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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

#61

Post by Brendinooo »

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 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.

This is pretty much what I've seen. ChatGPT (that's 3.5, right? GPT3 was interesting but still pretty laughable) was a massive step forward, and incredibly exciting to witness and interact with. But it still does have limitations, especially if you try to separate hype (which comes from an ecosystem of people who have incentives to hype it) from reality.

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

#62

Post by jrmg »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #40
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Safari on your phone was mind blowing and immediately useful. Also apps weren’t part of the original iPhone.

I... Think they were? I kinda remember having ICQ on it, but maybe that was already the iPhone 2. Or I'm hallucinating.

There were only built-in apps on release. Third party apps and the App Store came in the iPhoneOS 2.0 update.

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

#63

Post by sharemywin »

vidarh wrote: post #38
soperj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It seems to do ok at coming up with starting points or give you options if you're stuck. But the quality of the prose it comes up with is indeed awful. It gets a bit better if you ask it to write in the style of a specific author, but marginally so. I guess maybe it gets to mediocre fan fiction level. That's still pretty impressive, but not very usable for creative writing yet.

Don't most create writers have a process?

I wonder if there's a series of steps(prompts) that could be used to get it to out put something much better. I know I've used it to write something I would have never even attempted let alone tried to write on my own. It came out ok, but better than I could have done on my own.

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

#64

Post by elfleco »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #46
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.

Also a 95% correct LLM is arguably the same or better than a human doing a similar task.

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

#65

Post by Last5Digits »

Using ChatGPT to get facts is like going to a restaurant to buy your groceries. Sure, you could pick out slices of tomato and scrape the salt off of your steak, bring it all home and cook a meal - but the supermarket next door can offer the same ingredients without the hassle.

Just as the point of a restaurant is to process and cook the ingredients for you, the point of ChatGPT is the preprocessing of facts and information.

If you just want fresh, unprepared facts, go to Google or Wikipedia; if you want an informational meal, go to ChatGPT.

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

#66

Post by Nullabillity »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #24
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.

What? Safari on your phone was mind blowing and immediately useful. Also apps weren’t part of the original iPhone.

Browsers were already commonplace in phones for years at that point. Maybe things were more dire in the US?

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

#67

Post by tjr »

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…

It may be a while before we can entirely trust ChatGPT to give us all the answers.

I find the whole premise of ChatGPT -- or indeed, neural network systems in general -- to be untrustworthy. That does not mean useless! But more like a first approximation solution that still needs to be checked.

I expect that, with more and more training, GPT systems will make fewer and fewer errors, but I still find the fundamental concept something that needs to be double-checked through some other (possibly automated) means.

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

#68

Post by jhp123 »

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)…

LLMs also hallucinate during summarization tasks, adding topics that were not in the original

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

#69

Post by asimjalis »

dpflan wrote: post #57
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Copilot Chat will probably be something you’ll like. Have you used it? There is a waitlist. https://github.com/github-copilot/chat_waitlist_signup/join

“Admission to the private beta for GitHub Copilot chat is limited and requires an active subscription to GitHub Copilot. Signing up does not guarantee access.“

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

#70

Post by magicalist »

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…

There's a strong argument for its actual merits but this particular line of argument isn't convincing.

> 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

And the first Segways were written off, the first NFTs were written off, etc.

(in fact, we've seen this same argument for blockchains changing everything real soon now :)

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