Post

I am close to tears; they listened and made an english version apache.be/2025/10/24/b... @apache.be you rule 🖤

Katrien Beuls: "When ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, the then rector, Rik Van de Walle, swiftly announced that students could use the chatbot for their master's thesis. A bad move. Or at least the beginning of a lot of trouble.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

> “These systems will never be able to think and provide reliable information with the current approach to AI”, says Steels. And that current approach is focused on so-called large language models (LLMs). apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

"It’s a belief eagerly embraced by the capitalist system, with venture capitalists at the forefront. If such a god can be created, and if you can gain a monopoly on it, then you not only have the prospect of great wealth, but also a great deal of power." apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Wim Vanderbauwhede: “You give an input and it ‘guesses’ the answer a user would want to get, based on the input and the data it was trained on. The ‘machines’ don’t think; they generate something plausible, something that seems acceptable.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Wim Vanrie: “This involves detailed reading of philosophical and moral science texts, recognising, analysing and forming arguments, seeing and expressing conceptual connections, etc. Generative AI is a shortcut that is detrimental to developing these skills.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“I already ban the use of generative AI in my own courses, and as a promoter of master’s theses. I explicitly tell my students they won’t learn anything by using it. [...] A general ban is necessary, but nobody dares to say so.” 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️ apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“The advice is ingrained with the optimism that this technology will only get better. It’s the same story the AI companies are telling: with more computers and more data, all will be fine. That’s bullshit. This is and will always be a statistical, associative machine.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“The solution certainly won’t come from AI; on the contrary, this only magnifies the problem. Moreover, correcting the errors of AI will cost us loads of time and effort. But once the cat’s out of the bag…” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between translation for the moment or for the record. If you need to know what the menu says, quick & dirty AI translation is fine. If you own a restaurant, you should absolutely not let AI translate your menu unsupervised!

It’s the same with another oft-cited example of a “good” use case for AI: programming. Vibe coding is great for throwaway code that you only need to use once; it’s terrible for anything that will need to be maintained over time, especially together with other programmers.

Unless your quick and dirty AI spits out sesame as an ingredient instead of nuts* and you die of an allergic reaction *example taken from real life

Holy crap. And yes, my point exactly: my phone OCRs and translated something, I don’t trust it implicitly in the way I trust the restaurant’s own printed menu. People already trust “AI” far too readily; let’s at least keep it front & centre, visible in the process, where we can keep an eye on it.