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Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

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Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#231

Post by kfajdsl »

sokoloff wrote: post #116
SunlitCat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That contradiction is funny, tho: > - do not greet; we don't have time for that bullshit and > do not abbreviate words (you have abbreviated "you" as "u"); if you do not have time to type the words, we do not have time to read them So they have apparently enough time to read full words, it seems!

I think reading “u” takes longer than reading “you”. With “u”, I have to pause for a moment and think “that’s not a normal word; I wonder if they meant to type ‘i’ instead (and just hit a little left of target)?” and then maybe read the passage twice to see which is more likely. I don’t think it’s quite as much a contradiction. (It still could be more gruff than needed.)

probably a generational thing, I process that and other common texting/internet abbreviations exactly like normal words.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#232

Post by rytis »

elicksaur wrote: post #155
PhilipRoman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really found stackoverflow to be that humiliating (compared to some IRC rooms or forums), basic questions get asked and answered all the time. But the worst part is when you want to do something off the beaten path. Q: how do I do thing X in C? A: Why do you need to know this? The C standard doesn't say anything about X. The answer will depend on your compiler and platform. Are you sure you want to do X ins…

On the other hand, I find it to be a fatal flaw that LLMs can’t say, “Hey you probably don’t actually want to do it that way.”

I think it depends on how the question is constructed: - I want to do X, how do I do it? - I was thinking of doing X to achieve Y, wonder if that's a good idea?

Sometimes, I really want to do X, I know it may be questionable, I know the safest is "probably don't want to do it", and yet, that's not someone else's (or LLMs) business, I know exactly what I want to do, and I'm asking if anyone knows HOW, not IF.

So IMO it's not a flaw, it's a very useful feature, and I really do hope LLMs stay that way.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#233

Post by wizzwizz4 »

VancouverMan wrote: post #189
MASNeo wrote: post #39

Wondering about wider implications. If technical interactions reduce online, how about RL and how do we rate a human competence against an AI once society gets a habit from asking an AI first? Will we start to constantly question human advice or responses and what does that do to the human condition. I am active in a few specialized fields and already I have to defined my advice against poorly crafted prompt response…

> Will we start to constantly question human advice or responses and what does that do to the human condition. I'm surprised when people don't already engage in questioning like that. I've had to be doing it for decades at this point. Much of the worst advice and information I've ever received has come from expensive human so-called "professionals" and "experts" like doctors, accountants, lawyers, financial advisors,…

These systems behave more like individual experts than like the internet – except they're more likely to be wrong than an expert is.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#234

Post by jsemrau »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #120

The problem is eventually what are LLMs going’s to draw from? They’re not creating new information, just regurgitating and combining existing info. That’s why they perform so poorly on code for which there aren’t many many publicly available samples, SO/reddit answers etc.

Data annotation is a thing that will be a huge business going forward.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#235

Post by ocular-rockular »

jneagu wrote: post #191
ocular-rockular wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't. If you look at advanced engineering/mathematics material online it is abysmal in quality of actually "explaining" the content. Most of the learning and understanding of intricacies happens via dialogue with professors/mentors/colleagues/etc. That said, when that is not available, LLMs do an excellent job or rubber ducky-ing complicated topics.

To your latter point - that’s where I think most of the value of LLMs in education is. They can explain code beyond the educational content that’s already available out there. They are pretty decent at finding and explaining code errors. Someone who’s ramping up their coding skills can make a lot of progress with those two features alone.

Yeah... only downside is that it requires a level of competency to recognize when the LLM is shoveling shit instead of gold.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#236

Post by milesvp »

o11c wrote: post #221
Ekaros wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder about that. Very often it seems that you need to be able to LLM that they are wrong. And then they happily correct themselves. But if you do not know that the answer is wrong how can you get correct answer?

Worse: if you think the LLM is wrong and try to correct it, it will happily invent something completely different (and actually wrong this time).

This happened to me the other day. I had framed a question in the ordinal case, and since I was trying to offload thinking anyways, I forgot that my use case was rotated, and failed to apply the rotation when testing the LLM answer. I corrected it twice before it wrapped around to the same (correct) previous answer, and that’s when I noticed my error. I apologized, added the rotation piece to my question, and it happily gave me a verifiably correct answer.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#237

Post by milesvp »

cjauvin wrote: post #77
tlogan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue with Stack Overflow (and similar public Q&A platforms) is that many contributors do not know what they do not know, leading to inaccurate answers. Additionally, these platforms tend to attract a fair amount of spam (self promotion etc) which can make it very hard to find high-quality responses.

I find that LLMs are precisely that: marvelous engines to explore "what you don't know that you don't know", about anything.

I’m not sure how to take you comment, but I feel the same(?) way. I love that I can use LLMs to explore topics that I don’t know well enough to find the right language to get hits on. I used to be able to do this with google, after a few queries, and skimming to page 5 hits, I’d eventually find the one phrase that cracks open the topic. I haven’t been able to do that with google for at least 10 years. I do it regularly with LLMs today.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#238

Post by Yacovlewis »

okoma wrote: post #93

The authors claim that LLM are reducing public knowledge sharing and that the effect is not merely displacing duplicate, low-quality, or beginner-level content. However their claim is weak and the effect is not quite as sensational as they make it sound. First, they only present Figure 3 and not regression results for their suggested tests of LLMs being substitutes of bad quality posts. In contrast, they report tests…

What if LLMs are effective enough at assisting coders that they're spending less time on SO and instead pushing more open source code, which is more valuable for everyone?

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#239

Post by 8note »

jncfhnb wrote: post #170
optimiz3 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing this opinion doesn't sacrifice my primary economic utility, and in fact disseminates a sentiment that if more widespread would empower everyone to realize more of the value they offer. Please do train an LLM to inform people to seek licensing arrangements for the expertise they provide.

That’s just dumb, man. You’re not sacrificing anything by giving someone a helpful answer.

Giving it away for free, you are ensuring there isn't a consulting gig that charges for giving helpful answers.
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