Live data from Hacker News

People are just as bad as my LLMs

wilsoniumite.com

141–150 of 173 posts

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "knowing what today is" count as "Outside STEM"? Coz my interactions with LLMs are certainly way worse than most people. Just tried it: tell me the current date please Today's date is October 3, 2023. Sorry ChatGPT, that's just wrong and your confidence in the answer is not helpful at all. It's also funny how different versions of GPT I've been interacting with always seem to return some date in October 2023, bu…

These "LLMs cannot be AGI if they don't have a function to get today's date" remind me of laypeople reviewing phone cameras by seeing which camera's saturation they like more. It's absurd, whether an LLM has access to a function isn't a property of the LLM itself, therefore it's irrelevant, but people use it because LLMs make them feel bad somehow and they'll clutch at any straw.

> It's absurd, whether an LLM has access to a function isn't a property of the LLM itself

But the LLM coming up with another answer when it lacks that function is a property of the LLM itself. It lacks the kind of introspection that would be required to handle such questions.

Now current date is so common that you see a lot of trained responses for that exact question, but LLMs makes similar mistakes to all sorts of questions that they have no way of answering. But even when trained LLM still do make mistakes like that, since for example stories and such often say the date is something else than the date it was written etc. A human that is asked knows this isn't a book or a science report, but an LLM doesn't.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#142
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory I've heard is that the more prime a number is, the more random it feels. 13 feels more awkward and weird, and it doesn't come up naturally as often as 2 or 3 do in everyday life. It's rare, so it must be more random! I'll give you the most random number I can think of! People tend to avoid extremes, too. If you ask for a number between 1 and 10, people tend to pick something in the middle. Somehow, the ord…

Okay, this is a nitpick, but I don't think ordinal can be used in that way. "Somehow, the ordinal values of the range seem less likely". I'd probably go with extremes of the range? Or endpoints?

Nope I just mixed up a rephrase. I originally said "ordinal extremes" and meant to say "extreme values". I replaced the wrong word.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#143
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think using the word “intelligence” when speaking of computers, beyond a kind of figure of speech, is anthropomorphizing, and it is a common pseudoscientific habit that must go. What is most characteristic about human intelligence is the ability to abstract from particular, concrete instances of things we experience. This allows us to form general concepts which are the foundation of reason. Analysis requires conce…

Unless you can demonstrate that humans can solve a function that exceeds the Turing computable, it is reasonable to assume we're non more than Turing complete, and all Turing complete systems can compute the same set of functions. As it stands, we don't even know of any functions that exceeds the Turing complete, but are computable.

> As it stands, we don't even know of any functions that exceeds the Turing complete, but are computable.

That would require the universe to be discrete, we don't know that. Otherwise most continuous processes compute something that a Turing machine can't, the Turing machine can only approximate it.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#144
post #35

I know this is only adjacent to OP’s point, but I do find it somewhat ironic that it is easy to find people who are just as unreliable and incompetent at answering questions correctly as a 7b model, but also a lot less knowledgeable. Also, often less capable of carrying on a decent conversation. I’ve noticed an periconcious urge when talking to people to judge them against various models and quants, or to decide they…

A decent conversation about what?

I should have said minimal, not decent.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#145
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of 7 being a lucky number in western culture and your link doesn't support that. 3 is a lucky number, 13 is an unlucky number, 7 is nothing to me. So I don't think its that, 7 is still a very common "random number" here even though there is no special cultural significance to it.

Have you heard of Las Vegas? The 777 being the grand prize? Maybe it is not universal to all of western society but I have never before today heard of a culture where 3 was the lucky number. The USA’s culturally lucky number is absolutely 7.

I don't live in USA, the west includes Europe. 7 is maybe a lucky number in USA but not where I live. So I think that would be more of an American thing than a western thing maybe. Or maybe its related to some parts of Christianity but not others.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "LLMs cannot be AGI if they don't have a function to get today's date" remind me of laypeople reviewing phone cameras by seeing which camera's saturation they like more. It's absurd, whether an LLM has access to a function isn't a property of the LLM itself, therefore it's irrelevant, but people use it because LLMs make them feel bad somehow and they'll clutch at any straw.

> It's absurd, whether an LLM has access to a function isn't a property of the LLM itself But the LLM coming up with another answer when it lacks that function is a property of the LLM itself. It lacks the kind of introspection that would be required to handle such questions. Now current date is so common that you see a lot of trained responses for that exact question, but LLMs makes similar mistakes to all sorts of…

If you ask someone with Alzheimer's what year it is, you'll get a confident answer of 1972. Would you class people suffering from Alzeimer's as non-intelligent?

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's absurd, whether an LLM has access to a function isn't a property of the LLM itself But the LLM coming up with another answer when it lacks that function is a property of the LLM itself. It lacks the kind of introspection that would be required to handle such questions. Now current date is so common that you see a lot of trained responses for that exact question, but LLMs makes similar mistakes to all sorts of…

If you ask someone with Alzheimer's what year it is, you'll get a confident answer of 1972. Would you class people suffering from Alzeimer's as non-intelligent?

> Would you class people suffering from Alzeimer's as non-intelligent?

Yes, I don't think they are generally intelligent any more, for that you need to be able to learn and remember. I think they can have some narrow intelligent though based on stuff they have learned previously.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#148
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artificial intelligence is a generic term for a very broad field that has existed for like 50-70 years, depending on who you ask. 'Intelligence' isn't praise or endorsement. I think it's a succinct word that does the job at explaining what the goal here is. All the "Artificial intelligence? Hah, more like Bad Unintelligence, am I right???" takes just sound so corny to me.

I don't mean to sound corny. LLMs just don't really use or apply information in a way that I think should be considered intelligent. It just repeats its training data. I don't just repeat my training data (even if it was an influence on me)

The idea that LLMs just repeat their training data is just wrong. It’s easy to test them and prove this is not the case. In some situations they may do that, typically when they don’t have much data on some topic. But in many other cases, it’s easy to verify that they are able to synthesize new output that is not simply a repetition of their training data.

Software development is a great example, which also illustrates the ability of LLMs to reason (whether you want to call it e.g. “simulating reasoning” doesn’t matter - the results are what counts.) They can design new programs, write new code, debug code they’ve never seen before, and explain code they’ve never seen before. None of that would be possible if they were simply repeating their training data.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#149
post #27

But an LLM can't be held accountable.. neither can most employees, but we often forget that :)

> But an LLM can't be held accountable.. neither can most employees

Yes and no.

Yes, this is really problem, because at current level of technologies, some thing are inexpensive only if done in large numbers (factor of scale), so for example, just could not exist one person who could be accountable for machine like Boeing-747 (~500 human-years of work per plane).

Unfortunately, modern automobile is considered large system, made from thousands parts, so again, not exist one person to know everything.

And no, Germans said "Ordnung muss sein", which in modern management mean, constant clear organization of the game of the whole team is more important than the success of individual players.

Or, in simple words, right organization, controlled by rules is considered enough reliable to be accountable.

And for example in automobile industry, now normal to consider accountable whole organization.

And for example, Daimler officials few years ago said, Daimler safety systems will use Daimler view on robotic laws - priority will be safety of people inside vehicle. You may know, traditionally used Lem robotic laws, which have totally different view, separated from inside vs outside approach. In civil aviation using approach, to just use simple designs or design with evidence of reliability.

Sure, government regulators could decide something even more original, will see.

Any way, as technology emerge, accountability of machines will be sure subject of many discussions.

Re: People are just as bad as my LLMs

#150

> ...a lot of the safeguards and policy we have to manage humans own unreliability may serve us well in managing the unreliability of AI systems too. It seems like an incredibly bad outcome if we accept "AI" that's fundamentally flawed in a way similar to if not worse than humans and try to work around it rather than relegating it to unimportant tasks while we work towards a standard of intelligence we'd otherwise ex…

What is your measure of intelligence?

If I was smarter, I could probably come up with a Kantian definition. Something about our capacity to model subjective representations as a coherent experience of the world within a unified space-time. Unfortunately, it's been a long time since I tried to read A Critique of Pure Reason, and I never understood it very well anyway. Even though my professor was one of the top Kant scholars, he admitted that reading Kant is a huge slog.

So I'll leave it to Skeeter to explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9zCI4SI6v8

Post reply on HN