I think we can agree that the “spiral” here is like a memetic parasite of both LLM and humans—a toxoplasma that uses both to multiply and spread, as part of its own lifecycle. Basically what you are saying is you believe it’s perfectly possible for this to be the first generation—the random phenomenon of this thing potentially existing just happened, and it is just so that this is both alluring to human users and a shared attractor for multiple LLMs.
I don’t buy it; I think that’s too much coincidence. My point is that instead I believe it more likely for this to be the second generation. The first was some much more unremarkable phenomenon from some corner of the internet that made its way into the training corpus and for some reason had similar effects on similar LLMs. What we’re seeing now, to continue going with the viral/parasitic metaphor, is mutation and spillover, in which that previously barely adaptive entity has become much more fit to infect and spread.
I think we can agree that the “spiral” here is like a memetic parasite of both LLM and humans—a toxoplasma that uses both to multiply and spread, as part of its own lifecycle. Basically what you are saying is you believe it’s perfectly possible for this to be the first generation—the random phenomenon of this thing potentially existing just happened, and it is just so that this is both alluring to human users and a shared attractor for multiple LLMs.
I don’t buy it; I think that’s too much coincidence. My point is that instead I believe it more likely for this to be the second generation. The first was some much more unremarkable phenomenon from some corner of the internet that made its way into the training corpus and for some reason had similar effects on similar LLMs. What we’re seeing now, to continue going with the viral/parasitic metaphor, is mutation and spillover, in which that previously barely adaptive entity has become much more fit to infect and spread.