Nuclear Disaster! Could Llama 3.1 Have Prevented TMI?

Asking Meta's Llama 3.1 what it might have done if it had been in charge of Three Mile Island at the time of the disaster. Could it have prevented the disaster? Would it have made it WORSE?

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0:00 - Intro
1:56 - If Llama 3.1 Is in Charge When the Disaster Begins
5:02 - Llama Fails to Prevent the Disaster!
6:00 - Llama Could Have Prevented Serious Operator Mistakes
7:54 - Llama Couldn't Second-guess Indicators, but Could See Indicators Operators Missed
10:45 - Can Llama Prevent the Core from Being Exposed and Hydrogen Building Up?
12:52 - Can Llama Get the Reactor Back up and Running?
15:40 - How Much Does the Disaster Cost?

[DariusExplains]

Feels over Reals, the Simpsons was decades of Anti Nuclear propaganda.

[TheCudaHemi]

Kyle Hill has a really good dive into the TMI disaster in his Half Life History series

[evensgrey]

As I recall, the computer was managing the event fairly well, but the human interface was poorly designed (issues like many alarms being indistinguishable without referring to the status information on the computer interface, which was effectively unusable because the interface was providing too much information for the operators to interpret adequately). The operators didn't know what was happening because the computer couldn't alert them. These may seem like very basic matters in the human interface of critical systems, but that's partly because these design issues are some of the 3MI lessons. Human interfaces of machines often take disasters before they're gotten right. (Another example is the control panel on the B-17. There were many, MANY incidents of crashes on landing that were rightly but inadequately attributed to pilot error. When a psychologist examined the issue, he discovered a phenomenon now called 'design induced error.' In this case, the controls for the flaps and landing gear wear next to each other, and used identical switches. This made it easy for a pilot, tired from a long, dangerous flight, and almost safely home, to hit the wrong switch during landing and crash. In modern aircraft, designers work very hard to make every audio warning unique, and every functionally different control different, particularly making their shape and color different, to minimize the risk of the pilot misunderstanding a warning or accidentally using the wrong control.)