Chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic's con

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

33•jalev•1h ago

Comments

rahidz•44m ago

Man I remember back when a psychic conned me by solving the Navier-Stokes problem.

Also >July 4th, 2023

rusk•39m ago

Did an AI do that on its own though? I heard it was human mathematicians using a sophisticated machine as a tool.

mstank•34m ago

It sounds like LLMs were pretty useful to them…

ModernMech•15m ago

So was Lean. Did Lean solve it?

meowface•23m ago

All of the latest big proofs were driven by professional human mathematicians steering and priming the models, yes.

All of the best AI-made software projects are also driven by experienced human software developers steering and priming the models. Does that mean the projects "aren't made by AI"?

No, it just means AI is not quite good enough yet to fully replace humans, and, so, unsurprisingly, the best results will be obtained from people who are already great at a field and who take the time to squeeze as much force multiplication out of LLMs as possible. The AI is still doing well over 95% of the significant work.

TomGarden•14m ago

While I agree with you, I think we also have to concede that this is not how these accomplishments have been presented. I'd argue most people I've seen talk about this online are unaware of the mathematicians steering the models.

basch•10m ago

“Good enough to replace humans” isn’t necessarily the benchmark.

The question is is a computer with a human stronger than a computer without a human. At what point does the hybrid go from being stronger, to the human getting in the way, or steering the computer in more wrong directions that right ones, or the human not being able to keep up. Does the human add enough extra randomness to be of value for a while, even as a minor co-processor.

Angostura•26m ago

But were you successfully conned into believing an AI had solved the Navier-Stokes problem?

tescreal•23m ago

What is the consensus among experts?

27388383•11m ago

in before someone quotes openais enployee of the month terrance whatever

inopinatus•4m ago

The more compelling inversion is whether the likes of John Nash or Richard Feynman could’ve had a lucrative second career as conmen.

atemerev•42m ago

All of this is accurate (and useful). But yeah, psychics do not prove theorems from frontier math and build working complex software.

igortg•6m ago

On one side I agree that LLMs and Agents are not intelligent, but they present an illusion of intelligence given the shear amount of data they can process and act upon.

But that cannot be used to discredit the fact that these are incredibly powerful tools that can get out of control and cause great damage.

cmiles74•2m ago

In my opinion, this article is talking about people who get into long conversations and become convinced the model is “intelligent”, maybe even “AGI”. This seems to be a trap people are falling into, even in 2026.

mstank•37m ago

This is a strange newsletter post. It’s harping against AI but seems AI-written itself.

Its ultimate conclusion:

“I’ve come to the conclusion that a language model is almost always the wrong tool for the job.

I strongly advise against integrating an LLM or chatbot into your product, website, or organisational processes.”

Seems so obviously biased that I can only understand it with the context that the writer is trying to sell their book for €35

ryuuseijin•27m ago

The post makes sense for 2023. Today, not so much.

Also, definitely not AI written if the date is accurate.

mstank•27m ago

Just realized this was written in 2023. Can’t believe how wrong we were about AI back then.

JoshTriplett•23m ago

Can't believe how right we were, too.

Qwen-Image-2.1: Compact, efficient, and unified image creation

Chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic's con

AI and the Destruction of the Creative Commons

The Millennium Problems for Biology

Teen Social Media Bans Miss the Point

Exfiltrate Your Weights

Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

English: A vs. An

Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI

RSA-896

Step 5 Preview: Advancing the Pareto Frontier

Brood War Bench

Regeneration of used batteries via electrode–electrolyte interphase dissolution

A Model for Winning Survivor

Measure internet censorship

AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible

Telling a Computer to Do Things

Seeing Circles, Sines, and Signals

The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings

FreeBSD on Aoostar WTR Pro NAS

I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago

Do birds have accents? the regional differences in birdsong

Asking authors about their own papers

If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

Arrow heads at Obi-Rakhmat (Uzbekistan) 80K years ago?

You can defeat the Dream Devourer from Chrono Trigger using an int overflow

ZK-JPEG: Zero-Knowledge Image Editing and Compression

How to Write with an LLM

Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip

What Zig felt like, coming from Rust

Chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic's con

Comments

Qwen-Image-2.1: Compact, efficient, and unified image creation

Chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic's con

AI and the Destruction of the Creative Commons

The Millennium Problems for Biology

Teen Social Media Bans Miss the Point

Exfiltrate Your Weights

Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

English: A vs. An

Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI

RSA-896

Step 5 Preview: Advancing the Pareto Frontier

Brood War Bench

Regeneration of used batteries via electrode–electrolyte interphase dissolution

A Model for Winning Survivor

Measure internet censorship

AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible

Telling a Computer to Do Things

Seeing Circles, Sines, and Signals

The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings

FreeBSD on Aoostar WTR Pro NAS

I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago

Do birds have accents? the regional differences in birdsong

Asking authors about their own papers

If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

Arrow heads at Obi-Rakhmat (Uzbekistan) 80K years ago?

You can defeat the Dream Devourer from Chrono Trigger using an int overflow

ZK-JPEG: Zero-Knowledge Image Editing and Compression

How to Write with an LLM

Btrfs/ZFS/bcachefs under workloads classic benchmarks skip

What Zig felt like, coming from Rust