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AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

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Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#81

Post by embedding-shape »

nkrisc wrote: post #24
dwohnitmok wrote: post #18

This study is pretty bad. The comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48970182 ) on the other link with the direct PDF explains the problem well, which is that nothing here being tested is specific to AI systems. This study gave people access to an LLM that the researchers knew would give incorrect answers to certain questions, and then quizzed people on those questions, with the option to not respond to a giv…

You could make the point that it’s no different than the textbook example you gave, but people don’t generally use textbooks like that, while out in the world people do use LLMs like that all the time.

> You could make the point that it’s no different than the textbook example you gave, but people don’t generally use textbooks like that

Feels like this differs wildly depending on who you consider "people" to be. The average person on the street? Definitely just parrots stuff they've read somewhere, not even a "textbook". A group of software developers used to parsing semi-true information? Probably they'd get it right, yeah.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#82

Post by gherkinnn »

reticulates wrote: post #9

Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. A large number of people seem to think that when someone asks a question, what they really want is not someone with direct knowledge, but instead someone to relay the question to ChatGPT and post the result as if it is their own hard earned knowledge and insight. I have no idea about the quality of this research but in the real world (well, real…

It gets better. Kagi search summary likes "people also say..." and then refers to a random LLM reddit thread.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#83

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Aurornis wrote: post #65
reticulates wrote: post #9

Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. A large number of people seem to think that when someone asks a question, what they really want is not someone with direct knowledge, but instead someone to relay the question to ChatGPT and post the result as if it is their own hard earned knowledge and insight. I have no idea about the quality of this research but in the real world (well, real…

> Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. Most of the advice and information subreddits I previously visited collapsed into bad posting even before AI. The few I still follow are oddly fine. The key was always having an active moderator who cared and had unbelievable amounts of time to moderate. Once the subreddit gets past a critical mass of junk-posting users, the good users leave a…

>The key was always having an active moderator who cared and had unbelievable amounts of time to moderate.

Sometimes the mods are the junk posting users.

A bunch of the car subs were modded for a long time by some tow truck driver who'd mod them while sitting around waiting for dispatch. Exactly the kind of guy you want refereeing a dispute between some guy who's lived it and a bunch of lube techs who are quoting textbook best practices.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#84

Post by glitchc »

reticulates wrote: post #9

Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. A large number of people seem to think that when someone asks a question, what they really want is not someone with direct knowledge, but instead someone to relay the question to ChatGPT and post the result as if it is their own hard earned knowledge and insight. I have no idea about the quality of this research but in the real world (well, real…

When there's weakness in not knowing, it's no surprise. How many of us work in a corporate environment where pretending to know is better than being honest about not knowing?

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#85

Post by metaltea »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #64
ls-a wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The pro AI wave needs to stop. It's obnoxious. Stop pushing it on people. If people want it, they'll seek it out. And, unfortunately, they'll then inflict it on the people around them.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words and pixels annihilate me

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#86

Post by sublinear »

hinkley wrote: post #34
reticulates wrote: post #9

Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. A large number of people seem to think that when someone asks a question, what they really want is not someone with direct knowledge, but instead someone to relay the question to ChatGPT and post the result as if it is their own hard earned knowledge and insight. I have no idea about the quality of this research but in the real world (well, real…

There are some people I'm not friends with anymore who didn't understand conversational bidding. They would jump straight to Why Don't You Google That and shut down any conversation we might have had. Yes I could get some of this information off of IMDB or a DIY video but I'm looking for color commentary and regional advice, and also in some of these situations, the people I asked know me. They know the sorts of thin…

I do agree that most LMGTFY was obnoxious, and I'm not defending that.

At the same time, we have historically seen a lot of "conversational bidding" lead to low quality shitposting at best. At worst, we see wildly out of touch echo chambers fueled by bots, guerilla marketing, and political agendas.

You did solve your problem by seeking higher quality people to talk to. I'm just saying there is more to rejection than the other party "not understanding".

In the context of work chat or certain events, I could understand a LMGTFY response as steering conversation out of the mud and saving everyone the headache. It also helps you, the recipient of that response, save face.

They're the ones looking like an asshole while you get another chance to try somewhere else. I've met some of the most sociable people upon realizing their usage of these "jiu-jitsu moves" were not meant to be hostile.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#88

Post by bluefirebrand »

recursive wrote: post #73
ls-a wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The anti AI wave still has so much work to do. Today I saw a duckduckgo ad selling how you can opt out of AI. This is the first ad I've seen suggesting the possibility that someone might not want to be maxing out AI in every possible way. This after seeing probably thousands of ads reference AI.

No one is funding "anti AI" the way AI is being funded :/

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#89

Post by papercrane »

nomel wrote: post #74
code_biologist wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing and videos produced before 2022 are the information equivalent of low-background steel (steel produced before the atom bomb era). Not all are precious, but they are important. AI influences are so pervasive at this point, even in informational writing from domain experts. Relentless grounding is my personal solution for my AI epistemic crisis, but it's an expensive solution in terms of time and effort, and tr…

What is "grounding"?

It's when the models outputs are connected to sources.

So for example, you might have a company chatbot that responds with a summary of a Confluence page it was trained on and a link to the source.

Doesn't eliminate hallucinations, but it does reduce them and gives you a chance to verify.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#90

Post by glitchc »

embedding-shape wrote: post #81
nkrisc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make the point that it’s no different than the textbook example you gave, but people don’t generally use textbooks like that, while out in the world people do use LLMs like that all the time.

> You could make the point that it’s no different than the textbook example you gave, but people don’t generally use textbooks like that Feels like this differs wildly depending on who you consider "people" to be. The average person on the street? Definitely just parrots stuff they've read somewhere, not even a "textbook". A group of software developers used to parsing semi-true information? Probably they'd get it ri…

> Definitely just parrots stuff they've read somewhere, not even a "textbook".

Or a teacher they met in childhood who taught them everything they know, right or wrong.

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