LLMs would have no problem doing any of this. There’s a discernible pattern in any judge’s verdict. LLMs can easily pick this pattern up.

That’s worse! You do see how that’s worse right?!?

You are factually correct, but those are called biases. That doesn’t mean that LLMs would be good at that job. It means they can do the job with comparable results for all the reasons that people are terrible at it. You’re arguing to build a racism machine because judges are racist.

I think you’re conflating formal and informal logic. Programmers are excellent at defining a formal logic system which the computer follows, but the computer itself isn’t particularly “logical”.

What you describe as:

Action A is legal. Action B isn’t. Doing X + Y + Z constitutes action A and so on.

Is a particularly nasty form of logic called abstract reasoning. Biological brains are very good at that! Computers a lot less so…

(Using a test designed to measure that)[https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01547] humans average ~80% accuracy. The current best algorithm (last I checked…) has a 31% accuracy. (LLMs can get up to ~17% accuracy.)[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.11793] (With the addition of some prompt engineering and other fancy tricks). So they are technically capable… Just really bad at it…

Now law ismarketed as a very logical profession but, at least Western, modern law is more akin to combatative theater. The law as written serves as the base worldbuilding and case law serving as addition canon. The goal of law is to put on a performance with the goal of tricking the audience (typically judge, jury, opposing legal) that it is far more logical and internally consistent than it actually is.

That is essentially what LLMs are designed to do. Take some giant corpus of knowledge and return some permutation of it that maximizes the “believability” based on the input prompt. And it can do so with a shocking amount of internal logic and creativity. So it shouldn’t be shocking that they’re capable of passing bar exams, but that should not be conflated with them being rational, logical, fair, just, or accurate.

And neither should the law. Friendly reminder to fuck the police and the corrupt legal system they enforce.

Another important facet to that scam that isn’t been discussed too much: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1809859768388854139.html

The numbers presented are funny.

Global carbon dioxide emissions hit an all-time high of 36 billion metric tons last year.

Discussing Occidental’s plants:

Powered by solar energy, and have the potential to capture and sequester 500,000 metric tons (0.0000005 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide per year.

Which then they say they plan on building more of said plants:

Occidental said it planned to build 100 facilities, each capable of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year

The annual amount captured magically doubles bringing it up to 0.000001 billion metric tons per plant and 0.0001 billion metric tons total annually.

It really seems like we should listen to the Vicki Hollub, Occidental’s chief executive, when they state the real purpose of direct air capture which could:

“preserve our industry. This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”

This is ignoring their main usage of that 0.0001 billion metric tons is for oil extraction thus increasing the 36 billion metric tons.

In other words shame on the NYT for burying the lead and being deceptive with their numbers.

(@facedeer, I’d be curious to get your take on this article)

Ah yes, don’t be realistic the solution is “thoughts and prayers”.

Or you could get mad about it and go do something to improve the world…

Exactly, hence the root of the problem the original meme is getting at…

For healthy working relationships and solid infrastructure you under-promise and over-deliver.

For maximal profit and sustainable business models you over-promise and under-deliver.