by TeMPOraL | 2025-09-28 13:09:37+00:00
> Would we? What for? Why would we need reams of iPads on our desks?

To use like we'd use paper.

> Which LLMs do not. They fake it really well but it’s still an illusion. No understanding is going on, they don’t really know what you mean

That is very much up to debate at this point. But for practical purposes in context described here, they do.

> and don’t know what the right answer is.

They're not supposed to. This is LLM use 101 - the model itself is behaving much like a person's inner monologue, or like a person who just speaks their thoughts out loud, without filtering. It's very much not a database lookup.

> I also disagree that was an underappreciated featured of the Star Trek computers, it’s one of their defining features.

What I meant is, people remember and refer to Star Trek's ship computer for its ability to control music, lights or shoot weapons, etc. with voice commands. People noticed the generality, the shamelessness of interaction, lack of structured command language - but rarely I saw anyone paying deeper attention to the latter, enough to realize the subtle magic that made it work on the show. It wasn't just some fuzzy matching allowing for synonyms and filler words, but more human-like understanding of the language.

(Related observation: if you pay attention to sliding doors on Star Trek vs. reality, you eventually realize that Starfleet doesn't just put a 24th century PIR into the door frame; for it to work like it does on the show, the computer has to track approaching people and predict, in real time, whether or not they want to walk through the door, vs, just passing by, or standing next to them, etc. That's another subtle detail that turns into general AI-level challenge.)

> The ship’s computer on Star Trek could run diagnostics on itself, the ships, strange life forms and even strange pieces of technology.

That's obviously tool calls :). I don't get where this assumption comes from, that a computer must be a single, uniform blob of compute? It's probably because people think people are like this, but in fact, even our brains have function-specific hardware components.

(I do imagine the scans involve a lot of machine learning and sensor fusion, though. That's actually how "life signs" can stop being a bullshit shorthand.)

> The most advanced LLMs frequently fail at even identifying themselves.

They'll stop when run with a "who am I?" tool.

> When the Start Trek computers behaved inconsistently like that, they would (rightly) be considered to be malfunctioning. Yet you’re defending this monumental gap as being effectively the same thing. Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave.

All I'm saying is, LLMs solved the "understand natural language" problem, which solves the language and intent recognition part of Star Trek voice interfaces (and obviously a host of other aspects of computer's tasks that require dealing with semantics). Obviously, they're a very new development and have tons of issues that need solving, but I'm claiming the qualitative breakthrough already happened.

Obviously, Star Trek's computer isn't just one big LLM. That would be a stupid design.