LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
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LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
1–10 of 308 posts
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#2>I think LLMs should not be seen as knowledge engines but as confidence engines.
This is a good line, and I think it tempers the "not just misinformed, but misinformed with conviction" observation quite a bit, because sometimes moving forward with an idea at less than 100% accuracy will still bring the best outcome.
Obviously that's a less than ideal thing to say, but imo (and in my experience as the former gifted student who struggles to ship) intelligent people tend to underestimate the importance of doing stuff with confidence.
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#3> I feel like LLMs are a fairly boring technology. They are stochastic black boxes. The training is essentially run-of-the-mill statistical inference. There are some more recent innovations on software/hardware-level, but these are not LLM-specific really.
This is pretty ironic, considering the subject matter of that blog post. It's a super-common misconception that's gained very wide popularity due to reactionary (and, imo, rather poor) popular science reporting.
The author parroting that with confidence in a post about Dunner-Krugering gives me a bit of a chuckle.
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#4I'm not sure this is something I really worry about. Whenever I use an LLM I feel dumber, not smarter; there's a sensation of relying on a crutch instead of having done the due diligence of learning something myself. I'm less confident in the knowledge and less likely to present it as such. Is anyone really cocksure on the basis of LLM received knowledge?
> As I ChatGPT user I notice that I’m often left with a sense of certainty.
They have almost the opposite effect on me.
Even with knowledge from books or articles I've learned to multi-source and question things, and my mind treats the LLMs as a less reliable averaging of sources.
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#5From the title I thought this was a repost of 'AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service ' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851483
It is not.
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#6>“the problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Is it me or does everyone find that dumb people seem to use this statement more than ever?
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#7> I feel like LLMs are a fairly boring technology. They are stochastic black boxes. The training is essentially run-of-the-mill statistical inference. There are some more recent innovations on software/hardware-level, but these are not LLM-specific really. This is pretty ironic, considering the subject matter of that blog post. It's a super-common misconception that's gained very wide popularity due to reactionary (a…
I also find it hard to get excited about black boxes - imo there's no real meat to the insights they give, only the shell of a "correct" answer
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#8I hate to comment on just a headline—thought I did read the article—but it's wrong enough to warrant correcting.
This is not what the Dunning-Kruger effect is. It's lacking metacognitive ability to understand one's own skill level. Overconfidence resulting from ignorance isn't the same thing. Joe Rogan propagated the version of this phenomenon that infiltrated public consciousness, and we've been stuck with it ever since.
Ironically, you can plug this story into your favorite LLM, and it will tell you the same thing. And, also ironically, the LLM will generally know more than you in most contexts, so anyone with a degree epistemic humility is better served taking it at least as seriously as their own thoughts and intuitions, if not at face value.
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#9I'm not sure this is something I really worry about. Whenever I use an LLM I feel dumber, not smarter; there's a sensation of relying on a crutch instead of having done the due diligence of learning something myself. I'm less confident in the knowledge and less likely to present it as such. Is anyone really cocksure on the basis of LLM received knowledge? > As I ChatGPT user I notice that I’m often left with a sense…
If you feel dumber, it’s because you’re using the LLM to do raw work instead of using it for research. It should be a google/stackoverflow replacement, not a really powerful intellisense. You should feel no dumber than using google to investigate questions.
Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
#10I very much agree. I've been telling folks in trainings that I do that the term "artificial intelligence" is a cognitohazard, in that it pre-consciously steers you to conceptualize a LLM as an entity.
LLMs are cool and useful technology, but if you approach them with the attitude you're talking with an other, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to all sorts of cognitive distortions.