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Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

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Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#41

Post by PartiallyTyped »

slashdev wrote: post #33
cl42 wrote: post #14

The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines. So it goes. I think both of these views can be true at the same time: ChatGPT (or, LLMs really) are revolutionary and they won't revolutionize the world the way technologists/researchers say. Early adopters will use the technology and do amazing thing…

I use it almost on a daily basis now, and I pay for the monthly subscription. It’s not magic, but it can save me a lot of time sometimes. I use it in my job as a software engineer, and I mostly use it to create unit tests. The code usually needs a lot of love, but it gets me started.

Copilot and chatgpt are some of the services i am perfectly content paying for.

ChatGPT is a great way to delve into new topics, and for that alone it’s worth it.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#42

Post by sclarisse »

wnevets wrote: post #21
cl42 wrote: post #14

The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines. So it goes. I think both of these views can be true at the same time: ChatGPT (or, LLMs really) are revolutionary and they won't revolutionize the world the way technologists/researchers say. Early adopters will use the technology and do amazing thing…

A more modern example is the first iPhone, the first gen was bad even by the standards of the day. If you look passed the novelty of having a lightsaber app on your phone it was terrible.

What are you referring to here? The iPhone didn’t have apps for over a year, until the same time as the iPhone 3G launch.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#43

Post by tombert »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #26

Yesterday, I had a sticky Swift/iOS issue. Checked SO, Apple Discussions, etc. Then, on a whim, I asked ChatGPT for a suggestion. > They are also prone to confident assertions of statements that are blatantly false. It suggested something that referenced a nonexistent property of a standard UIKit class. It wouldn't even compile. It was quite positive that this would fix my issue. After refreshing a couple of times (a…

That's basically the boat I'm in. I really like it, it's a good bit of software, but it's like having an error-prone person to bounce ideas off of.

It doesn't always directly give me an answer I can use, but it's extraordinarily handy to be able to copypaste a large server log into it, ask what it means, and give suggestions based on that. Often just knowing the proper-nouns to look up can be immensely useful.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#44

Post by sharemywin »

soperj wrote: post #19
substation13 wrote: post #4

It's really easy to get an LLM to hallucinate by asking an open ended question - the type typically answered by a Google search or checking Wikiedpia. However, this is not the best application of LLMs. This criticism is getting old. LLMs are great at: - Text synthesis given all of the facts in a prompt (expand these bullet points) - Summarization (condense this text) - Data extraction (fit this data into this schema)…

> - Fiction (virtual characters, scripts, etc.) I've found it bad for this, does not generate something I'd actually read.

I wonder if an LLM trained on your favorite author how many words/sentences paragraphs it could generate in the middle of a book that would be basically undetectable.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#45

Post by gfody »

teawrecks wrote: post #18

is there anyone claiming ChatGPT is the "holy grail" of AI research? it's pretty cool. it's an important step. it's far from the holy grail.

AGI has long been consisdered the holy grail of AI research and GPT-4 is basically an AGI so..

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#46

Post by Heliosmaster »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #23

This reminds of all the hype for self-driving cars a few years back. Self-driving systems performed well for 95% of driving, and it seemed like only a matter of time before the last 5% was ironed out. Turns out, the last 5% was both extremely difficult, and extremely important. It turns out that a self driving car that randomly makes dangerous maneuvers isn't desirable. Similarly, a LLM that occasionally outputs plau…

As far as I understand, LLMs with 95% correct answers are much more useful than a car that doesn't crash 95% of times (if you need to pay attention to correct mistakes, you may well be driving).

A 95% correct LLM might be utter garbage in some areas but nearly flawless (thus reliable) in other, menial and time consuming tasks, such as summarization, rewording, providing new ideas, etc.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#47

Post by SilasX »

cl42 wrote: post #14

The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines. So it goes. I think both of these views can be true at the same time: ChatGPT (or, LLMs really) are revolutionary and they won't revolutionize the world the way technologists/researchers say. Early adopters will use the technology and do amazing thing…

Don’t forget the infamous remark from the Slashdot mod about the first iPod, “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

https://slashdot.org/story/21026

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#48

Post by JieJie »

teawrecks wrote: post #18

is there anyone claiming ChatGPT is the "holy grail" of AI research? it's pretty cool. it's an important step. it's far from the holy grail.

Modern headline algorithms follow this formula: Scenario I Made Up? Doesn't It Stress You Out? Click for Relief!

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#49

Post by wnevets »

kgwgk wrote: post #27
wnevets wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more modern example is the first iPhone, the first gen was bad even by the standards of the day. If you look passed the novelty of having a lightsaber app on your phone it was terrible.

> the first iPhone, the first gen was bad even by the standards of the day That's why it barely got over six million units sold.

Milli Vanilli also sold over 10 million records. Maybe popularity doesn't equal quality?

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#50

Post by iforgotpassword »

substation13 wrote: post #4

It's really easy to get an LLM to hallucinate by asking an open ended question - the type typically answered by a Google search or checking Wikiedpia. However, this is not the best application of LLMs. This criticism is getting old. LLMs are great at: - Text synthesis given all of the facts in a prompt (expand these bullet points) - Summarization (condense this text) - Data extraction (fit this data into this schema)…

Regarding the last point: What I still find the most entertaining is how easily you can change its personality, especially via the system prompt. You can get it to be rather snarky, even sometimes insulting, which makes for hilarious IRC bots.
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