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Chat-GPT as a bullshit engine

This is a brilliant podcast with Dan McQuillan whose book I’m reviewing for LSE Review of Books in the near future. I was particularly taken with this line:

It’s literally making stuff up and it has no idea what it’s making up, therefore it’s a bullshit engine. It’s a bullshit engine in that it makes stuff up which has no semantic content, grounding or causality in it. And it’s bullshit because its only goal is to be plausible.

https://techwontsave.us/episode/158_why_we_must_resist_ai_w_dan_mcquillan

This is the second time recently I’ve seen ‘bullshit’ used as a serious frame for this. I must go back and read Frankfurt’s On Bullshit with this in mind. I’ve not read it yet but this post on Dan’s blog looks useful: https://www.danmcquillan.org/chatgpt.html

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