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I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

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Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#261

Post by tbrownaw »

brookst wrote: post #227
ffsm8 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a tech that's here to stay, unlike block chain/nfts But I mirror the confusion why people are still bullish on it. The current valuation for it is because the market thinks that it's able to write code like a senior engineer and have AGI, because that's how they're marketed by the LLM providers. I'm not even certain if they'll be ubiquitous after the venture capital investments are gone and the servic…

Remember the quote that IBM thought there would be a total market for maybe 10 or 15 computer computers in the entire world? They were giant, and expensive, and very limited in application.

I believe they was actually the number they expected to get orders for on one particular sales tour.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#262

Post by Xelynega »

jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #204
gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

I agree. I recently asked if a certain GPU would fit in a certain computer... And it understood that fit could mean physically inside by could also mean that the interface is compatible, and answered both. WhY aRe PeOpLe BuLlIsH

[flagged]

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#263

Post by mountainriver »

ffsm8 wrote: post #117
gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

It's definitely a tech that's here to stay, unlike block chain/nfts But I mirror the confusion why people are still bullish on it. The current valuation for it is because the market thinks that it's able to write code like a senior engineer and have AGI, because that's how they're marketed by the LLM providers. I'm not even certain if they'll be ubiquitous after the venture capital investments are gone and the servic…

It makes engineers a hell of a lot more efficient and opens up software to a whole new class of people. There is plenty of data to back this up.

Based on that alone it’s worth quite a lot.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#264

Post by crazygringo »

sc68cal wrote: post #208
crazygringo wrote: post #42

If there's one common thread across LLM criticisms, it's that they're not perfect. These critics don't seem to have learned the lesson that the perfect is the enemy of the good . I use ChatGPT all the time for academic research. Does it fabricate references? Absolutely, maybe about a third of the time. But has it pointed me to important research papers I might never have found otherwise? Absolutely . The rate of inac…

> Does it fabricate references? Absolutely, maybe about a third of the time And you don't have concerns about that? What kind of damage is that doing to our society, long term, if we have a system that _everyone_ uses and it's just accepted that a third of the time it is just making shit up?

No, I don't. Because I know it does and it's incredibly easy to type something into Google Scholar and see if a reference exists.

Like, I can ask a friend and they'll mistakenly make up a reference. "Yeah, didn't so-and-so write a paper on that? Oh they didn't? Oh never mind, I must have been thinking of something else." Does that mean I should never ask my friend about anything ever again?

Nobody should be using these as sources of infallible truth. That's a bonkers attitude. We should be using them as insanely knowledgeable tutors who are sometimes wrong. Ask and then verify.

The net benefit is huge.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#265

Post by MisterKent »

sc68cal wrote: post #208
crazygringo wrote: post #42

If there's one common thread across LLM criticisms, it's that they're not perfect. These critics don't seem to have learned the lesson that the perfect is the enemy of the good . I use ChatGPT all the time for academic research. Does it fabricate references? Absolutely, maybe about a third of the time. But has it pointed me to important research papers I might never have found otherwise? Absolutely . The rate of inac…

> Does it fabricate references? Absolutely, maybe about a third of the time And you don't have concerns about that? What kind of damage is that doing to our society, long term, if we have a system that _everyone_ uses and it's just accepted that a third of the time it is just making shit up?

This. 100% this.

LLMs will spit out responses with zero backing with 100% conviction. People see citations and assume it's correct. We're conditioned for it thanks to....everything ever in history. Rarely do I need to check a wikipedia entry's source.

So why do people not understand that: this is absolutely going to pour jet fuel on misinformation in the world. And we as a society are allowed to hold a bar higher for what we'll accept get shoved down our throats by corporate overlords that want their VC payout.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#266

Post by Xelynega »

dale_glass wrote: post #63
turtletontine wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally had a developer of an open source package I’m working with tell me “yeah that’s a known problem, I gave up on trying to fix it. You should just ask ChatGPT to fix it, I bet it will immediately know the answer.” Annoying response of course. But I’d never used an LLM to debug before, so I figured I’d give it a try. First: it regurgitated a bunch of documentation and basic debugging tips, which might have ac…

On the other hand, when it works it's darn near magic. I spent like a week trying to figure out why a livecd image I was working on wasn't initializing devices correctly. Read the docs, read source code, tried strace, looked at the logs, found forums of people with the same problem but no solution, you know the drill. In desperation I asked ChatGPT. ChatGPT said "Use udevadm trigger". I did. Things started working. F…

If the solution to "devices not setting up" was "udevadm trigger" and it took an LLM suggestion to get there, I question your google skills.

When I google "linux device not initializing correctly", someone suggesting "udevadm trigger" is the 5th result

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#267

Post by Terr_ »

gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

It's like computer graphics and VR: Amazing advances over the years, very impressive, fun, cool, and by no means a temporary fad...

... But I do not believe we're on the cusp of a Lawnmower-Man future where someone's Metaverse eats all the retail-conference-halls and movie-theaters and retail-stores across the entire globe in an unbridled orgy of mind-shattering investor returns.

Similarly, LLMs are neat and have some sane uses, but the fervor about how we're about to invent the Omnimind and usher in the singularity and take over the (economic) world? Nah.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#268

Post by no_wizard »

ffsm8 wrote: post #117
gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

It's definitely a tech that's here to stay, unlike block chain/nfts But I mirror the confusion why people are still bullish on it. The current valuation for it is because the market thinks that it's able to write code like a senior engineer and have AGI, because that's how they're marketed by the LLM providers. I'm not even certain if they'll be ubiquitous after the venture capital investments are gone and the servic…

Most “AI” companies are simply wrapping the ChatGPT API in some form. You can tell from the job posts.

They aren’t building anything themselves. I find this to be disingenuous as best, and is a sign to me of bubble attribution.

I also think that re-branding Machine Learning as AI to also be disingenuous.

These technologies of course have their use cases and excel in some things, but this isn’t the ushering of actual, sapient intelligence, that for the majority of the term’s existence was the de facto agreed standard for the term “AI”. This technology does lack the actual markers of what is generally accepted as intelligence to begin with

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#269

Post by 111111101101 »

genidoi wrote: post #220
ffsm8 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a tech that's here to stay, unlike block chain/nfts But I mirror the confusion why people are still bullish on it. The current valuation for it is because the market thinks that it's able to write code like a senior engineer and have AGI, because that's how they're marketed by the LLM providers. I'm not even certain if they'll be ubiquitous after the venture capital investments are gone and the servic…

Blockchain is here to stay, this is way past the point of "believing in the tech" - recently an wss:// order book exchange (Hyperliquid) crossed $1T volume traded, and they started in 2023. Blockchains are becoming real-time data structures where everyone has admin level read-only access to everyone.

HN doesn't like blockchain. They had the chance to get in very early and now they're salty. I first heard about bitcoin on HN, before Silk Road made headlines.

Re: I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

#270

Post by deostroll »

gilbetron wrote: post #109

I get so confused on this. I play around, test, and mess with LLMs all the time and they are miraculous. Just amazing, doing things we dreamed about for decades. I mean, I can ask for obscure things with subtle nuance where I misspell words and mess up my question and it figures it out. It talks to me like a person. It generates really cool images. It helps me write code. And just tons of other stuff that astounds me…

Today's models are far from autonomous thinking machines. It is a cognitive bias among the masses that agree. It is just a giant calculator. It predicts "the most probable next word" from a sea of all combinations of next words.
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