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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

#291

Post by rmbyrro »

nfw2 wrote: post #249
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.

Fwiw, GPT o1 helped me figure out how a fairly complex use case of epub.js, an open-source library with pretty opaque documentation and relatively few public samples. It took a few back-and-forths to get to a working solution, but it did get there. It makes me wonder if the AI successfully found and digested obscure sources on the internet or was just better at making sense of the esoteric documentation than me. If t…

I'm having a similar experience with o1. It's the only model that can identify causes of bugs for me. Perhaps it's already clever enough to be used in generating synthetic data about coding to train and improve less capable models. Even synthetic StackOverflow Q&A format.

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

#292

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

nfw2 wrote: post #287
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about your complex use case of epub.js. What were you trying to do with it?

I'm building an e-reader app where "enhancement content" such as illustrations, context-approprate summaries, and group chat can be integrated into the reading experience. The way I am connecting external content to the epub is through an anchoring system -- sequences of words can be hashed to form unique ids that are referenced by the enhancement. Doing this lets me index the enhancement content in such a way that i…

Interesting. How did you come across this idea. And how long have you been working on it?

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

#293

Post by chii »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #213
chii wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Q: how do I do thing X in C? SO does suck, but i've found that if you clarify in the question what you want, and pre-empt the Y instead of X type answers, you will get some results.

I wish... Some commenters follow up with "Why do you think Y won't work for you?"

i haven't been using SO recently, so this problem may have devolved now. if people remaining today on SO are such that they just question the premise whenever something slightly off the beaten track is asked, then i guess the site has really died.

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

#294

Post by chii »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #263
zmmmmm wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be an interesting side effect that people stop so gratuitously inventing random new software languages and frameowrks because the LLMs don't know about it. I know I'm already leaning towards tech that the LLM can work well with, simply because being able to ask the LLM to solve 90% of the problem outweighs any marginal advantage using a slightly better language or framework offers. Fro example, I dislike Pytho…

Alternatively, esoteric languages and frameworks will become even more lucrative ,simply because only the person who invented them and their hardcore following will understand half of it. Obviously, not a given, but not unreasonable given what we have seen historically.

> become even more lucrative

why would it be lucrative? The person paying would consider whether they'd get locked in to the framework/language, and be held hostage by the creator(s). This is friction to adoption. So LLMs will make popular, corporate backed languages/frameworks even more popular and drown out the small ones.

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

#295

Post by erie »

Artgor wrote: post #6

Well, if the users ask frequent/common questions to ChatGPT and get acceptable answers, is this even a problem? If the volume of duplicate questions decreases, there should be no bad influence on the training data, right?

I have queried gemini about a specific issue and when it failed to give a decent answer I narrowed down the issue with hints about the answer, it responded with details from an old post by me on reddit.

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

#296

Post by AtlasBarfed »

creer wrote: post #272
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.

> They’re not creating new information Most of this "knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms" is NOT creative activity. It's endless questions about the same issues everyone is having except the system developers themselves. Much of this is just displacing search platforms.

For the purposes of the argument it is: these are the interface between the unseen "real world" and the LLMs. So information coming from these forums, even if regurgitated from "real life" or "education" or "experience"... the writer or someone else's, is a "creation" to the LLM.

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

#297

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

chii wrote: post #294
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, esoteric languages and frameworks will become even more lucrative ,simply because only the person who invented them and their hardcore following will understand half of it. Obviously, not a given, but not unreasonable given what we have seen historically.

> become even more lucrative why would it be lucrative? The person paying would consider whether they'd get locked in to the framework/language, and be held hostage by the creator(s). This is friction to adoption. So LLMs will make popular, corporate backed languages/frameworks even more popular and drown out the small ones.

Scarcity of some knowledge. Not all knowledge exists on SO. You are right about the popular stuff, but the niche stuff will be like everything else niche, harder to get and thus more expensive. COBOL is typically used as an example of this, but COBOL was at least documented. I am saying this, because, while I completely buy that there will be executives who will attempt to do this, it won't be so easy to rewrite it all like Jassy from Amazon claims ( or more accurately, it will be easy, but with exciting new ways for ATMs, airlines and so on to mess with one's day).

I want to believe a rational actor would do that. It makes sense. On the other hand, companies and people sign contracts that lock them in all the time to all sorts of things and for myriad of reasons including, but not limited to being wined and dined.

Again, I think you are right about the trend ( as it will exacerbate already existing issues ), but wrong about the end result.

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

#298

Post by nfw2 »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #292
nfw2 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm building an e-reader app where "enhancement content" such as illustrations, context-approprate summaries, and group chat can be integrated into the reading experience. The way I am connecting external content to the epub is through an anchoring system -- sequences of words can be hashed to form unique ids that are referenced by the enhancement. Doing this lets me index the enhancement content in such a way that i…

Interesting. How did you come across this idea. And how long have you been working on it?

I'm not sure when I first had the idea. I read a lot of mystery, but I'm often frustrated trying to remember all the details. A virtual notebook seems like it could help a lot for me personally.

My mom and grandma also read books with a physical notebook handy, and seems like modern technology should make that unnecessary.

I was laid off as part of the massive layoffs in 2022 and made a first pass at the project. I didn't use epubjs and instead wasted a lot of time making a custom rendering engine -- this was dumb. Eventually I got another job and paused the project. I started again in earnest a month or so ago using epubjs as the base.

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

#299

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

nfw2 wrote: post #298
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. How did you come across this idea. And how long have you been working on it?

I'm not sure when I first had the idea. I read a lot of mystery, but I'm often frustrated trying to remember all the details. A virtual notebook seems like it could help a lot for me personally. My mom and grandma also read books with a physical notebook handy, and seems like modern technology should make that unnecessary. I was laid off as part of the massive layoffs in 2022 and made a first pass at the project. I d…

Why group chat? Where did you think of that?

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

#300

Post by viraptor »

y7 wrote: post #150
mycall wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought synthetic data is what is partially training the new multimodal large models, i.e. AlphaGeometry, o1, etc.

Synthetic data can never contain more information than the statistical model from which it is derived: it is simply the evaluation of a non-deterministic function on the model parameters. And the model parameters are simply a function of the training data. I don't see how you can "bootstrap a smarter model" based on synthetic data from a previous-gen model this way. You may as well well just train your new model on t…

It's been already proven possible https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.14465
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