Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

bytesauna.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 308 posts

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#81

Post by kmijyiyxfbklao »

yannyu wrote: post #39
Chabsff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that's their interface. That informs surprisingly little about their inner workings. ANNs are arbitrary function approximators. The training process uses statistical methods to identify a set of parameters that approximate the function as best as possible. That doesn't necessarily mean that the end result is equivalent to a very fancy multi-stage linear regression. It's a possible outcome of the process, bu…

> Yeah, but that's their interface. That informs surprisingly little about their inner workings. I'm not sure I follow. LLMs are probabilistic next-token prediction based on current context, that is a factual, foundational statement about the technology that runs all LLMs today. We can ascribe other things to that, such as reasoning or knowledge or agency, but that doesn't change how they work. Their fundamental arch…

Then why not say "they are just computer programs"?

I think the reason people don't say that is because they want to say "I already understand what they are, and I'm not impressed and it's nothing new". But what the comment you are replying to is saying is that the inner workings are the important innovative stuff.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#82

Post by nathan_compton »

sho_hn wrote: post #4

I'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…

Yeah, everything I get out of the AI stinks of wrongness, even when its not materially wrong. There is a flimsiness to everything.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#83

Post by SJMG »

derektank wrote: post #38
aabhay wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also the fact that both Wikipedia and LLMs are non-stationary. The quality of wikipedia has grown immensely since its inception and LLMs will get more accurate (if not explicitly “smarter”)

I'm not entirely convinced that the quality of Wikipedia has improved substantially in the last decade.

I think you would need a complicated set of metrics to claim something like "improved" that wasn't caveated to death. An immediate conflict being total number of articles vs impressions of articles labeled with POV biases. If both go up has the site improved?

I find I trust Wikipedia less these days, though still more than LLM output.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#84

Post by njarboe »

everdrive wrote: post #50
Brendinooo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing a tweet awhile back that talked about how modernity separated work from physicality, and now you have to do exercise on purpose. I think the Internet plus car-driven societies had done something similar to being social, and LLMs are doing something to both thinking, as well as the kind of virtue that enables one to master a craft. So, while it's an imperfect answer that I haven't really nailed down…

>Internet plus car-driven societies had done something similar to being social, That's an interesting take on the loneliness crisis that I had not considered. I think you're really onto something. Thanks for sharing. I don't want to dive into this topic too much since it's political and really off-topic for the thread, but thank you for suggesting this.

Radio and especially TV also had large social effects. People used to play cards, instruments, and other social things before TV. Then household TV watching maxxed at 9 hours/day in 2010 (5hr/d in 1950). (Would like to know the per person watching and these are from Nielsen who would want higher numbers) [1].

Cars help people be social in my world. I would say that riding on a train in your own bubble with strangers is not a social activity, but others would disagree.

[1]https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/when-did-tv-watching-p...

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#85

Post by bootsmann »

sho_hn wrote: post #4

I'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…

> Is anyone really cocksure on the basis of LLM received knowledge?

I work for a company with an open source product and the number of support requests we get from people who ask the chatbot to do their config and then end up with something nonfunctioning is quite significant. Goes up to users complaining our api is down because the chatbot hallucinated the endpoint.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#86

Post by Theodores »

Insanity wrote: post #11
sho_hn wrote: post #4

I'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…

I remember back when I was in secondary school, something commonly heard was "Don't just trust wikipedia, check it's resources, because it's crowdsourced and can be wrong". Now, almost 2 decades later, I rarely hear this stance and I see people relying on wikipedia as an authoritative source of truth. i.e, linking to wikipedia instead of the underlying sources. In the same sense, I can see that "Don't trust LLMs" wil…

It wasn't just Wikipedia, which was a relatively recent addition to the web, everything online was a 'load of rubbish'.

In turn-of-the-century boomer world, reality was what you saw on TV. If you saw something with your own eyes that contradicted the world view presented by the media, then one's eyes were to be disbelieved. The only reputable sources of news were the mainstream media outlets. The only credible history books would be those with reviews from the mainstream media, with anything else just being the 'ramblings of a nutter'.

In short, we built a beautiful post-truth world and now we are set on outsourcing our critical thinking to LLMs.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#87

Post by gtowey »

everdrive wrote: post #42
Brendinooo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's not really me doing the things, and I feel like a bit of a fraud I've been thinking about this a bit. We don't really think this way in other areas, is it appropriate to think this way here? My car has an automatic transmission, am I a fraud because the machine is shifting gears for me? My tractor plows a field, am I a fraud because I'm not using draft horses or digging manually? Spell check caught a word, am I…

I've been thinking about that comparison as well. A common fantasy is that civilization will collapse and the guy who knows how to hunt and start a fire will really excel. In practice, this never happens and he's sort of left behind unless he also has other skills relevant to the modern world. And, for instance, I have barely any knowledge of how my computer works, but it's a tool I use to do my job. (and to have fun…

> Why are these different than using LLMs?

I would say that with a computer you're using a tool to take care of mundane details and speed up the mechanics of tasks in your life. Such as writing a document, or playing a game. I can't think of a way I would be seriously disadvantaged by not having the ability to hand-write an essay or have games I can readily play without a computer. Computers are more like tools in the way a hammer is a tool. I don't mind being totally dependent on a computer for those tasks in the same way I don't mind that I need a hammer anytime I want to drive a nail.

But for many people, LLMs replace critical thinking. They offer the allure of outsourcing planning, research, and generating ideas. These skills seem more fundamental to me, and I would say there's definitely a loss somehow of one's humanity if you let those things atrophy to the point you become utterly dependent on LLMs.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#88

Post by ctoth »

everdrive wrote: post #42
Brendinooo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's not really me doing the things, and I feel like a bit of a fraud I've been thinking about this a bit. We don't really think this way in other areas, is it appropriate to think this way here? My car has an automatic transmission, am I a fraud because the machine is shifting gears for me? My tractor plows a field, am I a fraud because I'm not using draft horses or digging manually? Spell check caught a word, am I…

I've been thinking about that comparison as well. A common fantasy is that civilization will collapse and the guy who knows how to hunt and start a fire will really excel. In practice, this never happens and he's sort of left behind unless he also has other skills relevant to the modern world. And, for instance, I have barely any knowledge of how my computer works, but it's a tool I use to do my job. (and to have fun…

But what is Apache for?

You don't just set up Apache to have run Apache? You set it up to serve web content! It is middleware, it is not in of itself useful?

Isn't setting up Apache robbing yourself of the opportunity to learn about writing your own HTTP server? In C? And what a bad idea that is?

The LLM helping you configure a web server is no different than the web server helping you serve HTTP instead of implementing a web server from scratch. You've just seemingly? arbitrarily decided your preferred abstraction layer is where "real work" happens.

Okay, maybe LLMs might disappear tomorrow and so for some reason the particular skill of configuring Apache will become useful again, maybe! But I'm already using brainpower to memorize phone numbers in case my smartphone contacts disappear, so maybe I won't have room for those Apache configs ;-)

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#89

Post by ok_dad »

miningape wrote: post #52
Insanity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember back when I was in secondary school, something commonly heard was "Don't just trust wikipedia, check it's resources, because it's crowdsourced and can be wrong". Now, almost 2 decades later, I rarely hear this stance and I see people relying on wikipedia as an authoritative source of truth. i.e, linking to wikipedia instead of the underlying sources. In the same sense, I can see that "Don't trust LLMs" wil…

> "Don't just trust wikipedia, check it's resources, because it's crowdsourced and can be wrong" This comes from decades of teachers misremembering what the rule was, and eventually it morphed into the Wikipedia specific form we see today - the actual rule is that you cannot cite an encyclopaedia in an academic paper. full stop. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and therefore should not be cited. Wikipedia is the only en…

The original rule when I was a lad (when wikipedia was a baby) was, "don't trust stuff on the internet, especially Wikipedia where people can change it at will."

Today they might have better trust for Wikipedia-- and I know I use it as a source of truth for a lot of things-- but back in my day teachers were of the opinion that it couldn't be trusted. This was for like middle and high school, not college or university, so we would cite encyclopedias and that sort of thing, since we weren't reading cutting edge papers back then (maybe today kids read them, who knows).

Edit: Also, I think the GP comment was proven correct by all of the replies claiming that Wikipedia was never controversial because it was very clear to everyone my age when Wikipedia was created/founded that teachers didn't trust the internet nor Wikipedia at the time.

Re: LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger

#90

Post by gowld »

miningape wrote: post #52
Insanity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember back when I was in secondary school, something commonly heard was "Don't just trust wikipedia, check it's resources, because it's crowdsourced and can be wrong". Now, almost 2 decades later, I rarely hear this stance and I see people relying on wikipedia as an authoritative source of truth. i.e, linking to wikipedia instead of the underlying sources. In the same sense, I can see that "Don't trust LLMs" wil…

> "Don't just trust wikipedia, check it's resources, because it's crowdsourced and can be wrong" This comes from decades of teachers misremembering what the rule was, and eventually it morphed into the Wikipedia specific form we see today - the actual rule is that you cannot cite an encyclopaedia in an academic paper. full stop. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and therefore should not be cited. Wikipedia is the only en…

Both comments are missing the reason that an encyclopedia should not be cited:

An encyclopedia does not cite its sources, and does not claim to be a primary source, its potentialymistakes cannot be checked.

(Wikipedia has the additional problem that, by default, the version cited is the ever-changing "latest" version, not a fixed and identified version.)

Post reply on HN