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I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

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Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#231

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #180
scarface_74 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried changing the house style. https://chatgpt.com/share/6817c9f4-ed48-8010-bc3e-58299140c8... In the real world I would at least remove the em dashes. It’s a dead give away for LLM generated text.

That was not a good attempt at changing the style. You can't just say "don't sound like an LLM." The LLM does not in fact know that it is "speaking like an LLM"; it just thinks that it's speaking the way the "average person" speaks, according to everything it's ever been shown. If you told it "just speak like a human being"... that's what it already thought it was doing! You have to tell the LLM a specific way to spe…

[deleted]

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#232

Post by pessimizer »

eric_cc wrote: post #225
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

If you used a wheelchair every day, your legs would atrophy.

Regardless of the existence of other ways to exercise your legs which you also will not do, because you're a person with working legs who chooses to use a wheelchair.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#233

Post by tehjoker »

eric_cc wrote: post #225
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

writing is one of the best way to develop your thinking. students really are cheating themselves if they use LLMs to write their assignments

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#234

Post by aftbit »

palata wrote: post #230
eric_cc wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

> Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. It means that you are losing your time. If you are a university student and use LLMs for your classes while "challenging your mind" for stuff outside of class, maybe you should just not be studying there in the first place.

School isn't a place for smart people, Morty.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#235

Post by AstroBen »

eric_cc wrote: post #225
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

Even if that's true I imagine there's a huge correlation between not trying on other challenging things and using LLMs for papers

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#236

Post by UncleMeat »

eric_cc wrote: post #225
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

Sure. And there are new pedagogies that educators are trying out that help people learn even in the presence of these tools.

But a huge amount of "ugh I'm too smart for this assignment" complaining that students do is just kids being immature rather than an honest attempt at learning through other means.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#237

Post by palata »

jcul wrote: post #214
derefr wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one other very useful form of "expansion" that LLMs do. If you aren't aware: (high-parameter-count) LLMs can be used pretty reliably to teach yourself things. LLM base models "know things" to about the same degree that the Internet itself "knows" those things. For well-understood topics — i.e. subjects where the Internet contains all sorts of open-source textbooks and treatments of the subject — LLMs really…

Yeah you're totally right with this use case. It feels like the information is there strewn across the internet, in forums, Reddit posts, stack overflow, specs, books. But to trawl though it all was so time consuming. With an LLM you can quickly distill it down to just the information you need. Saying that, I do feel like reading the full spec for something is a valuable exercise. There may be unknown unknowns that y…

To me:

If an LLM can help you understand an RFC, it's great. You're now relying on the RFC.

If an LLM can help you not rely on the RFC, you're doing it wrong.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#238

Post by eric_cc »

palata wrote: post #230
eric_cc wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

> Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. It means that you are losing your time. If you are a university student and use LLMs for your classes while "challenging your mind" for stuff outside of class, maybe you should just not be studying there in the first place.

Bingo! I agree with where you’re going with this line of thinking.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#240

Post by palata »

valenterry wrote: post #209
musicale wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are like anti-compression algorithms when used like that, a simple idea gets expanded into a bloated mess by an LLM, I think that's the answer: LLMs are primarily useful for data and text translation and reduction, not for expansion. An exception is repetitive or boilerplate text or code where a verbose format is required to express a small amount of information.

They are also useful for association. Imagine an LLM trained on documentation. Then you can retrieve info associated with your question. This can go beyond just specific documentation but also include things like "common knowledge" which is what the other poster meant when they talked about "teaching you things".

In my experience, if the information I need is in the documentation, then I don't need the LLM. If it is not in the documentation, then the LLM will invent stuff that could be there but that isn't, and it's actually a loss of time.
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