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Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

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Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#111

Post by tmnvdb »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #100
TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

"The LLMs have no ground truth" claim (around chapter 2) that's core to the "bullshit machines" argument is itself wrong. Of course LLMs have ground truth. What do the authors think here, that the text in training corpus is random ? Hint: it isn't. Real conversations are anything but random. There's a lot of information hidden in "statistical ordering of the words", because the distribution is not arbitrary . Statist…

So if I ask ChatGpt about bears and in the middle of explaining their diet it tells me something about how much they like porridge and in the middle of habitat it tells me they live in a quaint cabin in the woods, that's ... True? Statistically we certainly have a lot of words about 3 bears and their love for porridge. That doesn't mean it's true, it just means it's statistically significant. If I asked someone a sci…

Having a ground truth doesn't mean it does not make huge and glaring mistakes.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#112

Post by consp »

dzogchen wrote: post #105

This will not age well. Yesterday my bullshit machine wrote a linker argument parser to hook a C++ library up in a Rust build config. Oh it also wrote tests for it. https://chatgpt.com/share/67a89e5f-b5b4-8011-9782-472d469cc2...

You asked it to do a task with probably many examples. This course will probably tell you that will work fine. Don't see your point here.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#113

Post by vaidhy »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #100
TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

"The LLMs have no ground truth" claim (around chapter 2) that's core to the "bullshit machines" argument is itself wrong. Of course LLMs have ground truth. What do the authors think here, that the text in training corpus is random ? Hint: it isn't. Real conversations are anything but random. There's a lot of information hidden in "statistical ordering of the words", because the distribution is not arbitrary . Statist…

So if I ask ChatGpt about bears and in the middle of explaining their diet it tells me something about how much they like porridge and in the middle of habitat it tells me they live in a quaint cabin in the woods, that's ... True? Statistically we certainly have a lot of words about 3 bears and their love for porridge. That doesn't mean it's true, it just means it's statistically significant. If I asked someone a sci…

If that were the case, then you are right.. However, the current crop of LLMs seem to be good at understanding the context.

A scientific data point about bears is unlikely to have Goldilocks in there (unless talking about evolution of life and Goldilocks zone). You can argue that there is meaning hidden in words that is not captured by words themselves in a given context - psychic knowledge as opposed to reasoned out knowledge. That is a philosophical debate.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#114

Post by tmnvdb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #91
tmnvdb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have stopped using LLMs? I wasn't aware of that. Can you share a source for that?

I know a lot of people who went through the "Oh, wow - wait a minute..." cycle. Including me. They're approximately useful in some contexts. But those contexts are limited. And if there are facts or code involved, both require manual confirmation. They're ideal for bullshit jobs - low-stakes corporate makework, such as mediocre ad copy and generic reports that no one is ever going to read.

> And if there are facts or code involved, both require manual confirmation.

The hidden assumption here seems to be that the model needs to be perfect before it has utility.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#115

Post by rawtr »

dzogchen wrote: post #105

This will not age well. Yesterday my bullshit machine wrote a linker argument parser to hook a C++ library up in a Rust build config. Oh it also wrote tests for it. https://chatgpt.com/share/67a89e5f-b5b4-8011-9782-472d469cc2...

Yesterday my 30 year old photocopier wrote a Shakespeare drama! All I had to was scan the original pages.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#116

Post by _heimdall »

gsky wrote: post #110

People said the world wouldn't need more than 10 computers. Newyork times ridiculed space industry and etc.. AI is gonna disrupt all industries

Any new technology given this much attention and money will disrupt, that's not really a question.

The question is whether we're going to be better off for it, and if people want all that change in the first place.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#117

Post by bayindirh »

tmnvdb wrote: post #109
dzogchen wrote: post #105

This will not age well. Yesterday my bullshit machine wrote a linker argument parser to hook a C++ library up in a Rust build config. Oh it also wrote tests for it. https://chatgpt.com/share/67a89e5f-b5b4-8011-9782-472d469cc2...

[flagged]

Allowing a parrot to iterate on given examples and generate a similar one with the information baked in their weights does not invalidate "Stochastic Parrot" take. On the contrary, it proves it.

LLMs are statistical machines. The catch is you feed it hundreds of terabytes of valid information, so it asymptotically generates valid information as a result of this statistical bias.

Even yet, they can hallucinate so badly. I mean, the same OpenAI model claimed that I'm a footballer, a goal keeper in fact.

Stochastic parrot, yes. On LSD, very yes.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#118

Post by zwnow »

gsky wrote: post #110

People said the world wouldn't need more than 10 computers. Newyork times ridiculed space industry and etc.. AI is gonna disrupt all industries

In a unpredictable, hallucinating way. Who cares about human expertise when you can have a machine that acts like it has expertise in the same area? We deserve what is coming.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#119

Post by Aiguru31415666 »

einrealist wrote: post #49

This website is so important! Now ask yourself why AI companies don't want to be regulated or scrutinized. So many companies (users and providers) jump on the AI hype train because of FOMO. The end result might be just as destructive as this mythical "AGI". Edit: I am not saying to not use the technology. I am just on the side of caution and constant validation. The technology has to serve society. But I fear this hy…

Hype is if it doesn't deliver or it's overblown.

But I'm amazed on the progress we make every week.

There is real FOMO because if you don't follow it, it just might be here suddenly.

Deepseek impressive, deep research also great.

And what you might complete underestimate: we never had a system we're it was worth it to teach it everything.

If we need to fine-tune LLMs for every single industry that would still be a gigantic shift. Instead of teaching a million employees we will teach an LLM all of it once then clone the agent a million times

We still see so much progress and there is still plenty of money and people available to flow into this space.

There is not a single indication right now that this progress is stoping or slowing down.

And not only that, in parallel robots are having their break through too.

Your musk point I do not understand really? He is a narcissist and he pushed his propaganda platform for becoming president because he is in big shit and his house of cards was close to crashing

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#120

Post by fancyfredbot »

I have just read one section of this, "The AI scientist'. It was fantastic. They don't fall into the trap of unfalsifiable arguments about parrots. Instead they have pointed out positive uses of AI in science, examples which are obviously harmful, and examples which are simply a waste of time. Refreshingly objective and more than I expected from what I saw as an inflammatory title.
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