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@upslislib.bsky.socialSep 24, 2026, 6:24 AM

Join us for #BookTalk@SLISLIB as we discuss "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna.

🎙 Asst. Prof. Paul Jason V. Perez
📅 September 25, 2026 | 1:00 PM
📍 UP SOLAIR Room 10

#TheAICon #UPSLISLib #ArtificialIntelligence

@johnlwalters.bsky.socialSep 20, 2026, 9:42 AM

Whenever someone smart says, ‘I asked ChatGPT and it said xyz,’ I’m reminded of Baldur Bjarnason’s excellent article ‘The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con.’
softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...
#quitgpt #TheAICon
@baldurbjarnason.com

The intelligence illusion seems to be based on the same mechanism as that of a psychic’s con, often called cold reading. It looks like an accidental automation of the same basic tactic. By using validation statements, such as sentences that use the Forer effect, the chatbot and the psychic both give the impression of being able to make extremely specific answers, but those answers are in fact statistically generic. The psychic uses these statements to give the impression of being able to read minds and hear the secrets of the dead. The chatbot gives the impression of an intelligence that is specifically engaging with you and your work, but that impression is nothing more than a statistical trick. This idea was first planted in my head when I was going over some of the statements people have been making about the reasoning of these ‘AI’. I first thought that these were just classic cases of tech bubble enthusiasm, but no, ‘AI’ has both taken a different crowd and the believers in the ‘AI’ bubble sound very different from those of prior bubbles.