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I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

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Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#171

Post by maple3142 »

I think many people are just not really good at dealing with "imperfect" tools. Different tools can have different success probability, let's call that probability p here. People typically use tool that have p=100%, or at least very close to it. But LLM is a tool that is far from that, so making use of it takes different approach.

Imagine there is an probabilistic oracle that can answer any question with a yes/no with success probability p. If p=100% or p=0% then it is apparently very useful. If p=50% then it is absolutely worthless. In other cases, such oracle can be utilized in different way to get the answer we want, and it is still a useful thing.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#172

Post by imoverclocked »

I’m bullish because many of these models rest on the consumption of copyrighted material or information that wasn’t intended for mass consumption in this way.

Also, I like to think for myself. Writing code and thinking through what I am writing often exposes edge cases that I wouldn’t otherwise realize.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#173

Post by collingreen »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #150
tempestn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it won't do your taxes for you, but it can sure help you do them yourself. Probably won't put you out of your job either, but it might help you accomplish more. Of course, one result of people accomplishing more in less time is that you need fewer people to do the same amount of work - so some jobs could be lost. But it's also possible that for the most part instead, more will be accomplished overall.

If it had access to my books, a current-gen frontier LLM most certainly could do my taxes. I don't understand that entire line of reasoning.

And it might even be right and not get you in legal trouble! Not that you'd know (until audit day) unless you went back and did them as a verification though.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#174

Post by pikelet »

turtletontine wrote: post #30
bluefirebrand wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look for the ways that AI works, and it can be a powerful tool. Try and figure out where it still fails, and you will see nothing but hype and hot air. Not every use case is like this, but there are many. The problem is that I feel I am constantly being bombarded by people bullish on AI saying "look how great this is" but when I try to do the exact same things they are doing, it doesn't work very well for me Of cou…

I literally had a developer of an open source package I’m working with tell me “yeah that’s a known problem, I gave up on trying to fix it. You should just ask ChatGPT to fix it, I bet it will immediately know the answer.” Annoying response of course. But I’d never used an LLM to debug before, so I figured I’d give it a try. First: it regurgitated a bunch of documentation and basic debugging tips, which might have ac…

This is exactly my experience, every time! If I offer it the slightest bit of context it will say 'Ah! I understand now! Yes, that is your problem, …' and proceed to spit out some non-existent function, sometimes the same one it has just suggested a few prompts ago which we already decided doesn't exist/work. And it just goes on and on giving me 'solutions' until I finally realise it doesn't have the answer (which it will never admit unless you specifically ask it to – forever looking to please) and give up.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#175

Post by relaxing »

MostlyStable wrote: post #4

My experience (almost exclusively Claude), has just been so different that I don't know what to say. Some of the examples are the kinds of things I explicitly wouldn't expect LLMs to be particularly good at so I wouldn't use them for, and others, she says that it just doesn't work for her, and that experience is just so different than mine that I don't know how to respond. I think that there are two kinds of people w…

> Also, when she says "none of my students has ever invented references that just don't exist"...all I can say is "press X to doubt"

I’ve never seen it from my students. Why do you think this? It’s trivial to pick a real book/article. No student is generating fake material whole cloth and fake references to match. Even if they could, why would they risk it?

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#176

Post by kupopuffs »

ffsm8 wrote: post #117
gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

It's definitely a tech that's here to stay, unlike block chain/nfts But I mirror the confusion why people are still bullish on it. The current valuation for it is because the market thinks that it's able to write code like a senior engineer and have AGI, because that's how they're marketed by the LLM providers. I'm not even certain if they'll be ubiquitous after the venture capital investments are gone and the servic…

blockchain is here to stay, dont kid yourself

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#177

Post by amrocha »

intrasight wrote: post #164
zozbot234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. If you're lucky it figures it out. If you aren't, it makes stuff up in a way that seems almost purposefully calculated to fool you into assuming that it's figured everything out. That's the real problem with LLM's: they fundamentally cannot be trusted because they're just a glorified autocom…

Humans also get things wrong surprisingly large percentage of the time.

Yeah but if your accountant bullshits when doing your taxes, you can sue them.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#178

Post by Animats »

cogman10 wrote: post #161
gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

> Wah, it can't write code like a Senior engineer with 20 years of experience! No, that's not my problem with it. My problem with it is that inbuilt into the models of all LLMs is that they'll fabricate a lot. What's worse, people are treating them as authoritative. Sure, sometimes it produces useful code. And often, it'll simply call the "doTheHardPart()" method. I've even caught it literally writing the wrong algor…

> inbuilt into the models of all LLMs is that they'll fabricate a lot.

Still the elephant in the room. We need an AI technology that can output "don't know" when appropriate. How's that coming along?

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#179

Post by jasonjayr »

MattGaiser wrote: post #169
cogman10 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wah, it can't write code like a Senior engineer with 20 years of experience! No, that's not my problem with it. My problem with it is that inbuilt into the models of all LLMs is that they'll fabricate a lot. What's worse, people are treating them as authoritative. Sure, sometimes it produces useful code. And often, it'll simply call the "doTheHardPart()" method. I've even caught it literally writing the wrong algor…

Humans bullshit and hallucinate and claim authority without citation or knowledge. They will believe all manner of things. They frequently misunderstand. The LLM doesn’t need to be perfect. Just needs to beat a typical human. LLM opponents aren’t wrong about the limits of LLMs. They vastly overestimate humans.

LLM's can't be held accountable.

And many, many companies are proposing and implementing uses for LLM's to intentionally obscure that accountability.

If a person makes up something, innocently or maliciously, and someone believes it and ends up getting harmed, that person can have some liability for the harm.

If a LLM hallucinates something, that somone believes and they end up getting harmed, there's no accountability. And it seems that AI companies are pushing for laws & regulations that further protect them from this liability.

These models can be useful tools, but the targets these AI companies are shooting for are going to be activly harmful in an economy that insists you do something productive for the continued right to exist.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#180

Post by toomuchtodo »

MattGaiser wrote: post #169
cogman10 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wah, it can't write code like a Senior engineer with 20 years of experience! No, that's not my problem with it. My problem with it is that inbuilt into the models of all LLMs is that they'll fabricate a lot. What's worse, people are treating them as authoritative. Sure, sometimes it produces useful code. And often, it'll simply call the "doTheHardPart()" method. I've even caught it literally writing the wrong algor…

Humans bullshit and hallucinate and claim authority without citation or knowledge. They will believe all manner of things. They frequently misunderstand. The LLM doesn’t need to be perfect. Just needs to beat a typical human. LLM opponents aren’t wrong about the limits of LLMs. They vastly overestimate humans.

It's fine if it isn't perfect if whomever is spitting out answers assumes liability when the robot is wrong. But, what people want is the robot to answer questions and there to be no liability when it is well known that the robot can be wildly inaccurate sometimes. They want the illusion of value without the liability of the known deficiencies.

If LLM output is like a magic 8 ball you shake, that is not very valuable unless it is workload management for a human who will validate the fitness of the output.

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