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Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

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Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#201

Post by Terr_ »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #149
iambateman wrote: post #39

The core point in this article is that the LLM wants to report _something_, and so it tends to exaggerate. It’s not very good at saying “no” or not as good as a programmer would hope. When you ask it a question, it tends to say yes. So while the LLM arms race is incrementally increasing benchmark scores, those improvements are illusory. The real challenge is that the LLM’s fundamentally want to seem agreeable, and th…

> The real challenge is that the LLM’s fundamentally want to seem agreeable, and that’s not improving LLMs fundamentally do not want to seem anything But the companies that are training them and making models available for professional use sure want them to seem agreeable

Yeah, and they probably have more "agreeable" stuff in their corpus simply because very disagreeable stuff tend to be either much shorter or a prelude to a flamewar.

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#202

Post by 4b11b4 »

aerhardt wrote: post #34

My mom told me yesterday that Paul Newman had massive problems with alcohol. I was somewhat skeptical, so this morning I asked ChatGPT a very simple question: "Is Paul Newman known for having had problems with alcohol?" All of the models up to o3-mini-high told me he had no known problems. Here's o3-mini-high's response: "Paul Newman is not widely known for having had problems with alcohol. While he portrayed charact…

We all know this isn't the kind of question you ask an LLM...

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#203

Post by throwanem »

lukev wrote: post #40

This is a bit of a meta-comment, but reading through the responses to a post like this is really interesting because it demonstrates how our collective response to this stuff is (a) wildly divergent and (b) entirely anecdote-driven. I have my own opinions, but I can't really say that they're not also based on anecdotes and personal decision-making heuristics. But some of us are going to end up right and some of us ar…

> I'm really curious what features signal an ability to make "better choices" w/r/t AI

So am I. If you promise you'll tell me after you time travel to the future and find out, I'll promise you the same in return.

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#204

Post by adamiscool8 »

aerhardt wrote: post #34

My mom told me yesterday that Paul Newman had massive problems with alcohol. I was somewhat skeptical, so this morning I asked ChatGPT a very simple question: "Is Paul Newman known for having had problems with alcohol?" All of the models up to o3-mini-high told me he had no known problems. Here's o3-mini-high's response: "Paul Newman is not widely known for having had problems with alcohol. While he portrayed charact…

I don't think this reflects a flaw in LLM's at all. It is true that Paul Newman is not "known for" having alcohol problems. Paul Newman is known for acting, and salad dressing. Paul Newman has been "known to" have had alcohol problems, which formed as a question correctly one-shots accurate results for me across a few common LLMs. Someone like Betty Ford could be "known for" having alcohol problems. Paul Newman's alcohol problems are relatively specialized knowledge.

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#205

Post by Terr_ »

gilleain wrote: post #191
AstroBen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems fairly obvious at this point. If they were actually reasoning at all they'd be capable (even if not good) of complex games like chess Instead they're barely able to eek out wins against a bot that plays completely random moves: https://maxim-saplin.github.io/llm_chess/

Just in case it wasn't a typo, and you happen not to know ... that word is probably "eke" - meaning gaining (increasing, enlarging from wiktionary) - rather than "eek" which is what mice do :)

Ick, OK, ACK.

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#206

Post by jodrellblank »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #145
karn97 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to come up with a way to prove humans aren't stochastic parrots then maybe people will atart taking you seriously. Just childish reddit angst rn nothing else.

> Try to come up with a way to prove humans aren't stochastic parrots Look around you Look at Skyscrapers. Rocket ships. Agriculture. If you want to make a claim that humans are nothing more than stochastic parrots then you need to explain where all of this came from. What were we parroting? Meanwhile all that LLMs do is parrot things that humans created

Skyscrapers: trees, mountains, cliffs, caves in mountainsides, termite mounds, humans knew things could go high, the Colosseum was built two thousand years ago as a huge multi-storey building.

Rocket ships: volcanic eruptions show heat and explosive outbursts can fling things high, gunpowder and cannons, bellows showing air moves things.

Agriculture: forests, plains, jungle, desert oases, humans knew plants grew from seeds, grew with rain, grew near water, and grew where animals trampled them into the ground.

We need a list of all atempted ideas, all inventions and patents that were ever tried or conceived, and then we see how inventions are the same random permutations on ideas with Darwinian style survivorship as everything else; there were steel boats with multiple levels in them before skyscrapers; is the idea of a tall steel building really so magical when there were over a billion people on Earth in 1800 who could have come up with it?

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#207

Post by whutsurnaym »

4b11b4 wrote: post #202
aerhardt wrote: post #34

My mom told me yesterday that Paul Newman had massive problems with alcohol. I was somewhat skeptical, so this morning I asked ChatGPT a very simple question: "Is Paul Newman known for having had problems with alcohol?" All of the models up to o3-mini-high told me he had no known problems. Here's o3-mini-high's response: "Paul Newman is not widely known for having had problems with alcohol. While he portrayed charact…

We all know this isn't the kind of question you ask an LLM...

You may know this, but that doesn't mean we all do. LLMs are marketed towards many different groups, including folks who don't have much tech knowledge.

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#208

Post by Terr_ »

kylebyte wrote: post #174
AstroBen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems fairly obvious at this point. If they were actually reasoning at all they'd be capable (even if not good) of complex games like chess Instead they're barely able to eek out wins against a bot that plays completely random moves: https://maxim-saplin.github.io/llm_chess/

Every day I am more convinced that LLM hype is the equivalent of someone seeing a stage magician levitate a table across the stage and assuming this means hovercars must only be a few years away.

I believe there's a widespread confusion between a fictional character that is described as a AI assistant, versus the actual algorithm building the play-story which humans imagine the character from. An illusion actively promoted by companies seeking investment and hype.

AcmeAssistant is "helpful" and "clever" in the same way that Vampire Count Dracula is "brooding" and "immortal".

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#209

Post by xdavidliu »

adamiscool8 wrote: post #204
aerhardt wrote: post #34

My mom told me yesterday that Paul Newman had massive problems with alcohol. I was somewhat skeptical, so this morning I asked ChatGPT a very simple question: "Is Paul Newman known for having had problems with alcohol?" All of the models up to o3-mini-high told me he had no known problems. Here's o3-mini-high's response: "Paul Newman is not widely known for having had problems with alcohol. While he portrayed charact…

I don't think this reflects a flaw in LLM's at all. It is true that Paul Newman is not "known for" having alcohol problems. Paul Newman is known for acting, and salad dressing. Paul Newman has been "known to" have had alcohol problems, which formed as a question correctly one-shots accurate results for me across a few common LLMs. Someone like Betty Ford could be "known for" having alcohol problems. Paul Newman's alc…

good point, though a great LLM answer would DWIM here and explain both interpretations as you have done here, as opposed to (what presumably happened) focus on one and ignore the other.

Re: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit

#210

Post by moregrist »

adamiscool8 wrote: post #204
aerhardt wrote: post #34

My mom told me yesterday that Paul Newman had massive problems with alcohol. I was somewhat skeptical, so this morning I asked ChatGPT a very simple question: "Is Paul Newman known for having had problems with alcohol?" All of the models up to o3-mini-high told me he had no known problems. Here's o3-mini-high's response: "Paul Newman is not widely known for having had problems with alcohol. While he portrayed charact…

I don't think this reflects a flaw in LLM's at all. It is true that Paul Newman is not "known for" having alcohol problems. Paul Newman is known for acting, and salad dressing. Paul Newman has been "known to" have had alcohol problems, which formed as a question correctly one-shots accurate results for me across a few common LLMs. Someone like Betty Ford could be "known for" having alcohol problems. Paul Newman's alc…

And yet the New Yorker article was the first thing that my Google search for “Paul Newman alcoholism” returned.

Apparently it isn’t so specialized that a pretty obvious old fashioned web search on Google wouldn’t immediately return an authoritative source.

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