Re:Borges and AI
by aschwtzr on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @12:59PM
(#38711554)
I thought of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science and its relation to language, which is discussed by Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Large Language Models are the efforts of mapmakers to encapsulate reality in a way that is ultimately futile.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> Large Language Models are the efforts of mapmakers to encapsulate reality in a way that is ultimately futile.
What's futile?
Nobody is trying to "encapsulate all of reality". Trying to do that would be futile but succeeding would also be useless.
That was poorly worded, what I meant is that some people in general seem to think of LLMs as proxies for reality or truth., and Musk himself says he wants to build "truthGPT" https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/17/23687440/elon-musk-truthg...
That's the part I think is futile, because reality and truth are vast and moving targets there's no way to build a functional map.