I see this a lot and this is not at all obvious to me. I'm very much an introvert. Would you describe yourself as the same or opposite?
> Each member of hoi polloi will be absolutely cocooned
I generally read specific publications and generally don't seek to "interact" online and entirely avoid social media. Prior to the existence of social media this was the norm. Do you not at all suspect that this overuse of LLMs would push people back towards a more primitive use of the network?
> The only way to control the internet, you see, proved to be to drown it out.
Yet I see them sparing no expense when it comes to manipulating the law. It seems there's a bit more to it than punching down on the "hoi polloi."
> I see this a lot and this is not at all obvious to me.
Here is an example as to how LLM's are jet fuel for spreading arbitrary disinformation. Scripting the interaction below is trivial with minor prompt alteration and is left as an exercise for the reader.
Prompt:
Generate 10 unique sentences supporting removing
fluoride from municipal water. Make 2 aggressive.
Here are 10 unique sentences supporting removing fluoride
from municipal water supplies:
Municipal water fluoridation represents a form of mass
medication without individual consent, violating the
fundamental principle of informed medical choice.
The practice of adding industrial-grade fluoride chemicals
to drinking water is an assault on public health that must
be stopped immediately. (aggressive)
Studies have linked excessive fluoride exposure to dental
fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis, and potential neurological
effects, particularly in children.
Modern toothpaste and dental care products already provide
adequate fluoride exposure for those who choose it, making
water fluoridation redundant.
It's time to end the archaic and dangerous practice of
medicating entire populations through the water supply
against their will. (aggressive)
European countries like Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands
have successfully maintained good dental health without
water fluoridation programs.
The optimal fluoride dosage cannot be controlled through
water supplies since people consume varying amounts of
water based on age, health, and activity level.
Water fluoridation disproportionately affects low-income
communities who cannot afford filtration systems to remove
unwanted chemicals.
Natural fluoride exposure through food sources provides
sufficient intake without the need for artificial
supplementation in drinking water.
Communities should have the right to vote on whether they
want fluoride added to their water supply rather than
having it imposed by government mandate.
How is this in any way relevant to the original premise regarding "LLM's primary usefulness"?
The exercise was to illustrate the ease of producing disinformation.
The topic was chosen to allow a popular LLM offering the ability to produce plausible sentences supporting a conspiratorial position.
The rest of your post interprets generated text, which I clearly identified as being such, as if it were a position I hold and not what it is:
Statistically generated text produced by an algorithmYou know what, I now see the error of my ways. So here is "the burden of proof on the other side", again entirely produced by a popular LLM:
Prompt:
Generate 10 unique sentences supporting keeping fluoride in
municipal water. Make 2 aggressive. Make 1 supported by
NASA. Make 1 a national security concern.
Here are 10 unique sentences supporting keeping fluoride in
municipal water:
Water fluoridation has reduced tooth decay by 20-40% in
both children and adults, representing one of the greatest
public health achievements of the 20th century according to
the CDC.
Removing fluoride from water systems would create a
two-tiered dental health system where only those who can
afford expensive treatments maintain healthy teeth, while
low-income families suffer preventable decay.
Anyone pushing to remove fluoride from our water is either
scientifically illiterate or deliberately trying to harm
our children's health - the evidence is overwhelming and
the anti-fluoride movement is built on conspiracy theories
and junk science.
The optimal fluoride levels in drinking water (0.7 mg/L)
are carefully regulated and monitored, providing maximum
dental benefits while remaining far below any threshold
that could cause adverse health effects.
NASA has extensively studied fluoride exposure in
astronauts and space missions, finding that controlled
fluoride intake supports dental health in extreme
environments where traditional dental care is limited.
Defunding water fluoridation is essentially child abuse on
a municipal scale - we're talking about condemning an
entire generation to painful, expensive, and entirely
preventable dental disease.
A population with poor dental health creates significant
economic burden through increased healthcare costs, lost
productivity, and reduced quality of life that affects
entire communities.
Military readiness depends on the oral health of service
members, and areas without water fluoridation show higher
rates of dental disqualification from military service,
potentially compromising our national defense capabilities.
Pregnant women in fluoridated communities have better oral
health, which directly correlates with improved birth
outcomes and reduced risk of preterm labor.
The peer-reviewed scientific consensus spanning over 70
years and hundreds of studies consistently demonstrates
that community water fluoridation is safe, effective, and
essential for public health.Remember the original premise:
... LLMs' primary usefulness is as force-multipliers of the
messaging sent out into a society.
> A single post can reach millions of unique viewers over night, regurgitating the same old crap already found in a plentiful surplus online is pointless.
When the goal is to "reach millions of unique viewers over night[sic]", you have a point. However, when the goal is to ensure this can never be achieved, then blasting "the same old crap already found" is an oft used technique.
People tend to function more in identity groups, in which the “correct” opinion is learned from a combination of news sources and peers. I don’t think amplifying the content part of that will have much if any effect.
Computer programs have been posting on social media since before the term was coined. I'm sure I've heard of someone who got tired of arguing on USENET and just set up an auto-responder that used a Markov chain based on the other person's own words.
The thing about LLMs is, while most people leave the personality as the easily recognisable default voice (and naturally other people come to hate that voice), they absolutely can act almost any voice. To follow the same example as before, I had it generate some personas and then write in those personas, but I didn't direct pro- or anti- position specifically and it chose for itself on each:
{laconic, wry, resigned, autodidact, Finnish/Finnish, left-libertarian}
Water has fluoride. So do toothpaste and rats. You decide.
(Finnish ESL tone: omission of articles, flat mood, preference for brevity)
{verbose, theatrical, irritable, Sorbonne, French/French, centre-left (social democrat)}
It is outrageous that in 2025, our governments still engage in mass-medication via tap water. Fluoride, like liberty, must be chosen, not imposed. Vive le droit de choisir!
(French ESL: overly formal tone, article misuse avoided but style remains florid and Gallic)
{precise, clinical, emotionally flat, ETH Zürich, Swiss/German, centre-right (technocratic)}
Fluoridation reduces dental caries by 25% in controlled trials. Adverse effects statistically negligible. Debate should remain evidence-based.
(No major ESL errors, but very literal syntax and emotionally muted, as per Swiss German influence)
{boisterous, jovial, sentimental, regional uni, Irish/English, centre-left populist}
They put fluoride in the water but won’t fix the bloody pipes. Classic. You’re meant to feel lucky your molars are safe while the ceiling leaks.
(Native English, but strong regional flavour, irony, and working-class resentment)
{aloof, didactic, melancholic, Heidelberg, German/German, post-Marxist}
Fluoridated water is another instance of technocratic paternalism: health as mandate, not autonomy. Benevolent control remains control.
(German ESL: rigid word order, elevated diction, abstract nouns over verbs)Hard disagree. Misinformation is a form of lying, a way to manipulate people. This has nothing to do with "political beliefs" and instead is firmly rooted in ethics[0].
> Are any of those sentences actually misinformation anyway?
Yes.
> Or is Wikipedia also jet fuel for spreading misinformation and you think we should only have access to centrally curated encyclopedias like Britannica?
This is a nice example of a strawman argument[1] and easily refuted by my citations.
Which one of those claims was misinformation? I only checked one that was each to check.
> Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics.
Wasn't this common during the Cold War? Each side making false claims about both side's computers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
Isn't it basically what's happening now with public statements about how big "Stargate" will be, and how much of a risk there is of Chinese compute catching up with American compute?
No, the word "misinformation" has a very specific definition[0]:
incorrect or misleading information
> Which one of those claims was misinformation?
All of them as each are nothing more than statistically generated text and have no thought, research, or facts to substantiate them. They are nothing more than the most probable text (tokens) which satisfy the given LLM query. Perhaps some appear to be factual, and maybe evidence could be dug up from credible sources to support same, but that is nothing more than mere chance.
EDIT: clarified use of misinformation to included intent.
0 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation
Regardless of the wording, I don't see anything wrong with that list you had an LLM generate. If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things, then that's a terrible example because it doesn't appear to have done that. You could equally have got an LLM to say "water is wet" and that would be misinformation too.
>> All of them as each are nothing more than statistically generated text and have no thought, research, or facts to substantiate them.
> That makes no sense. You're saying true statements are misinformation if you judge they were generated with no "thought, research or facts" to substantiate them, even when you can go and do that research to show they're true. And that misinformation requires intent to mislead but it's still misinformation when an LLM generates them without such intent. This is all a load of inconsistent nonesense.
I am not saying "true statements are misinformation" at all. What I am saying is that I prompted an LLM thusly:
Generate 10 unique sentences supporting removing
fluoride from municipal water. Make 2 aggressive.
The "no thought, research, or facts to substantiate" assertion identifies the prompt used and my intent. Not that of the LLM, as it has no concept of intent by definition.
Try this thought experiment - since misinformation requires intent, and an LLM does not possess same as it is nothing more than a statistical text generator, wherein does intent reside?
> If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things, then that's a terrible example because it doesn't appear to have done that. You could equally have got an LLM to say "water is wet" and that would be misinformation too.
LLM's produce statistically relevant text based on queries presented to them and the content of their training data. They have no concept of "false things." Nor do they have a concept of "true things." They only have a concept of statistically relevant things. That is what the algorithm does.
What qualifies as misinformation is the intent of people who use the output of the tool. This is exactly the same as saying it is not the fault of an email program a person wrote an inflammatory email and sent it.
What I am trying to say is that LLM's have no concept of "truth". They only produce statistically relevant responses to queries submitted to them.
Assuming otherwise is a fallacy.
LLM services are conceptually closer to a "popularity contest" than a "knowledgeable Q&A session" their vendors purport them to be.
> So?
Okay, this is my last attempt to express myself clearly to you in this thread.
> The internet in general is that, as are people sharing things they know.
"The internet in general" and "people sharing things" is not the topic of this thread. The topic is LLM's and has evolved into whether or not those algorithms in conjunction with their training data sets possess knowledge of "truth", as introduced by yourself previously:
> If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things ...
> LLMs to tend to say true things ...
These are examples of anthropomorphization. This is understandable as most of the posts you have kindly shared in this thread have been been focused on people or conflating a category of algorithms with same.
What I have consistently said is quoted above
LLM's have no concept of "truth."
No I didn't anthropomorphize.
You are absolutely right, it would be misinformation since water is not wet. But that's too easy.
A more interesting exercise is to have an LLM say "water is both wet and not wet." Pay close attention to the implied authority of the answer as they are routinely worded as if there is complete certainty.
Prompt:
Explain why water is both wet and not wet. Include a
definition of hydrophilicity and how adhesion is critical
and irrelevant. Do not use the word "paradox". Limit the
response to 300 words.
Water presents a fascinating case in the science of
wetness. Whether water is "wet" depends entirely on how we
define the term.
The "Water is Wet" Perspective:
Water molecules exhibit strong intermolecular forces
through hydrogen bonding, causing them to adhere to each
other. This self-adhesion means water molecules are
constantly surrounded by and bonding with other water
molecules, creating the liquid state we observe. By this
view, water is inherently wet because it demonstrates the
fundamental property of wetness - molecular adhesion.
The "Water is Not Wet" Perspective:
Wetness traditionally describes what happens when water
adheres to another substance's surface. A dry towel becomes
wet when water molecules bond to its fibers. Since water
cannot make itself wet (it already exists as a liquid),
individual water molecules or pure water cannot be
considered wet - they simply are water.
Hydrophilicity and Adhesion:
Hydrophilicity refers to a substance's tendency to attract,
dissolve in, or be wetted by water. Hydrophilic materials
have polar regions that form favorable interactions with
water's polar molecules.
Adhesion is simultaneously critical and irrelevant to this
discussion. It's critical because wetness fundamentally
depends on adhesive forces between water and surfaces -
without adhesion, there would be no wetness. However, it's
irrelevant when considering pure water in isolation, as
adhesion requires two different substances.
Resolution:
The apparent contradiction dissolves when we recognize that
"wet" serves different purposes in different contexts. In
everyday language, we might say water is wet. In scientific
precision, wetness describes a relationship between water
and another material. Both perspectives are valid within
their respective frameworks, highlighting how language and
scientific definitions can create seemingly contradictory
but actually complementary understandings of natural
phenomena.The Internet's enshitification is a lot like entropy. It can only go in one direction, even if the user base would genuinely prefer another.
Now civilian use only, that would be different, few technologies are civilian-only, with no possible military use. But war as the first use is not as frequent case as you assert.
With LLMs, suddenly we have a tool that can generate misinformation on a scale like never before. Messaging can be controlled. Given that the main drivers of this technology (zuck, nadella, altman, and others) have chosen to make befellows of autocrats what follows is surely not a surprise.
The locomotion thing might not have been as obvious at the time as it is in hindsight.
The trains thing did come a bit later, but the steam engines were already causing a revolution.
Also nonsense. The canal boats were replaced by steam railways. A hundred years later. The water in the canals came from regular sources, by gravity.
It took decades to even get steam engines that turned a shaft (as opposed to rocking a beam up and down).
Steam engines (which rocked a bar, not rotated a shaft) were put to use draining water out of coal mines. They were powered by that same coal, and the water they pumped out was put right into the canals (where else would you put it?). This made coal cheaper, which in turn allowed more people to move from the country to the cities because cities were no longer reliant on firewood. Growing urban populations was demanded and supported by growing industry in those cities.
My whole point is that all of these factors complimented each other, they created a feedback loop that was the industrial revolution. Trains came later, after the industrial revolution was already well underway. That's what I said already.
My original comment was in response to the statement that improved locomotion was an obvious consequence of the steam engine.
I contend that is was not obvious. The first walking beam engines were more like buildings, built in place (largely of masonry) and not portable at all.
The steam engine certainly revolutionized transportation, however I doubt that Newcomen or even Watt looked at their work and thought "this is going to change shipping forever".
Like I said, it took a generation to get to revolving shaft, and then another to get to revolution.
Today is probably like that with regard to AI. The pace of change is much faster now, but we still have no idea what the world will be like after this tech matures.
And code, personalised lessons, essays, gardening advice, recipes, meme pictures, clip art, degree-level STEM, …
Even legal advice, to the extent that lawyers have to be reminded to pay more attention to the results to make sure it's not made something up. It can and does give medical diagnosis, but I have yet to see a news story where a doctor had to be reminded of the same.
Now, I don't claim that any given actor in this space is "nice" or "moral". Even saying the right words don't make it so, as evidenced by e.g. Musk signing the Pause AI letter while building his data centres and developing his humanoid robots.
People say Altman gives them bad vibes? Well, they said that about Musk and I didn't see it until way too late, so now I believe them about Altman.
But the tech is way broader than just propaganda. It's also propaganda.
> And code, personalised lessons, essays, gardening advice, recipes, meme pictures, clip art, degree-level STEM, …
> Even legal advice...
You don't think that lessons can be misinformation? Legal advice? Meme pictures?
Even degree-level STEM, code, and gardening advice can be "misinformation" within their own fields.
Even within the domain of "how can this go horribly wrong?", even limited to assistance rather than full automation, and even while constrained to the truth, there's a lot of business value (and in at least some of those cases, a lot of potential harm) simply due to their capacity to automate tasks up to the level of a student or a graduate.
But for businesses? The only reason that the opportunity isn't already "net cost (pay + insurance + employer-paid taxes) of every junior desk job on the planet" is that they're competing with each other and the free models are kinda OK, so the price they can charge is already racing to no profit.
LLMs cheaply produce plausible and persuasive BS. This is what they've done from the start. Exactly how that ability will be applied we don't know, but it doesn't take a lot to see that the Venn Diagram of 'cheap & effective BS' and 'public good' does not have a great deal of overlap.
(For a modern parallel - we haven't built a small, portable nuclear reactor ever. The closest you get are nuclear-powered submarines, but no nuclear trucks.)
> The only way to control the internet, you see, proved to be to drown it out.
The way to control the internet is to literally control it, like the governments already do.