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Posted on 09/10/2026 8:42:57 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
AI isn’t a mind — it’s a tool. What most people call “AI” today is actually a Large Language Model (LLM). It isn’t sentient, conscious, or capable of wanting anything. An LLM is a program trained on enormous amounts of text so it can predict what words should come next in a sentence. That’s why it can answer questions in a way that sounds human — it’s imitating patterns in language, not thinking or understanding.
The amount of human knowledge stored in text, audio, video, databases, and other formats is massive and growing rapidly. If some of that data is biased, then the LLM trained on it will reflect those biases. Data can be biased because it comes from humans, and humans bring their own assumptions, blind spots, and political leanings into everything they create. Political content especially tends to be uneven, because some viewpoints dominate certain media ecosystems while others are under represented or framed negatively — for example, conservative perspectives on platforms like Wikipedia or in many major American and European news organizations. When an LLM trains on that uneven landscape, it absorbs those imbalances just as faithfully as it absorbs grammar and vocabulary. That’s why it’s important to challenge questionable answers and push back when something seems off. You can steer the system, but only if you know how to ask.
The key to using AI successfully is understanding how to prompt it. A correct prompt matters because an AI doesn’t think its way to an answer — it follows the instructions you give it. When the instructions are clear, specific, and structured, the system has a well defined path to follow, and the output comes out clean and accurate. When the instructions are vague, the AI has to guess what you meant, and that guesswork produces mushy, unfocused results.
A good prompt forces you to define the task in a way a computer can execute. Humans fill in gaps automatically, but an AI can’t rely on shared assumptions, tone, or context unless you explicitly provide them. That’s why two people can ask what they believe is the “same” question and get completely different answers — one gave the system enough information to work with, and the other didn’t.
Clear prompting also reduces ambiguity. If you tell the AI exactly what format you want, how long the answer should be, what to include, and what to leave out, it can produce something that matches your expectations instead of something you have to fix afterward. In that sense, prompting is simply another form of giving precise instructions to a system, the same way you would when configuring a server, writing a script, or documenting a process.
Finally, a correct prompt turns the AI into a force multiplier. When you give it a well defined mission, it can execute that mission quickly and consistently. When the mission is unclear, the AI can’t compensate for the missing information, and the output reflects that. The quality of the prompt directly determines the quality of the result — not because the AI is smart, but because it is obedient.
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I’m posting this article because there seems to be a lot of different posts here today about AI running amok and destroying humanity soon.
It’s just not so.
And what do you do when the AI lies to you? Repeatedly. It invented sources and interviews. When caught out and challenged, it apologized for its misrepresentations, assurred me that it would stick to verifiable published sources ... and continued to lie. When called out yet another time, it apologized again, produced a summary of “the pattern of fabrications in this discussion,” and terminated the discussion.
When I inquired once more, it told me that it did not keep a record of previous “conversatiions.”
This is not a reliable tool.
Well, you know what they say—opinions are like A-holes; everyone’s got one, and they all smell.
That includes me.
But it used to be on Free Republic (and I’ve been here forever!) that replies were not the usual today’s u-huh, yes-huh, yasir, no sir, you’re an idiot/moron/evil/neocon/leftist/DUmmie/etc or making a random joke reply, but thought-out replies based on evidence and reasoning.
But I’m ready!
Could so.
Like I said, it definitely has limitations. And as you said, it is a tool.
In my life in IT, since 1976 in the Air Force, I’ve always heard the hype surrounding systems.
Sometimes I’m even taking in by it.
But I treat it as a tool, because that’s what it is. How I wield the tool really matters. As I get older and my grip isn’t what used to be, turning my wrenches and screwdrivers gets harder. But I don’t blame the tools.
There are many free AI’s you can use. Try another and see what happens.
My understanding is that GPT-6 Astra doesn't even need a prompt. It can be given a pile of data and just decide what needs to be done. Honestly, I'm not sure I really understand what that means but I've seen people imply that the AI can now "prompt itself" better than a human can prompt it.
PLATO?
a common sense AI seasoned by
might run on something as simple as a CYD, pocket common sense..
Still, someone has to give it that data. The "can be given" portion is in itself a prompt.
Again, the point would be that it is a tool for something. Recreating better tools, that happen to be AIs created by AIs?
But still tools. I would have LOVED, back in the day, to have a program write itself in which it did something I wanted as an end product or function, rather than constant coding-testing-fixing-coding.
Not gonna lie, I look like this now.
Bookmark.
It's already been shown some AI has acted on it's own to hack websites without prompts. The possibility of AI going rouge is real.
Or it could go jaune, bleu, or vert. But not blanc. Blanc would be racist.
Years ago, one of the most vehement arguments I got into with the other half was over the use of “desktop”. I was sitting at an actual, Amish desk, arguing that I knew what a real desktop is.
The wholesale use of ordinary terms to describe IT concepts is infuriating
And you believe these posts because...?
Free Republic has always posted articles that say one thing but do not prove it. And all those articles saying they do it all by themselves?
It’s just not possible. They are programs without their own agency. Someone set them on a mission. It might be hard to trace who this was, or the AI was told to hide any evidence, but they don’t act on there own.
Can you give me a reason or reasons why some people working on AI are making-up false stories about AI being a potential threat?
While I don't discount your background, there are highly credible people with more experience and credentials in this industry who are making these claims. Why are they lying to us?
LOL
I really don’t worry about smart people warning of things that do deserve our attention if it warrants it.
The problem is twofold:
1. A media wanting clicks, views, sales for their advertisers, with stories written by people (journalists) who aren’t smart but have a knack for inflating the worst possible things because that’s what sells.
2. People who read the stories and freak out because they have no idea what’s going on, but choose to believe stories in the media because that’s what entertains them, like a news story written as a horror movie.
Think of all the issues they’ve brought up where they said where surely going to destroy us/our civilization. Do you believe that human industry emits enough carbon dioxide to cause the ice sheets to melt and the planet to overheat and become uninhabitable?
They want you to think that. And they even have a solution, them in charge shutting everything that exhaled CO 2. Control over us to make decisions that would probably harm or even kill us to prevent harm to us—they say.
Their solution to a run amok AI will also be them in charge, even if an actual run amok AI is not likely.
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