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Comment by ShinyLeftPad | Hacker News Reader

> They implement something poorly, or incorrectly, or introduce a bad pattern into the project. Then they continue to amplify that badness over time, as they continue to copy from it on subsequent work. It spreads like a virus.

> Keeping these seeds out of the project is very difficult, and cleaning up the rot is very difficult.

My "aha" moment was when I realized this goes for all spheres of life where this tech is/will be introduced.

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It goes for all spheres of life, full stop. I’m not sure if agents struggle with this because they learned it from humans, or if they struggle with it because it’s a universally challenging problem, but it’s something we share with them.

The comment highlighted how LLMs exacerbate the issue by entrenching the preexisting issues.

Indeed, and reply to comment seemed a "yes and" -- As with humans.

It's curious how much of these could apply to either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect

And many mechanisms exacerbate issues by entrenching preexisting issues.

I don't understand. The comment said if humans want to change the route, this tech makes it more difficult. Human inertia is X, inertia with this tech is X ^ Y. The Y is the issue being discussed.

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever wrought"

You full-stopped too soon: It may happen everywhere, but it doesn't happen the same way everywhere or for the same reasons.

LLMs will create different kinds of corruption than humans, because the underlying mechanisms are different. Our ability to manage type of corruption will depend on how whether they can be predicted by math or intuition.

You’re kind of begging the question that I asked after the full stop. I was wondering how much the underlying mechanism matters if it’s modelling the same environment to a similar level of effectiveness.

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