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Cake day: May 23rd, 2025

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  • something i was thinking about yesterday: so many people i respect used to respect have admitted to using llms as a search engine. even after i explain the seven problems with using a chatbot this way:

    1. wrong tool for the job
    2. bad tool
    3. are you fucking serious?
    4. environmental impact
    5. ethics of how the data was gathered/curated to generate[1] the model
    6. privacy policy of these companies is a nightmare
    7. seriously what is wrong with you

    they continue to do it. the ease of use, together with the valid syntax output by the llm, seems to short-circuit something in the end-user’s brain.

    anyway, in the same way that some vibe-coded bullshit will end up exploding down the line, i wonder whether the use of llms as a search engine is going to have some similar unintended consequences — “oh, yeah, sorry boss, the ai told me that mr. robot was pretty accurate, idk why all of our secrets got leaked. i watched the entire series.”

    additionally, i wonder about the timing. will we see sporadic incidents of shit exploding, or will there be a cascade of chickens coming home to roost?


    1. they call this “training” but i try to avoid anthropomorphising chatbots ↩︎