LLMs for Communicating & the Death of Relationship

The internet started with the sole purpose of knowledge sharing - a way for universities, libraries, governments, banks to connect and make their libraries more accessible to each other. Decentralizing, democratizing, and removing barriers to access.

And although information-sharing - in the sense of research data, evidence, & published content was extremely successful - it also paved the way for more of what we humans crave - relationship & connection.

Humanity developed in shared spaces - “doing life” with the people around us. We’d eat together, work together, play together, laugh and weep and drink together - physical distance was the natural barrier to separate us from those living further away, and as we shared so much of our lives in common with our neighbours, we built extremely close-knit relational networks.

The development of dense cities and factory / corporate workplaces meant that over time we've lost a lot of the forced relationships with people who live in physical proximity to us.

TV promised to bring entertainment out from the cultural centers directly to us - but inadvertently - by becoming cheap enough that we could each watch our own set rather than watch together - continued the path to isolation. The plethora of separate streaming services, news networks, youtube channels means that today we can live in entirely separate subcultures from our neighbours - having literally nothing in common beyond a postcode.

The internet - in it's best light - allowed us once again to start connecting with others - now with those who were like-minded - even if physically distant. Lord of the Rings fans could connect over their love of Tolkien's books. Football team fans could share their love of the beautiful game. Isolated LGBT youth found they weren’t alone. Burned-out doctors found understanding from peers hundreds of miles away.

And through this connection, our technology has flourished. By enabling us to connect and work with each other - we've been able to accomplish incredible things.

One of the most incredible things that's currently being developed is LLMs. By pouring billions of written words that have been collected across the last few hundred years into mathematical analysis - we've created tools which can mimic the shape of communication to such a degree that we struggle to distinguish it's output from communication from a fellow human. Some argue that there is no difference - we humans are merely biological token sequence generators, spitting out plausible combinations of our training data.

Is that really all that we are? Token fountains?

Is what defines communication & connection just the ability to spout feasible sounding content?

Is there no "me" behind the words?

I can't accept that. I believe that there really is a soul - a beautiful and unique person behind whatever cultural and physical façade that we present to the world. Our words are a tool to help us connect - and real communication happens when we can reach through or past the words to the human on the other side.

I worry that we're using this incredible LLM technology to step further away from each other - rather than drawing closer & connecting more really.

We're using LLMs to build taller walls, prettier masks, stronger barriers between each other.

We're using LLMs to take others’ words & summarise them so we can connect less.

Is this really what we want to do?

If an LLM is more "efficient" at dealing with others, doesn't that mean that we were just treating the others as tasks to be dealt with, rather than persons to connect with?

LLMs have held a light up to how disconnected we've become, how we want to quickly parse & check off other people from our todo lists - rather than genuinely connect; how much our jobs have become about administrating processes rather than meaning.

What is it that makes you you - and how can you connect with other people as people?

What holds meaning for you?

How is chasing efficiency and the addiction of accomplishment driving the shape of your life?

We at the Developer Society are experts in technology, we want to help charities & other organisations thrive, and continue to make the world a better place. If that sounds like something you're interested in, reach out - we'd love to chat.