It’s interesting that LLM engineers are trying to reverse the search engine. The advantage of google, at least before SEO nonsense, was how easy it was to find things online with just a few words. Now they are trying to reintroduce the confusion and tedium of conversing (with a non intelligent machine no less) at a time when most people’s articulation and rhetoric have atrophied.
It's an interesting thought experiment about this "intention economy," but I must say I find it hardly believable. A unavoidable aspect of a human being is agency, which is another way of saying we all have our own intentions which have a tendency to win out in the end. Yes, perhaps there are some mentally ill people who go on social media and are "willing to be told what they want, to be shown what is being done for or to them, 'in the best possible way' for their own good," and maybe tech advertisers have a desire for some sort of ability to simply pull a lever and turn regular people into zombies who can be ordered around with manufactured intent. But to portray LLMs as having the ability to induce this 'zombification of intent,' so to speak, is simply a fantasy. Maybe LLMs are good at convincing users they are being given facts, but people do seem to be figuring out a result from an LLM has some good chance of being a "hallucination" instead.
Maybe the framing of "intent economy" is more useful from a critical perspective anyway. What is the intent of the researchers who published this study, for instance? It's common knowledge there are literally hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around, looking for a place to germinate. I mean, why else would such a a far fetched bit of speculative musing be given a second thought beyond some seventies-era sci-fi dime novel? With that kind of funding washing through such a struggling technology, why not go for gold where there is gold to be had?
It’s interesting that LLM engineers are trying to reverse the search engine. The advantage of google, at least before SEO nonsense, was how easy it was to find things online with just a few words. Now they are trying to reintroduce the confusion and tedium of conversing (with a non intelligent machine no less) at a time when most people’s articulation and rhetoric have atrophied.
It's an interesting thought experiment about this "intention economy," but I must say I find it hardly believable. A unavoidable aspect of a human being is agency, which is another way of saying we all have our own intentions which have a tendency to win out in the end. Yes, perhaps there are some mentally ill people who go on social media and are "willing to be told what they want, to be shown what is being done for or to them, 'in the best possible way' for their own good," and maybe tech advertisers have a desire for some sort of ability to simply pull a lever and turn regular people into zombies who can be ordered around with manufactured intent. But to portray LLMs as having the ability to induce this 'zombification of intent,' so to speak, is simply a fantasy. Maybe LLMs are good at convincing users they are being given facts, but people do seem to be figuring out a result from an LLM has some good chance of being a "hallucination" instead.
Maybe the framing of "intent economy" is more useful from a critical perspective anyway. What is the intent of the researchers who published this study, for instance? It's common knowledge there are literally hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around, looking for a place to germinate. I mean, why else would such a a far fetched bit of speculative musing be given a second thought beyond some seventies-era sci-fi dime novel? With that kind of funding washing through such a struggling technology, why not go for gold where there is gold to be had?