this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
59 points (88.3% liked)
Technology
87417 readers
3844 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah people don't understand the math behind these things. They are statistical models, like demographics or climate models. They are interesting and potentially useful, but not necessarily useful for the things we are trying to and want to use them for. They can predict certain things and trends very reliably in a general, high-level sense, but they will get the details wrong if you try to use them outside of their area of applicability, just like if you try to use national climate models to determine what day your basement is going to flood, it may come up with a specific date, but just as obviously that's not actually going to be correct in reality. It doesn't mean it's a bad model, it means you're using it wrong.
And lots of AI bros and AI companies are using these things desperately wrong, and for very wrong reasons. They want to sell things to you. They want to control you and manipulate you. They don't care if they're using the model properly, they only care if it's profitable for them to do it.