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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

#361

Post by tpoacher »

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…

Did you then share this insight back onto a public channel?

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

#362

Post by hanniabu »

zahlman wrote: post #337
hanniabu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My questions always get closed and marked as a duplicate with a comment linking to a question that's unrelated

A large majority of the complaints we get of this form on the Meta site, whenever there's an actual object case, turn out to be really clear-cut duplicates where the OP is quibbling on an irrelevant detail instead of trying to understand the explanation in the answer and adapt the code to individual circumstances .

No, that's not the case and this type of attitude is exactly what I mean

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

#363

Post by sfink »

8note wrote: post #239
jncfhnb wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Putting your trash in a trash can is unethical. Leaving it on the street provides employment to trash collectors who need a job.

Obeying the law is unethical. Think of the poor laid off police officers.

The fact that information can be duplicated with zero cost is a feature, not a bug.

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

#364

Post by zahlman »

hanniabu wrote: post #362
zahlman wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large majority of the complaints we get of this form on the Meta site, whenever there's an actual object case, turn out to be really clear-cut duplicates where the OP is quibbling on an irrelevant detail instead of trying to understand the explanation in the answer and adapt the code to individual circumstances .

No, that's not the case and this type of attitude is exactly what I mean

Feel free to show supporting examples, then. Simple contradiction is not very convincing.

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

#365

Post by adam_hn »

inthebin wrote: post #316
nfw2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be honest, many times GPT 4o helps me understand poorly written emails by colleagues. I often find myself asking it "Did he means this when he wrote this?"... I'm a bit on the spectrum so if someone asks me vague questions or hallucinates words for things that don't exist, I have to verify with chatGPT to reaffirm that they are in fact just stupid.

same here, sometimes my understanding of a message doesn't make sense, but when gpt4 gives me the same understanding, it feels like we can't both reach the same conclusion by mistake. of course, that's not true, but in most cases, it's good enough.

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

#366

Post by Forgeties79 »

Yacovlewis wrote: post #238
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?

Being able (or theoretically able!) to produce more of a thing per day has never made anyone’s job easier. It just means they’re expected to meet that new output level or some unreasonable level above that.
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