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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

#611

Post by lnenad »

hansmayer wrote: post #592
lnenad wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They push the narrative that they’ve created something akin to human cognition This is your interpretation of what these companies are saying. I'd love to see if some company specifically anything like that? Out of the last 100 years how many inventions have been made that could make any human awe like llms do right now? How many things from today when brought back into 2010 would make the person using it make it f…

How about Sam Altman literally saying on twitter "We know how to build AGI now"? That close enough?

How many examples of CEOs writing shit like that can you name? I can name more than one. Elon's been saying that camera driven level 5 autonomous driving will be ready in 2021. Did you believe him?

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

#612

Post by hzay »

ITT: ppl saying LLMs are v helpful

The keyword in title is "bullish". It's about the future.

Specifically I think it's about the potential of the transformer architecture & the idea that scaling is all that's needed to get to AGI (however you define AGI).

> Companies will keep pumping up LLMs until the day a newcomer puts forward a different type of AI model that will swiftly outperform them.

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

#614

Post by hansmayer »

lnenad wrote: post #611
hansmayer wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Sam Altman literally saying on twitter "We know how to build AGI now"? That close enough?

How many examples of CEOs writing shit like that can you name? I can name more than one. Elon's been saying that camera driven level 5 autonomous driving will be ready in 2021. Did you believe him?

Elon? Never did, and for the record, also never really understood his fanboys. I never even bought a Tesla. And no, besides these two guys, I don´t really remember many other CEOs making such revolutionary statements. That is usually the case when people understand their technology and are not ready to bullshit. There is one small differentiation though: At least self-driving cars hype was believable because it seemed almost like a finite-search problem, like along the lines of, how hard could it be to process X input signals from lidars and image frames and marry it to an advanced variation of what is basically a PID controller. And at least there is a defined use-case. With genAI, we have no idea what the problem definition and even problem space is, and the main use-case that the companies seem to be pushing down our throats (aside from code assistants) is "summarising your email" and chatting with your smartphone, for lonely people. Ew, thanks, but no thanks.

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

#615

Post by BOOSTERHIDROGEN »

linsomniac wrote: post #490
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 becoming clear to me that some people just have vastly different uses and use cases than I do. Summarizing a deep, cutting edge physics paper is I'm sure vasty different than summarizing a web page while I'm browsing HN, or writing a Python plugin for Icinga to monitor a web endpoint that spits out JSON. The author says they use several LLMs every day and they always produce incorrect results. That "feels" weird…

This is so true. I really hope she joins this conversation so we can have a productive discussion and understand what she's actually hoping to achieve.

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

#616

Post by qwertox »

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…

An LLM is like a mouse.

You no longer have the console as the primary interface, but a GUI, which 99.9+% of computer users control via a mouse.

You no longer have the screen as the primary interface, but an AUI, which 99.9+% of computer users control via a headset, earbuds, or a microphone and speaker pair.

You mostly speak and listen to other humans, and if you're not reading something they've written, you could have it read to you in order to detach from the screen or paper.

You'll talk with your computer while in the car, while walking, or while sitting in the office.

An LLM makes the computer understand you, and it allows you to understand the computer.

Even if you use smart glasses, you'll mostly talk to the computer generating the displayed results, and it will probably also talk to you, adding information to the displayed results. It's LLMs that enable this.

Just don't focus too much on whether the LLM knows how high Mount Kilimanjaro is; its knowledge of that fact is simply a hint that it can properly handle language.

Still, it's remarkable how useful they are at analyzing things.

LLMs have a bright future ahead, or whatever technology succeeds them.

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

#618

Post by theshrike79 »

bjornsing wrote: post #520

I’ve been using Claude a lot lately, and I must say I very much disagree. For example, the other day I was chatting with it about the health risks associated with my high consumption of grown salmon. It then generated a small program to simulate the accumulation of PCB in my body. I could review the program, ask questions about the assumptions, etc. It all seemed very reasonable. A toxicokinetic analysis it called it…

"Trust but verify"

With an LLM it should be "Don't trust, verify" - but it isn't that hard to verify LLM claims, just ask it for original sources.

Compare to ye olde scientific calculators (90s), they were allowed in tests because even though they could solve equations, they couldn't show the work. And showing the work was 90% of the score. At best you could use one to verify your solution.

But then tech progressed and now calculators can solve equations step by step -> banned from tests at school.

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

#619

Post by cs02rm0 »

qwertox wrote: post #616
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…

An LLM is like a mouse. You no longer have the console as the primary interface, but a GUI, which 99.9+% of computer users control via a mouse. You no longer have the screen as the primary interface, but an AUI, which 99.9+% of computer users control via a headset, earbuds, or a microphone and speaker pair. You mostly speak and listen to other humans, and if you're not reading something they've written, you could hav…

It's like a mouse that some variable proportion of the time pretends it's moved the cursor and clicked a button, but actually it hasn't and you have to put a lot of work in to find out whether it did or didn't do what you expected.

It used to be annoying enough just having to clean the trackball, but at least you knew when it wasn't working.

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

#620

Post by re-thc »

lnenad wrote: post #565
gloosx wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem Sabine tries to communicate is that reality is different from what the cash-heads behind main commercial models are trying to portray. They push the narrative that they’ve created something akin to human cognition, when in reality, they’ve just optimised prediction algorithms on an unprecedented scale. They are trying to say that they created Intelligence, which is the ability to acquire and apply knowled…

> They push the narrative that they’ve created something akin to human cognition This is your interpretation of what these companies are saying. I'd love to see if some company specifically anything like that? Out of the last 100 years how many inventions have been made that could make any human awe like llms do right now? How many things from today when brought back into 2010 would make the person using it make it f…

> Out of the last 100 years how many inventions have been made that could make any human awe like llms do right now?

Lots e.g. vacuum cleaners.

> But at no point in history could you talk to your phone

You could always "talk" to your phone just like you could "talk" to a parrot or a dog. What does that even mean?

If we're talking about LLMs, I still haven't been able to have a real conversation with 1. There's too much of a lag to feel like a conversation and often doesn't reply with anything related.

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