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LLMs reward expertise

seangoedecke.com

11–20 of 607 posts

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#11
This matches my experience. Just Talk To It is the best method for working with LLMs if you're an expert.

I've seen this at work (as eng manager/lead/principal/whoevenknowsanymore) – all the big APIs give you stats. We see how much people burn in tokens and we know how much output they produce. There is a pretty strong inverse correlation between token burn and output.

The more tokens people burn, the less likely they are to produce a good outcome.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#12

Not sure I agree with this. The math guy at anthropic's prompts are essentially: "suppose you’ve gotta resolve the $CONJECTURE, like absolutely have to, everything depends on it. think really hard, and try to come up with a bunch of ideas to try. but remember to trust yourself and not necessarily in conventional wisdom!!" https://claude.ai/share/25740bd5-aa97-4bd7-bf58-c4df3793fda7 https://xcancel.com/__alpoge__/stat…

And what about problems that cannot be one-shotted but helped along?

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#13
post #2

LLMs reward architecture knowledge of how to structure things and how to not just say "Claude, make me Microsoft Flight Simulator, make no mistakes".

Unfortunately the software industry is saying things like "don't look at the code", "LLMs have made developers 10-100x faster", etc. The only way they can make such claims is by saying what you said above: "Claude, make me Microsoft Flight Simulator, make no mistakes". Additionally engineers are facing pressures via deadlines to work in the paradigm of "Claude, make me Microsoft Flight Simulator, make no mistakes"...

The question i wonder about is, when will an event come along that persuades everyone that human understanding is still required? Or will it never come?

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#14
I do find that "signalling expertise" is important. "I have a significant background in biblical scholarship. You can assume I've read the most important works in NT studies in particular. Do not translate Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Syriac. Now, I would like to know . . ." That changes things significantly. So does telling it you have 20+ years of experience with C programming, that you have a robust understanding of machine organization, memory layouts, embedded systems, etc.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#15

Not sure I agree with this. The math guy at anthropic's prompts are essentially: "suppose you’ve gotta resolve the $CONJECTURE, like absolutely have to, everything depends on it. think really hard, and try to come up with a bunch of ideas to try. but remember to trust yourself and not necessarily in conventional wisdom!!" https://claude.ai/share/25740bd5-aa97-4bd7-bf58-c4df3793fda7 https://xcancel.com/__alpoge__/stat…

LLMs are a collection of biases. Humans are also a collection of biases. So we project our biases as input through the biases of an LLM and get an output. Hence why I think getting optimal output requires being an optimal person. And in that sentence there are many points of expression.

Finally, we train our LLMs on who we are. Another reinforcement of biases.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#16
I have lengthy conversations with my LLM, almost like an interview. I agree on the expertise part, because I wouldn't be able to go in depth on a subject with it if I lacked the expertise. Some work is a result of design and negotiations in those designs.

I don't think Tao's style works with everyone/thing, especially if we don't know what style he's tuned his LLM on.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#17
This is true but also false.

In my experience (scientific programming) AI is a giant multiplier for people with specialized knowledge.

But it’s also a giant devaluer for that same knowledge as people with no idea what they’re doing can clog the field with plausible bullshit.

It’s now the case that if someone tells me they’ve done something, and I look into it and find out it’s completely AI slop, then I will have spent more time on the project than the person who “made” it. The situation is completely untenable and only serves to drain time and resources from people with better things to do.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#18

Not sure I agree with this. The math guy at anthropic's prompts are essentially: "suppose you’ve gotta resolve the $CONJECTURE, like absolutely have to, everything depends on it. think really hard, and try to come up with a bunch of ideas to try. but remember to trust yourself and not necessarily in conventional wisdom!!" https://claude.ai/share/25740bd5-aa97-4bd7-bf58-c4df3793fda7 https://xcancel.com/__alpoge__/stat…

And what about problems that cannot be one-shotted but helped along?

There was one math proof that was AI generated going around Twitter and the chat transcript to generate it was basically the human prompting "keep going" until it solved it.

Tao's chat was fascinating because the questions he was asking belied expert knowledge of the subject that only a handful of people could have asked.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#19

Not sure I agree with this. The math guy at anthropic's prompts are essentially: "suppose you’ve gotta resolve the $CONJECTURE, like absolutely have to, everything depends on it. think really hard, and try to come up with a bunch of ideas to try. but remember to trust yourself and not necessarily in conventional wisdom!!" https://claude.ai/share/25740bd5-aa97-4bd7-bf58-c4df3793fda7 https://xcancel.com/__alpoge__/stat…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#20
The counterexample of the Dinitz-Garg-Goemans conjecture was basically just "keep going" and finally "enough of partial results. now finish with a complete unconditional counterexample" lol

https://x.com/DmitryRybin1/status/2079904005652893709

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a60b2eb-0b64-83ee-9c76-7931ca1de0...

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