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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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So, I've been spending too much time on subreddits with heavy promptfondler presence, such as /r/singularity, and the reddit algorithm keeps recommending me subreddit with even more unhinged LLM hype. One annoying trend I've noted is that people constantly conflate LLM-hybrid approaches, such as AlphaGeometry or AlphaEvolve (or even approaches that don't involve LLMs at all, such as AlphaFold) with LLMs themselves. From their they act like of course LLMs can [insert things LLMs can't do: invent drugs, optimize networks, reliably solve geometry exercise, etc.].
Like I saw multiple instances of commenters questioning/mocking/criticizing the recent Apple paper using AlphaGeometry as a counter example. AlphaGeometry can actually solve most of the problems without an LLM at all, the LLM component replaces a set of heuristics that make suggestions on proof approaches, the majority of the proof work is done by a symbolic AI working with a rigid formal proof system.
I don't really have anywhere I'm going with this, just something I noted that I don't want to waste the energy repeatedly re-explaining on reddit, so I'm letting a primal scream out here to get it out of my system.
Relatedly, the gathering of (useful, actually works in real life, can be used to make products that turn a profit or that people actually want, and sometimes even all of the above at the same time) computer vision and machine learning and LLMs under the umbrella of “AI” is something I find particularly galling.
The eventual collapse of the AI bubble and the subsequent second AI winter is going to take a lot of useful technology with it that had the misfortune to be standing a bit too close to LLMs.
Yes, thank you, I'm also annoyed about this. Even classic "AI" approaches for simple pattern detection (what used to be called "ML" a few hype waves ago, although it's much older than that even) are now conflated with capabilities of LLMs. People are led to believe that ChatGPT is the latest and best and greatest evolution of "AI" in general, with all capabilities that have ever been in anything. And it's difficult to explain how wrong this is without getting too technical.
Related, this fun article: ChatGPT "Absolutely Wrecked" at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977