Capitalism created LLMs.

People are clever; we invent things.

LLMs are just a tool. Tools can be used by people; the problem is when people are used by tools, which is what is happening in this case.

See Corey Doctorow’s latest tour of YouTube promoting his idea of reverse centaurs (which, for the life of me, I can´t figure out why he didn´t call minotaurs).

There is no such thing as just a tool.

Sure. You can talk about the LLM gestalt, if you’d like, that’s worth examining, as with any other tool; especially stuff like progressive brain rot.

But listening to the complaints people have about LLMs, it’s mostly that it’s being improperly used to replace human labor. Improperly in the sense that it can’t actually do the job it is replacing humans in, which is a separate discussion of what kind of world it will be when there are no jobs for humans to do.

LLMs are used responsibly by people doing their own work. For instance, Linus Torvalds used Claude to find errors in the Linux kernel (I think), that he then fixed himself.

The problem is that capitalism, especially oligoplic capitalism, will create worse products at lower prices (or higher profits), and it will do so on the shortest timeline, ignoring things like future lawsuits over security flaws and future lack of programming talent and erosion of consumer trust.

I guess calling them reverse centaurs visualizes the change that is happening in the relationship between human and machine. We used to be the head but we’re the butt now. It makes you reconstruct the image in your head.

In truth there already was a downward trend before LLM’s exploded where tools were continuously used against people. “Enshitification” most people call it but it’s really just free range capitalism. Generations of economy majors have been doing exactly what they were taught. Increase short term shareholder value at any cost. It’s unsustainable and LLM’s are just another accelerant.

I guess calling them reverse centaurs visualizes the change that is happening in the relationship between human and machine. We used to be the head but we’re the butt now. It makes you reconstruct the image in your head.

Yes, but the minotaur is frequently just a person with the head of a bull, instead having to invert a centaur, which is already not a familiar image. In talks, Doctorow defaults to “Bojack Horseman”, an acknowledgment that reverse centaur is perhaps too much imaginative labor for his audience.

Agree on the MBAs–capitalism eating itself.

Yeah, my shovel sometimes convinces me to commit suicide while evaporating water to keep it running.

Sweat is an evaporatve cooling system used to regulate the temperature of the mechanism that keeps a shovel moving. And if you’ve never considered killing yourself over the prospect of spending all day with a shovel, I can at least be confident you’d make an -excellent- archeologist.

(But mild humor aside, I do understand your point.)

I can´t figure out why he didn´t call minotaurs

Minotaurs still convey the idea of super human strength, he was trying to convey the idea of limited power output of a human with the limited mental capacity of a horse.

Ah, thank you. The problem has been bedevilling me for weeks and I think this is the solution.

I initially thought it could be because the Minotaur isn’t exactly half-man/half-animal as the centaur is, but a hybrid of the two; often represented with hoofs for feet, etc., which is another expression of what you’re saying.

Also it’s a really shitty tool that doesn’t actually fix a problem. Unless you are rich and that problem is ‘I have to pay my employees’

There are several valid use cases for LLMs. It does solve problems, quite literally.

Corey Doctorow didn’t invent that term, but I’m glad people are talking about it.

It comes from “centaur chess” which is chess where both players are assisted by a computer. The humans are “riding” the computer in the centaur analogy — benefitting from the computer’s ability to process the best tactical move, while the human handles the strategy. They found out that computers win chess against humans every time; but humans with computers win against the computer every time.

By definition not. The majority of the code in GitHub is some volunteer project on a permissive licence .

I like this take.

Capitalism was the jet fuel that got us here, but now we need to shed our boosters and switch engines to something made to run longer.

That’s how every ecosystem eventually grows. First come the weeds aimed at colonizing new areas as fast as possible. Then come the small plants, then the shrubs, the trees until it’s a self sustaining forest of different species.

Yeah, still a sweatshop with air conditioning and free coffee and junk food.

who wouldn’t want to be paid to do very little?

Oh that’ll change soon enough as well in the downwards direction.

to do very little?

…for 12 hours a day…

no this is just bad engineering

you can do what you want with or without ai or capitalism

if you skip the engineering part it will be very likely, shit