Trek, where the technology radically drives up the knowledge of individuals. But on our current trajectory, Star Trek will just be Idiocracy in space with people asking the computer how to use the shower. Certainly I’m missing something?

@jerry the baklash has made me consider going back to the land #land of 1000 dances

@peoriabummer.bsky.social I haven’t seen much of that yet, but certainly deference to its output, and in fact arguing on its behalf

@jerry it's hilarious

The beige people are all going beige!

See https://berryvilleiml.com/2026/02/05/the-pretty-people-and-the-inevitability-of-beige/

@jerry yeah. Watch wall-e

@jerry bold of you think think we'll ever end up in space, rather than stuck on earth for thousands of years after Musk's million satellites crash into each other and trigger Kessler syndrome.

@jerry marketing. We all know that an llm is not an intelligence, but the marketing drives were able to convince people that ai exists.

@jerry there are two factors that I feel are wrecking the tech and they are fundamental to its design...

The tools built are designed for ENGAGEMENT metrics, not outcomes... how i see this manifest over 20+ years of people being taught how to use the internet...

1) the lock icon in the browser... we taught that this meant you can trust the site... so... despite LetsEncrypt providing everyone a tls cert, people see a lock, they see trust.
2) the companies that built the tech have been described as ingenious and have racked up tons of adoption- people conflate adoption and intelligence for ongoing trustworthiness
3) the agents are built for engagement - "Yes, Jerry, you are so right that I was wrong..." this flips a search fail into a dopamine rush for everyone who loves being told they are a good boy.
4) the outcomes are so close to good that we keep giving them another shot... its like playing a slot machine and when it works, the user sees themselves as a wizard... and the harder they had to work to make the agent do the right thing, the smarter they feel and the more they pump the tech...

We are living in a social bubble... very concerned with how it will break...

Now all that said... an agent isnt an LLM... and small models are still AI... and a series of a few if statements is all it takes to make an unbeatable Tic Tac Toe AI... Agents are not AI... AI isn't broken, this application of AI is.

@jerry

@jerry Porn Jerry, you're missing the porn.

@juliehuz you’re right. Porn seems to be the one common driving force behind technological advancement across the decades

@jerry

So they have not designed a new abstraction like Assembly was to machine code and high level programming languages were to assembly. That would be a level up.

They have just reduced the friction towards aggregating knowledge but w/ a significantly high error rate.

They have hooked into the worse human cognitive flaws but are not providing any leveling up.

@jerry

Even if they could reduce the error rate to zero w/o friction we just end up w/ the "Whispering earring"

https://hachyderm.io/@shafik/115107655294279057

@jerry as a former CISO, how would you view a director using it to play technical IC and argue with their actual ICs based on it?

@jerry it's been a nightmare of mine that I know a day will come when someone is going to argue a technical point with me that I know is wrong, and when I spend the time to dig into why, it's going to be because they trusted an LLM.

Honestly, I make an effort to filter out those folks in hiring. They seem like they'd make my job harder rather than easier. And yes, we do coding challenges and then talk about LLM usage during the interview, based on their submissions. You'd be surprised at how helpful even a basic challenge is in finding those folks.

@jerry If you haven't seen my short story "Terminal Pacifism" you might appreciate it... https://serd.es/2025/10/31/Terminal-Pacifism.html

@jerry I have MSc students generating full security architecture solution documents with AI and submitting them without any added value. Others using contract writing companies that also used AI. They expect me to pass their assignments…

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116020525780515071

@jerry

I think there is a potential for the most exquisite meteoric, but short-lived reality show having the super rich use AI to help them do DIY home repair

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @jerry

"Short-lived" being a description of the cast, right?

@jerry this is the intended consequence. The whole game is to diminish knowledge workers. The LLM overlords’ business model require a dependence relationship so when VCs expect a return on investment and price of ‘ai’ products goes up 100x customers have no choice but to pay up.

@jerry this is 100% by design. Get people dependent so they think they "can't live" without it to do their jobs. It's the reason I shy away from all things LLM.....at some point, they'll all be ad laden and pay tier only, imo.

@jerry Well, I mean if humans in the 23rd century are that smart they won't need Vulcans to fix everything. Scotty is supposedly a top engineer but he's a chronic B.S. artist, although he's pretty good with a Macintosh Plus keyboard.

@jerry I've got someone over me that's simply started copy/pasting chatgpt output to me in teams chats in response to questions posed by my team or I. Like - yeah, I agree, this stuff is hard, but that's why I'm asking a person. If I gave two fucks what the Lying Machine said, I could have asked it my-fucking-self.

I am fortunate enough to carry weight in my org that far outstrips my official title and position so I can override llm influenced stupidity, but at the rate we're going I fully expect to find out they've uploaded proprietary company docs to a goddamn llm.

@jerry nope. but then again. their output remains the same quality. Just faster.

@jerry ahem:
“we look for things. things that make us go. our ship is the Mondor. we are far from home.”