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If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

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Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#181

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #57
boolit wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a critical insight. Whenever I ask an LLM about a topic I’m knowledgeable about, I can detect that it spews a load of nonsense. Talking to people in other fields, e.g., history and literature, they say it’s the same for them. LLMs are only useful if you know the topic you’re asking questions about. Otherwise, they generate so much nonsense that you cannot verify, that trusting it becomes a liability.

Depends what the topic is. IME it hallucines rarely when asked practical programming questions but basically constantly when asked math questions beyond basic calculus.

It might be just a glitch but in the last few days it generates such blunders I suspect something must be going on. Like completely messing up random pieces of code on subsequent iteration. I don't remember anything like this before. Normally it would improve the code with each iteration (until going out of the context window and starting to "forget" things, but not putting random characters here and there on second reply).

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#182

Post by tossandthrow »

yencabulator wrote: post #179
tossandthrow wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that it can regurgitate what the random dudes from local accelerators have written in their blog posts. This is not how modern training pipelines work. The models are trained on proprietary alignments that ensure factuality. Regardless, that random dude from a local accelerator probably regurgitates those blog articles himself.

"ensures", really?

Like with so many other thing, it is a process.

Just like reviews "ensure" correctness on Wikipedia - which is actually a good case. In my childhood teachers would make us avoid Wikipedia. Now they advice students to use it.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#183

Post by j-bos »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #51
j-bos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You should assume your org will be the same quality as a program written by a non-technical person using an LLM if you do it that way. Only if OP is themself not somewhat business savvy

Way to ignore the first paragraph of the one you’re replying to where he says exactly this: “ because you can't verify when its wrong since that isn't your area of expertise, so those advice looks better to you.”

I've seen a non programmer navigate bad llm advice on writing code by double checking the info, both with the same llm and with google searches. It isn't their area of expertise, but their light familiarity is enough to build something decent. I can imagine OP doing similar with business advice.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#184

Post by avidphantasm »

tossandthrow wrote: post #122
avidphantasm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a proverb (I can’t remember where I read it now) that goes something like, “what comes in through the front gate isn’t the family jewels.” Seems appropriate here. There are no short cuts to building insight and and intuition.

Indeed, but a bigger gates takes more effecient machinary for the jewel production in the back. You could use the same proverb to dismiss the effects of Gutenbergs printing press. And also, now when you respond again: can you elaborate on why you feel it is necessary to urge people to boycott a startup, because they use a technique that you currently are not familiar with? I see that you have earned your PhD and I wo…

I’ve dabbled with using LLMs, but in my experience they’re not even as good as using an annotated bibliography to help guide your study of a new domain. A bibliography, even a mediocre one, will give you an entry point into a literature, which can greatly speed up your exploration of the space. You still have to put in the work to synthesize and understand the literature and how it applies to your problem. Until LLMs can stop fabricating sources and concepts, they are not even as useful to research as an annotated bibliography. I suppose if no such bibliography exists, an LLM is better than nothing, but it must be used with extreme caution, and I’m not really sure how much time they would save than simply spending a week or two working through the literature for a domain using library search engines.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#185

Post by tossandthrow »

avidphantasm wrote: post #184
tossandthrow wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but a bigger gates takes more effecient machinary for the jewel production in the back. You could use the same proverb to dismiss the effects of Gutenbergs printing press. And also, now when you respond again: can you elaborate on why you feel it is necessary to urge people to boycott a startup, because they use a technique that you currently are not familiar with? I see that you have earned your PhD and I wo…

I’ve dabbled with using LLMs, but in my experience they’re not even as good as using an annotated bibliography to help guide your study of a new domain. A bibliography, even a mediocre one, will give you an entry point into a literature, which can greatly speed up your exploration of the space. You still have to put in the work to synthesize and understand the literature and how it applies to your problem. Until LLMs…

That's cool, seems like you have something that works well for you. Something which is also based on several hundreds of years of refinement.

And yet you are still extremely dismissive and rude around people investigating methods where foundational work is roughly 40 years old.

Humbleness and perspective can nobody blame on you, though - maybe an llm could help you on that?

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#186

Post by Jensson »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #181
sebzim4500 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what the topic is. IME it hallucines rarely when asked practical programming questions but basically constantly when asked math questions beyond basic calculus.

It might be just a glitch but in the last few days it generates such blunders I suspect something must be going on. Like completely messing up random pieces of code on subsequent iteration. I don't remember anything like this before. Normally it would improve the code with each iteration (until going out of the context window and starting to "forget" things, but not putting random characters here and there on second…

Likely you are just moving slightly outside of its knowledge domain with your questions. Anything that is hard to Google will also typically generate bad responses, most coding problems are there but many programmers just work on the few common problems over and over.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#187

Post by Jensson »

tossandthrow wrote: post #182
yencabulator wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ensures", really?

Like with so many other thing, it is a process. Just like reviews "ensure" correctness on Wikipedia - which is actually a good case. In my childhood teachers would make us avoid Wikipedia. Now they advice students to use it.

LLMs does compose answers from its corpus, it doesn't refer to it, so it doesn't ensure factuality at all since it can still compose questions in stupid ways just like it always did.

Most of the wrong thing it says is just invented by the model, not things it has seen, cleaning up the input doesn't add much there since it writes the same kind of bullshit as bullshitting humans do.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#188

Post by tossandthrow »

Jensson wrote: post #187
tossandthrow wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with so many other thing, it is a process. Just like reviews "ensure" correctness on Wikipedia - which is actually a good case. In my childhood teachers would make us avoid Wikipedia. Now they advice students to use it.

LLMs does compose answers from its corpus, it doesn't refer to it, so it doesn't ensure factuality at all since it can still compose questions in stupid ways just like it always did. Most of the wrong thing it says is just invented by the model, not things it has seen, cleaning up the input doesn't add much there since it writes the same kind of bullshit as bullshitting humans do.

Yes, that is correct, and was also more than indicated in my initial comment.

> The software engineer needs to "de-hallucinate" him in order to get a proper answer.

The question is not whether a model is sound and complete. The question how LLMs perform in comparison to the existing solutions.

Don't let perfect get in the way of good.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#189

Post by mike_hearn »

bee_rider wrote: post #169
mike_hearn wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience of journalists has been that they often just email you to ask questions. LLMs can do that.

I can imagine there are lots of cases where that might work. But for example, if you are covering a small town police scandal or something, you might end up wanting to talk to people who’d rather not comment online or might not even have a super strong online presence/identity. I don’t know you, but lots of people on this site do internet stuff, if you are for example an open source contributor worth reporting on, ac…

Yes, it can't work that way for all things, but you'd be surprised how many journalists don't leave their offices even for stuff like talking to police. Some do but they tend to be the more serious ones working on a big project where they want to do in depth face to face interviews. The idea of shoe leather is as bit old fashioned I'm afraid. And LLMs have the massive advantage that they work a lot faster, and can work 24/7 without complaining.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#190

Post by gcanyon »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #120
gcanyon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common narrative is that Tim Cook was the organizer and glue behind Steve Jobs's vision for years, and "just took over a big functional company and made it continue do what it did before" is a funny way to describe the tear Apple has been on for the last ~15 years.

That is a narrative that is borne out by the record but it is a vast oversimplification. If we’re talking about Tim Cook specifically, he was a wonderful choice because of his SCM acumen. He was one of the original architects of the supply chain system Apple uses to this day. Product OEMs that follow a philosophy like Apple’s are in a sense logistics and SCM firms as much as they are software firms. Particularly in t…

100% I'm aware of Tim Cook's achievements in SCM (although not in detail). I'd simply argue that if Apple were only succeeding at SCM, they would today be a very well run $500B company, instead of defining high-end technology in multiple fields and vying for most valuable company on the planet.
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