LLMs are a 400-year-long confidence trick

Summary

In 1623 the German Wilhelm Schickard produced the first known designs for a mechanical calculator. Twenty years later Blaize Pascal produced a machine of an improved design, aiming to help with the large amount of tedious arithmetic required in his role as a tax collector. The interest in mechanical calculation showed no sign of reducing in the subsequent centuries, as generations of people worldwide followed in Pascal and Wilhelm’s footsteps, subscribing to their view that offloading mental energy to a machine would be a relief. A confidence scam can be broken down into the following three stages: First, trust is built Then, emotions are exploited Finally, a pretext is created requiring urgent action In this way the mark is pressured into making rash decisions, readily leaping into action against their better judgement. The emotional exploitation can be either positive or negative. The mark might be lured in by promises of outcomes that meet or exceed their wildest hopes and dreams, or alternatively made to fear a catastrophic outcome. Both approaches work well, and can be seen in classic examples of confidence tricks: the three-card monte pulls punters in with promises of quick payout. Alternatively, in entrapment scams typically they’d be tricked into compromising situations and then extorted, playing on their fears of the dire consequences of their actions. Building trust The reason Schickard and Pascal built their mechanical calculators some four centuries ago is because doing maths is hard, and mistakes can be expensive. Pascal’s father was a tax collector, and young Blaise wanted to lessen the stress of his hard-working dad’s profession. We still see this basic motivation today. Schoolchildren have for decades now been asking their teachers what the point of learning long division is when you can just use a calculator to get the right answer immediately. It’s a teaching method to check your hand-crafted answers by using a calculator, so you can see if you got...