It's a funny thing to write, like an article in an old newspaper that aged quickly. I suspect that this will be wildly out of date within 2-3 years.
Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
21–30 of 97 posts
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#22It's a funny thing to write, like an article in an old newspaper that aged quickly. I suspect that this will be wildly out of date within 2-3 years.
I think it's already out of date with verifiable reward based RL, e.g. on maths domain. When "correctness" arguments fall, the argument will probably just shift to whether it's just "intelligent brute force".
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#23The article asserts that the quality of human knowledge work was easier to judge based on proxy measures such as typos and errors, and that the lack of such "tells" in AI poses a problem. I don't know if I agree with either assertion… I've seen plenty of human-generated knowledge work that was factually correct, well-formatted, and extremely low quality on a conceptual level. And AI signatures are now easy for people…
I’m also not sure I agree with the assertion that LLMs will produce a high quality (looking) report with correct time frames, lack of typos, and good looking figures. I’m just as willing to disregard human or LLM reports with obvious tells. An LLM or a person can produce work that’s shoddy or error filled. It may be getting harder to differentiate between a good or bad report, but that helps to shift the burden more onto the evaluator.
This is especially true if we start to see more of a split in usage between LLMs based on cost. High quality frontier models might produce better work at a higher cost, but there is also economic cost pressure from the bottom. And just like with human consultants or employees, you’ll pay more for higher quality work.
I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to argue here. But the idea that an LLM won’t produce a low quality report just seemed silly to me.
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#24The FUD about LLM's will never get old. The way I know and trust LLM's is the same way a manager would trust their reportees to do good work. For most tasks, the complexity/time required to verify a task is I wrote a post detailing this argument https://simianwords.bearblog.dev/the-generation-vs-verificat...
FUD ? You are missing the point entierly, and so does your blog post
Are LLM a good dictionary of synonyms ? Perhaps, but is it relevant ? Not at all
Are you biased when a solution is presented to you ? Yes, like all humans.
Is it damageful when said solution is brain-dead ? Obsiously.
Are you failing to understand that most (if not all) manager's work is human centric and, as such, cannot be applied to a non-human ? Obviously ..
You trust a machine's intent. Joke's on you, it has no intent at all, it will breaking that "trust" your pour in it without even realizing-it
You say that LLM does better job than you. Perhaps this says it all ?
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#25[deleted]
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#26The article asserts that the quality of human knowledge work was easier to judge based on proxy measures such as typos and errors, and that the lack of such "tells" in AI poses a problem. I don't know if I agree with either assertion… I've seen plenty of human-generated knowledge work that was factually correct, well-formatted, and extremely low quality on a conceptual level. And AI signatures are now easy for people…
The goal of automation is to automate consistently perfect competence, not human failures.
You wouldn't use a calculator that is as good as a human and makes mistakes as often.
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#27This is an already apparent problem in academia, though not for the reasons the article suggests.
It is not so much that the "tells" of a poor quality work are vanishing, but that even careful scrutiny of a work done with AI is going to become too costly to be done only by humans. One only has so much time to read while, say, in economics journals, the appendices extend to hundreds of pages.
Would love to hear if other fields' journals are experiencing a similar pressure in not only at the extensive margin (no of new submission) but the intensive margin (effort needed to check each work).
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#28It's a funny thing to write, like an article in an old newspaper that aged quickly. I suspect that this will be wildly out of date within 2-3 years.
I think it's already out of date with verifiable reward based RL, e.g. on maths domain. When "correctness" arguments fall, the argument will probably just shift to whether it's just "intelligent brute force".
"stochastic genius"
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#29The FUD about LLM's will never get old. The way I know and trust LLM's is the same way a manager would trust their reportees to do good work. For most tasks, the complexity/time required to verify a task is I wrote a post detailing this argument https://simianwords.bearblog.dev/the-generation-vs-verificat...
[deleted]
Re: Simulacrum of Knowledge Work
#30I think this is pretty obvious for many of us in the industry. Unfortunately, there is so much money on the table that the big players will shove whatever they want down our throats