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Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#111

Post by sodapopcan »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #89
sodapopcan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth but from what I've seen, in person but mostly online, but the "problem" (and I put that in quotes because I don't even know what to call it... it seems deeper than a mere "problem") is that they quote them as if they are autonomous, sentient beings.

The problem is that LLM output looks like a human conversation. People believe it. Which is more believable? “The sky is filled with a downpour of squealing pigs. Would you like me to suggest the best type of umbrella?” “Sky pigs squealing”

People just don't like to be played for fools. Perhaps us giving into this is progress? I'd give a big ol' "fuck you" to anyone who claims it is, but I'm also pretty old.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#112

Post by ericpauley »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #105
ericpauley wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an oft-repeated meme, but I’m convinced the people saying it are either blindly repeating it, using bad models/system prompts, or some other issue. Claude Opus will absolutely push back if you disagree. I routinely push back on Claude only to discover on further evaluation that the model was correct. As a test I just did exactly what you said in a Claude Opus 4.6 session about another HN thread. Claude consid…

If you have 10,000 people flipping coins over and over, one person will be experiencing a streak of heads, another a streak of tails. Which is to say, of a million people who just started playing with LLMs, a bunch of people will get hit or miss, while one guy is winning the neural net lottery and has the experience of the AI nailing every request, some poor bloke is trying to see what all the hype is about and canno…

Sure, but that doesn’t explain the volume of these complaints. I think the more likely answer is the pitiful sycophancy of some models as demonstrated in BSBench.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#113

Post by beeflet »

eranation wrote: post #21

Ask them to tell the LLM it's wrong... then when it goes "You are absolutely right!" to challenge it and say that it was a test. Then when it replies, ask it if it's 100% sure. They'll lose faith pretty quick.

I tried to fool claude sonnet with confidence and it failed.

https://claude.ai/share/47145af0-47d1-451b-813c-131ec48e7215

Maybe it is possible with a more complex or subjective question.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#114

Post by jazzyjackson »

al_borland wrote: post #31
sodapopcan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth but from what I've seen, in person but mostly online, but the "problem" (and I put that in quotes because I don't even know what to call it... it seems deeper than a mere "problem") is that they quote them as if they are autonomous, sentient beings.

Some of this might depend on the source. I’ve seen some people quote AI like you’re saying. However, when I preface something with “ChatGPT said…”, my intention is to convey to the listener that they should take it with a grain of salt, as it might be completely bull shit. I suppose I should consider who I’m talking to when I make that assumption.

it’s a slightly orthogonal problem to using the active voice of “XYZ says…”, it’s treating the text continuation engine as an “other” that may know better than they do, playing into sci fi conceptions of AI having its personal positronic brain or whatever, having its own ideas and deciding to carve a horse out of driftwood.

It’s not quite anthropomorphizing either that’s the issue, need a word for “treating it as tho it were a machine conscious that exists alongside humanity*”, how does cyborgropomorphizing sound

   * and not merely a markov chain running in Sam Altman’s closet

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#118

Post by odo1242 »

ericpauley wrote: post #42
eranation wrote: post #21

Ask them to tell the LLM it's wrong... then when it goes "You are absolutely right!" to challenge it and say that it was a test. Then when it replies, ask it if it's 100% sure. They'll lose faith pretty quick.

This is an oft-repeated meme, but I’m convinced the people saying it are either blindly repeating it, using bad models/system prompts, or some other issue. Claude Opus will absolutely push back if you disagree. I routinely push back on Claude only to discover on further evaluation that the model was correct. As a test I just did exactly what you said in a Claude Opus 4.6 session about another HN thread. Claude consid…

Claude Opus 4.6 is the best possible model to use in this test, with the least sycophancy. OpenAI and Gemini models are bad in comparison.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#119

Post by beeflet »

dlm24 wrote: post #103
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where do you think most of that info came from though? Not from the public library

I hear you, But my understanding is LLM can consume multiple sources of information and deduce what is the truth better and more accurately than a human clicking on multiple Google links and veryfying information and sources.

In inference/tool use it's doing the same thing that a human is doing in that regard. Just faster.

In training, it's a blind process. It's up to the trainers to feed the model accurate sources.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with people who trust LLMs?

#120

Post by acheron »

A search isn’t going to lead them to a “reputable source”, it’s going to lead them to ad filled SEO garbage, because it’s not 2004 anymore and thousands of Google employees have been working for two decades to ruin the Internet.

I’ll take LLMs any day over what search and the rest of the Internet has turned into.

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