I’m always shocked by how LLM illiterate professionals or even leading “science influencers” are.
…But I know why.
It’s on purpose
Literally everything about the most common (Big Tech) interfaces obfuscates everything about them, to the maximum degree, to present them as “sycophantic oracles” and maximize engagement. If that’s all one is exposed to, there is literally no way to get a cold ass bucket of water in the face by peeking under the hood.
It’s all very… anti science.
On a semi related note, see this absolutely unhinged but not wrong rant:
The Conspiracy Against High Temperature Sampling
https://gist.github.com/Hellisotherpeople/71ba712f9f899adcb08b94bce20d5397
It is related. Anyone, even Hank Green, will rely on AI more if they never get a chance to poke it and peel it apart.
Like, if I ware in charge of a university, I would mandate a course where everyone gets a untuned base model in raw completion mode, and gleefully watch the slow realization. “Wait… all “AI” is just this?”
A problem I have with gen AI is that is generates so much.
In an hour of work you can have a 200 page document about a subject you knew nothing of an hour before.
That’s just too much to keep up with.
You also have no idea how much of that 200 pages is true and accurate, nor which parts are, nor what any of the biases/ideologies of the original source materials may be (as they have been garbled). So basically, you have no reliable new information.
I was watching something last night about how high intelligence doesn’t mean superpowers, it simply means increased processing power. It means the ability to see more problems ahead, to ruminate, to worry about how to address them. It makes sense that a lot of people with high intelligence and compassion are anxious. Being able to foresee and worry about so many things stresses people out. Add in the limitations of being a human being with a finite capacity for doing things to address said problems, and well.
All of these very intelligent people being caught up in using AI because of the thought that it will increase their ability to get things done, be more productive, do ‘more and more,’ like Hank said, makes absolute sense.
It is unfortunately perfectly suited to people who feel they need to solve everything to find any kind of internal peace. The temptation to think that you are The One Who Can Use It Right To Help Save The World when everyone else is prone to succumbing to AI psychosis or simply being fed falsehoods and accepting them as presented… well, it results in things like this, doesn’t it?
His response on reddit pretty clearly illustrates what I was talking about.
“As for the "why don’t you just make less!
No one is making you do this!" I’m not sure that’s how I work. I’ve been feeling the pressure of “Oh, I have this little video idea, I need to get it out real fast so I can get to the more important stuff” and I create when I feel that pressure.
…
But mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.”
I don’t hate all LLMs/ML models/“AI”.
I also don’t use them. I also don’t see a need to use them.
I work in tech and these “AI” things are little more than averaging the most common replies to a given input. Any question that’s been asked, especially those that are asked often, is well suited for an LLM chat bot. That’s good if you want a high level overview of a topic that you don’t know much about. If you want accuracy, you’ll need to dig a bit more, but overall, you’ll get a relatively good idea of the answer you’re looking for. That’s enough for most people.
I’m crazy. I like to deeply understand everything, so the high level, lack of detail, finesse, and accuracy of LLM chat bots is unacceptable for me, so I trend towards doing my own research. If I use an LLM at all, it’s just an augmented search engine. I’m more interested in its references than its response.
There’s also something to be said about making short clips of impossible things that some smaller YouTubers are using “AI” models for. Things that would take a long time for a graphics artist to create, and an editor to composite. Stuff that a small time YouTuber can’t really afford, but they can get good enough but clearly “AI” visuals to spice things up in their videos. The AI is just for display during transitions, it doesn’t affect the content being made in any meaningful way. I’ve seen Paul Hibbert do this a lot and his production team from what I know is basically him and his wife. I’m not even sure if he has an editor, or if he does it himself. He’ll go from a live shot of him talking about a product, do an AI transition, to another live shot of him continuing his discussion. Rather than a cut, or some kind of fade, wipe, or other simplistic transition, the generated images are of him, and only to add visual flavor. He also does some AI generated music stuff, which again, fair. He’s not exactly a musician, and unless he has the money to hire a musician, he either uses AI for the funny transition music or he uses an unrelated and unlicensed (or open licensed) song… It just adds flavor to his content, it builds on what he’s creating, it doesn’t shape what he’s creating. All of his scripts sound genuine, not AI created, so everything should be fine.
That, to me, is a good use of AI as a tool.
There’s too many bad examples for me to really cover them in any detail, but I’m sure everyone has seen the AI generated person being animated by AI, reading an AI generated script, using an AI generated voice sample. Even if the original source material is legit, is buried under so many layers of slop that I can’t bear to watch it.
For me, it entirely depends on what he’s using it for. It’s entirely not about the fact that he uses it. I’ll have to dig into it a bit to see what he’s doing, but from the comments I’ve read so far, it seems like the answer to what he’s using it for, is yes. He’s using it for everything… Not ideal.
He’s been obviously struggling since he got cancer. He’s in remission now and that’s great but I’ve been watching him slowly slip into PTSD. I have medical PTSD, I have cystic fibrosis and had a double lung transplant in 2014 and I see him devolving the same way I did. I’m literally two days away from getting out of an inpatient trauma treatment center that I’ve been at for a month because I didn’t take the medical PTSD seriously because I didn’t realize I needed to, I think he is in the same boat. I think he was already spread way too thin then cancer happened and he’s stuck in a hyper reactive state which is exhausting and eventually leads to the more classic PTSD symptoms and he’s probably turning to LLMs to try to keep up as the PTSD drains his batteries and he’s unaware of it. I hope he gets help soon and he doesn’t wait for it to get as bad as I did, PTSD kills if you let it get away from you.
I’m sorry that things got bad enough to require inpatient care, but I’m glad you were able to get some help — I hope it did actually help. I know from firsthand experience that one never fully recovers from PTSD, in the sense that you can’t go back to how things were before. However, I also know that it’s possible to continue living life with the psychological equivalent of a massive scar, even if it is still red and angry and often painful — but not really possible to when instead of a scar, you have an open, gaping wound.
I hope you were able to make some progress towards healing, even if it’ll take much longer to fully heal.
I also appreciate your attempt to leverage your own experience to promote compassion for Green. I’ve not read the rest of the comments here yet, but I can imagine there are a lot of people with uncharitable stances towards the situation. I am pretty steadfastly anti-AI, but I think it’s important that we consider the person at the centre of any problematic AI use
Hank has been an advocate for knowledge for far longer than LLMs have existed. His recent use of them is disappointing, but I fell like this does not discredit the work he has done throughout his career to push curiosity.
What he does next will be important and will decide how I interact with his content going forward. It seems like he is aware of his missteps and is looking to make a change.
I am not a perfect human and do not expect celebrities to be perfect at all times.
his brother wrote a book on climate change, they should talk to each other
Perhaps over video logs they send to each other periodically…
That’s quite exactly what I was snarkly referring to. You’re pretty quick.
Literally who?
I like Hank, and this is a shitty article.
That aside he should be facing a revolt.
Hes supposed to be a credible source, hes an educator, hes the modern day Bill Nye. It’s very hard to take anything he says as objective truth when his research and fact checking consists of asking an LLM. Considering hallucinations and straight up lies are not only common but not even unexpected for an LLM you can’t believe anything that comes from one nor can you believe anyone who uses one.
He didn’t state what his actual process was. People assume that just means firing out a query and no bothering to check it, he said he uses it to summarize sources to see if they are worth reading. I don’t think that’s unreasonable if he still reads them.
Regarding using it to write scripts, I think if you use LLMs to generate something you are good at making and are picky and opinionated about, the review process very quickly makes you skeptical about the output.
Before the response, IP rights and environmental effects of LLMs are completely valid and are a valid reason for opposing them. Don’t just assume someone’s using it out of laziness instead of in an attempt to scale up their own work.
Papers have an abstract and summary sections SPECIFICALLY for this reason and usually aren’t more than a paragraph; there’s no excuse to use LLM.
I’m going to wait and see how he handles this hurdle before I form any long term opinions. Could be an honest mistake that he learns from and improves for the future.
Wait, the controversy is that he said something that was maybe AI generated or maybe it wasn’t or maybe his use of AI rubbed off on his talking patterns? I kinda feel like he’s th type that would admit to reading off responses generated from AI.
apparently he got caught reading AI texts, people became immediately suspicious.
I don’t know about a “revolt”, but it sure is disappointing.
I like the guy, and most of what he does. I also like, contrary to some, that he usually keep quiet on some controversial topics. Well, I liked that; it seems that he wasn’t just “staying quiet”, unfortunately.
And, the worst part is just that he, as we know him (remember, parasocial stuff and so on), should have been on the side of people that “know better”. I don’t understand how you can be that curious of a person, and not seeing the issues here. I understand trying the tools, to see what it’s about and what it can actually do; in a sort of experimentation kind of way. I would even understand (but not condone) regularly using them in some ways, once you find something that you can confidently say “it works well enough”.
This, however, is not it. And maybe I’m putting him on a sort of pedestal when I say he should have known better, but that’s how I feel it. There’s a large list of things LLM are known to not be reliable for: searching anything beyond surface informations, properly summarizing actually complex subjects, picking out what’s pertinent and what isn’t, being consistent, not having blind side, and being truthful (assuming we can decide what truthful means in the first place). All of this is intrinsic to the technology at hand. And while some people argument that “humans are imperfect too”, the difference is that humans can spot their mistakes.
And yet, here we are; one of the most prominent science communicator, heavily leaning on this to start his researches, undoubtedly being led astray on some topics by hallucination, missing some big issues on others because the models simply didn’t get something out this time (for whatever reasons), getting very heavy confirmation bias (because of course at some point you ask a prompt that’s oriented, and the LLM will oblige). And recently, a few things he kept saying, like, we’re needing more code… sounded silly. In fact, most of the time I hear something in a field I’m reasonably knowledgeable about, I find things that I don’t really agree with.
That’s the part that worries me about this. Not that he used large, corporate LLMs “responsibly” (assuming that’s a thing one can do, which I’m not convinced of). But that he muddled the image of a reliable source (and we have to decide, at some point, that this or that source is reliable or not) with lots of approximations wrapped in a pretty ribbon. And now, the little things I was slightly weirded out in his videos are taking way more space in my mind, and I’m starting to doubt topics I’m absolutely not knowledgeable about that he’s talked about, too, because that’s just how trust works.
At the end of the day, reliable people come and goes, but the “disclosure” sure sounded like he didn’t actually grasp the issues, only barely that there might have been issues.
A lot of weird things in this comment, like implying that it is OK to use llms to search for surface information. That is just as biased as searching for more complicated info, and the tone of the llm response white-washes it all away.
I don’t know where you think I implied it was ok for surface search, but it’s the exact opposite of what I wanted to say.
There’s a large list of things LLM are known to not be reliable for: searching anything beyond surface informations
This implies that it is reliable for “surface informations” which i disagree with, though a lot of people get sucked in that way
I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.
I think this is very honest and we shouldn’t give someone shit for speaking up.
Alright, so he got addicted to what felt like an easy source of knowledge. Can happen to anyone.
I guess I’m just tired of finding things to be upset about. I’ve lived more than five decades and it’s been outrage after outrage after outrage.
I’m tired, boss.
He’s admitted there was a problem and it got out of hand. If he changes, what’s the huge deal going forward?
We need social safety nets. We need universal health care. We need to kick fascists out of our government. And sure, we need to fix smaller problems, but jesus christ does every last thing have to be drama?
This is an issue I’m seeing more and more of. People are demanding that others be perfect at all times. We all fuck up and make mistakes. If we write off everyone we’ve ever disagreed with as irredeemably bad, then we’re telling people there’s no point in growing and changing.
When I was a kid in the early 90s in Texas, I thought homosexuality was immoral. I was wrong and I’ve spent the last 30 years preaching for inclusion and tolerance. And that’s the story for most people my age. In the 90s, a Democratic President banned openly gay people from being in the military.
If we want to change society, we have to invite others to our side with open arms, not condemn them.
It depends what you define as drama.
I would say this is just about him breaking his community’s trust in him, and people let him know that. So now he’ll need to work to earn it back.
It isn’t really drama, but I can understand why people would feel a bit betrayed when they find out this person, who presents themselves as a science communicator, was heavily using a machine that is well known for hallucinations and spreading misinformation.
Additionally, Hank himself has said he is deeply concerned about the effects of AI on the climate crisis, the consolidation of economic power, and the way it was trained. Him heavily using it can makes it feel as though he doesn’t care about that stuff as much as it initially appeared. And given his community includes a lot of people heavily worried about the climate crisis, consolidation of economic power, and the theft of artists’ work, I think them being angry at him is understandable and expected.
Of course, hopefully he now steps back and reflects on this, and then comes back better. But that couldn’t happen without someone calling him on it first.
Yeah I’m with you. I’m disappointed, but everyone will disappoint you in some way some times. Hell I’m disappointed in myself plenty of the time.
I agree, we try our best, but we’ve got to focus on the truly existential issues.
Yeah, I feel the response has gotten way out of hand. Sure, I’m not happy about it. But I have some faith Hank will actually reflect on the situation.
5 decade club reporting 🫡 and I’m tired too.
“If it bleeds, it leads.” Drama leads to clicks, clicks lead to advertising, advertising = money. Same ol’ story, its just super easy now with the internet.
Also an old.
The outrage machine has never been anything but a slow drip of poison to keep us too overwhelmed/afraid to see what the oligarch class is doing to us.
Now it’s a fire hose.
I’m glad I dont know who he is and I will continue to not know him.
These days it seems like the internet is more pleasant the less influencers you know, and most aren’t worth knowing any further about.
I think the past where people’s awareness of public figures was much more distant was a healthier time. Like knowing the famous athlete or actor, but nothing further about their lives and not feeling like “you know them” because they called our your username or liked your comment and not being able to send them a direct message.
You’re right that most influencers aren’t worth knowing any further, but Hank is one of the exceptions. I wouldn’t even call him an influencer honestly, that’s way WAY too generic of a term for what he’s done. His excitement for knowledge and learning, and spreading the things he learns, has helped a generation with thinking skills and getting them interested in the sciences.
I can understand why this technology would be particularly addicting to hank.
His whole persona is answering questions like “what color flower do bees like the most” with the kind of enthusiasm that shows his curiosity and deep passion for science. So a machine where you can put in those sorts of questions and get an almost instant answer would be very addicting.
What’s scary to me is that Hank Green is a rationale, intelligent person with time, money, resources, etc. Everything someone could want to be successful at their passion. And in this case, the passion is literally explaining science. If his own family has to have an intervention on his AI use (which it seems like they did?) after he denied reciting AI prompts on video despite being caught red-handed (which it seems like he did?) what chance do normie script kiddy vibe coders have? Is this the future? Addicts with rotting brains and AI psychosis leading the planet to destruction?
The allure of outsourcing your mental load to a chat bot designed to tell you exactly what you want to hear is too much. Everyone’s getting high off their own supply.
Those who are the most vulnerable to fall for the cult are a) those who have no safeguards or experience and thus don’t see the signs that it is a cult, and b) those who see the signs and know for a fact it is a cult, but think themselves they can outsmart the cult.
His overconfidence is the reason he is leaning so hard into AI. Because he thinks himself knowledgeable and smart enough to always know better than the AI slop. He is the perfect mark to fall for it.
It must feel godlike to manifest your will simply by speaking it. I can understand why that would addict people. This is exactly why they are pushing it so hard - they know it has this effect, people will demand it, they will fight for it. They will give over their enterprise and their personal lives to it, the way a drug or gambling addict gives over everything they have to it.
With that kind of impact - especially early on, before people realize they’ve been taken - they can build enough momentum to corner all compute.
No longer can we gather or organize without our names attached, without our intent scanned and analyzed, our location tracked, or our wallets closed. We will have to drink our verification cans, and we will have to be nice to Trump, or else they will see what you wrote on your iPad Cloud or your Google Pixel Light and then they will debank you, like waking up from the Matrix. “Go woke and go broke” was always a premonition about control.
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better
