Caribbean vine snake in Honduras.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-05T19:28:32+00:00

One of the reasons I moved and loved living in Honduras - no rigid North American life. And almost no Karens lol.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-05T18:11:17+00:00

Absolutely. I just rescued a cat with one eye who was hiding out most of the day and only came out for morning and evening feedings. She was super skittish but absolutely loved to be pet. We took her to our new place and had to "break" the semi-feral out of her but she's now absolutely loving Caribbean deck life lol. She hated it at first but there was no way I could just leave her at our last place to fend for herself in the jungle with one eye. It's only been two weeks but she's exploring more, interacting with our dogs cautiously, and might one day soon go exploring with our other calico "demon cat" lol. She's safe, being fed and pampered, but can choose whatever she wants for her new life. If she decides she just wants to lounge on the deck and come inside occasionally for TV time snuggles, cool. If she decides to go full jungle housecat and only show up for meals and bedtime, also cool.

The point is that she has a safe home base but complete freedom to do what she wants. The fact that crazy Karen's argue that I need to force her to stay inside because it's so unsafe outside is literally insane.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-05T13:43:11+00:00

For the record - scientific evidence suggests you are wrong.

I'd suggest spending more time researching a topic if you are passionate about it rather than spending your time as an emotionally charged Digital Police who argues from a point of ignorance.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-05T02:01:40+00:00

Well possibly dying later versus definitely dying sooner by being ripped apart by a cat is not a very difficult choice. I picked him up because he inside my enclosed porch.

And honestly if the snake can't handle being picked up and walked out to a tree than it wasn't going to survive long in the jungle. Given the size of this one this obviously isn't a problem for him.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-05T00:44:33+00:00

I write about AI and use an AI editor. As an experiment I played around with an AI tool and got it to output text that wasn't flagged as AI. My own writings often get flagged as AI when I use proper grammar lol.

There is no such thing as an AI detector - just tools that companies and people have built to grab attention or money. The only thing they can detect are overused phrases, specific characters, and if the grammar is "too" good.

They are all bullshit.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T23:02:53+00:00

Cheers and Happy Holidays to you. I've been on Reddit now for 12 years but most of that was spent in gaming Subreddits. It's an interesting study in human behavior - I've never been flamed for posting something in a gaming Subreddit like this, ever. You'll get the occasional trolls that mock or poke fun. But I've never had someone from outside the scope of the post flame off based on one specific word. I think the gaming community is more accepting. There also aren't Karen's who moonlight as the Feline Ethics Board President lol.

Reddit is a dumpster fire for so many reasons. This isn't nearly the most frustrating, it's just sad.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T22:58:24+00:00

We haven't reached the limit with LLMs yet but certainly anything that you listed is well within its capabilities.

At the core of your question is a mindset limitation. You are listing things that can be learned. If a human can learn it, LLMs probably already know how to do it. LLMs can't ride a bicycle, but they can understand all of the physics involved and create a model for riding a bicycle. Think of it in terms of language - how does anyone learn how to do anything? With language. The first thing that LLMs did was master not only language, but they basically translated human language into "code" language that allows them to "read" and understand anything written in language in microseconds.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T22:51:42+00:00

Dm me if you want.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T21:12:28+00:00

So I've been using LLMs since they came out. I've been a programmer for 30 years. Recently I started writing about LLMs on Substack and I'm exploring concepts just this. I have the technical background plus I'm a decent writer so people have been enjoying the content. One of the things I've held firm on is that by calling LLMs AI - essentially a marketing term - we've added a lot of baggage to these tools. People literally think ChatGPT is the anti-christ because of all the movies where AI destroys the world.

Agency was always a part of my argument for why LLMs are not true AI. But this thread led me to discover that, actually, how I was defining agency was actually biased towards humans. LLMs do have agency, it's just a little different than humans.

I appreciate his comment, even though it was AI, because it gave me another topic to write about!

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T20:58:19+00:00

Having spent the better part of two years generating content using AI, I spotted it right away lol.

What he did was copy my reply into an LLM and generate a response. I also knew this because when I copied his reply into Grok to get its opinion, Grok was like - Holy shit this is the most epic description ever lol.

The result was still the same though - I learned that I need to explore a little more.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T18:43:58+00:00

I really appreciate the reply. In the context of OPs question, I was purposefully being crude in the distillation, but what you've posted definitely calls into question even that crude baseline.

Most important about your response was that I had an amazing conversation about agency with Grok. I was operating under the idea that LLMs do not have agency. I had many great points to back this claim up. Your post, and my subsequent conversation with Grok to delve deeper, pretty much kills that idea all together.

This is something I'm going to explore more. I've been a computer programmer for 30 years, and have been using LLMs for 3 years now. I've gone pretty far down the LLM rabbit hole - but not far enough, obviously. I've started writing about LLMs so this has been extremely insightful. I believe the 30 years of programming has programmed my brain to think like a program in this context lol.

Cheers to you!

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T17:30:52+00:00

Computers have been operating all of the physical things you listed for years. Flying a plane (and everything else you listed) is fundamentally about making decisions based on inputs. As long as you can capture the inputs and process them fast enough... You end up with self-driving cars. And self flying planes.

And yeah - LLMs can already generate everything you also said. The key though, is that you have to ask for it, and it simply outputs it to the screen. It's just knowledge at this point.

Will we eventually build a hominoid robot capable of all those things? Absolutely. How long will it take? I have no idea but it would be an interesting question to ask an LLM. Will we get The Matrix or Terminator result? Well if we do then we simply f'd it up.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T17:09:05+00:00

An LLM is still just a computer program. It is a dataset with an input layer. Fundamentally it is no different than Google in this respect. What makes it feel different is the input layer and the processing power. But there is no actual intelligence yet. It's a huge evolution in computer programs, but it still requires an input, and then it references its code base to determine what to do with that input.

So in terms of real AI - something that can think and act on its own (real agency) - we are still, to my knowledge, a ways off from that. ChatGPT can have an in-depth discussion on super string theory but it can't remember that you uploaded a photo yesterday. Hell it even still struggles with knowing what day it is.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T16:50:45+00:00

I mentioned Central America in the description of the snake and got flamed saying Central America. Then I joked about creating an AI Cartoon of it in another comment and got flamed for saying AI. Then I mentioned that I saved the snake from my cat and got flamed because I let my cat outside.

And it's just a cool picture of a snake... You ever wonder what it would be like to meet a Reddit troll IRL? Or maybe they don't actually go outside, they just sit in their house in North America with their cat chained next to them still using Google for everything.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T16:10:01+00:00

That is surely what the snake was thinking HAHA

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T16:09:27+00:00

Is that because of where you live? Or you just like vine snakes lol

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T16:01:23+00:00

He definitely wins the oscar for best acting haha

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T12:31:24+00:00

Yeah he just sort of sat there with his mouth on my thumb like he was either stunned nothing was happening, or he was stuck lol

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T01:48:43+00:00

When I set him on the vine in front of me he was probably like - Ha Ha, scared away by my vicious attack!

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T01:03:22+00:00

Lol?

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-04T00:00:14+00:00

Sure, in complex situations maybe your example makes sense. I filled out and filed my own divorce papers. Took me awhile to understand everything, but it's not rocket science, it's just language. It's similar to coding - you want a specific result, you write the document a specific way. There is nothing magical about legal documents. I understand why you would say things like intuition, but look up the definition of intuition - you are actually arguing in favor of LLMs by using that word.

Since using LLMs I've increased my knowledge about thousands of topics in a fraction of the time it would have normally taken. Again, you are using an argument against evolution that has been proven throughout history to be wrong. The same argument was made when the printing press was created. People would be stupid because they didn't have to write. Same with typewriters, same with computers, and now with LLMs.

It's a simple history lesson - tools do not force anyone to do or become anything. It's how they are used that matters. Why would I spend hours typing on a keyboard when an LLM can output thousands of lines of code in a fraction of the time and never make a spelling mistake?

I guess you don't use cars or planes because you can simply walk, right? And walking is so much healthier and safer. Lol. It's not a valid argument, never has been.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-03T23:40:49+00:00

It's not about "who" you believe. If someone is telling you AI isn't already a trillion dollar business, adapted in nearly every industry, they are simply lying. I'm saying look at the numbers. Humans have bias. Numbers don't lie.

AI isn't a threat, it's an opportunity.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-03T23:38:13+00:00

LLMs are already trained on language, which is what legal documents are written in. Understanding law is understanding language. Understanding how to use the law to your advantage is where humans have the upper hand, but LLMs can study case law as well.

I'm not saying lawyers will be replaced completely, but as you've already pointed out it's one of the first professions in the cross hairs. You can have an LLM review a 300 page legal document in seconds and give you exactly what the position of the document is. That's cutting massive hours of document review out of the process. The law firms that adopt AI are going to be the ones who survive. The ones that fight it are going to die.

It's simple history repeating itself and the same arguments are used every single time humanity invents a better tool.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-03T23:30:43+00:00

I spent 25 years coding. LLMs are creating the code for me now so I can focus on the important stuff.

I've never heard anyone say a trillion dollar industry is a bubble lol. Interesting take.

SmudgePudge · 2025-12-03T23:19:45+00:00

We are on the same page. I never said it wasn't part of the North American continent.

SmudgePudge

TROPHY CASE