We have that already, we call it "Stack Overflow"

hands down, thread winner

I would be perfectly satisfied with the ST:TNG Computer. Knows all, knows how to do lots of things, feels nothing.

In Mass Effect, there is a distinction made between AI (which is smart enough to be considered a person) and VI (virtual intelligence, basically a dumb conversational UI over some information service).

What we have built in terms of LLMs barely qualifies as a VI, and not a particularly reliable one. I think we should begin treating and designing them as such, emphasizing responding to queries and carrying out commands accurately over friendliness. (The "friendly" in "user-friendly" has done too much anthropomorphization work. User-friendly non-AI software makes user choices, and the results of such choices, clear and responds unambiguously to commands.)

A bit of a retcon but the TNG computer also runs the holodeck and all the characters within it. There's some bootleg RP fine tune powering that I tell you hwat.

It's a retcon? How else would the holdeck possibly work, there's only one (albeit highly modular) computer system on the ship.

I mean it depends on what you consider the "computer", the pile of compute and storage the ship has in that core that got stolen on that one Voyager episode, or the ML model that runs on it to serve as the ship's assistant.

I think it's more believable that the holodeck is ran from separate models that just run inference on the same compute and the ship AI just spins up the containers, it's not literally the ship AI doing that acting itself. Otherwise I have... questions on why starfleet added that functionality beforehand lol.

ChatGPT 5 did argue with me about something math related I was asking about, and I did realize I was wrong after considering it further.

I don't actually think being told that I have asked a stupid question is valuable. One of the primary values, I think, of LLM is that it is endlessly patient with stupid questions. I would prefer if it did not comment on the value of my questions at all, good or bad.

Same. Constructive feedback is not always positive, and it is needed.

I dunno, I deliberately talk with Claude when I just need someone (or something) to be enthusiastic about my latest obsession. It’s good for keeping my motivation up.

There need to be different modes, and being enthusiastic about the user’s obsessions shouldn’t be the default mode.

It's just an adaptive echo chamber at that point.