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LLMs are a 400-year-long confidence trick

In 1623 the German Wilhelm Schickard produced the first known designs for a mechanical calculator. Twenty years later Blaize Pascal produced a machine of an improved design, aiming to help with the large amount of tedious arithmetic required in his role as a tax collector. The interest in mechanical calculation showed no sign of reducing in the subsequent centuries, as generations of people worldwide followed in Pascal and Wilhelm’s footsteps, subscribing to their view that offloading mental energy to a machine would be a relief.

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