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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

#891

Post by Jyaif »

MostlyStable wrote: post #4

My experience (almost exclusively Claude), has just been so different that I don't know what to say. Some of the examples are the kinds of things I explicitly wouldn't expect LLMs to be particularly good at so I wouldn't use them for, and others, she says that it just doesn't work for her, and that experience is just so different than mine that I don't know how to respond. I think that there are two kinds of people w…

> there are two kinds of people who use AI

You hit the nail on this one. Around me I noticed that the bashing of LLMs come from the smart people that want others to know they are smart.

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

#892

Post by jjani »

starchild3001 wrote: post #353

I have a bunch of friends who don't get along well with each other, but I tend to get along with all of them. I believe this is about focusing on the good in people, and being able to ignore the bad. I think it's the same with tools. To me AI is an out-of-this-world, OP tool. Is it perfect? No. But it's amazing! The good I get out of it far surpasses its mistakes. Almost like people. People "hallucinate" and say wron…

Not trying to dismiss your anecdote, as both can very much coexist separately, and I actually think your analogy is spot on for LLMs! But it did make me think of something.

I once was in an environment where A got along with everyone, and B was hated by everyone else except for A. This wasn't because B saw qualities in A that no one else recognized; it was just that A was oblivous to/wasn't personally affected by all the valid reasons why everyone else disliked B. A to an extent thought of themselves as being able to see the good in B, but in reality they simply lacked the understanding of the effects of B's behavior on others.

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

#893

Post by vonneumannstan »

jaccola wrote: post #850
vonneumannstan wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight the three possibilities how you want but I think in scenario 3 you are coping hard and the grey beard skills aren't nearly as valuable as you think. Is this not already the case? Grey beards already have well known problems with age discrimination despite having such a unique and hard to earn skillset no?

LLMs are not difficult to use and learn though, if so called "greybeard" skills are valueless (or close to) then knowing how to use an LLM certainly won't be valuable either! Just like in the 2000-2010's knowing how to effectively Google things (while undoubtedly a skill) wasn't what made someone economically valuable.

>LLMs are not difficult to use and learn though, if so called "greybeard" skills are valueless (or close to) then knowing how to use an LLM certainly won't be valuable either!

I mean I challenge you to show you're as skilled at using LLMs as Janus or Pliny the Liberator.

https://x.com/repligate https://x.com/elder_plinius

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

#894

Post by brookst »

topaz0 wrote: post #795
brookst wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think good biologists never need to summarize work into digestible language, or fill out multiple huge, redundant grant applications with the same info, or reformat data, or check that a writeup accurate reflects data? I’m not a biologist (good or bad) but the scientists I know (who I think are good) often complain that most of the work is drudgery unrelated to the science they love.

Sure, lots of drudgery, but none of your examples are things that you could trust an LLM to do correctly when correctness counts. And correctness always counts in science. Edit to add: and regardless, I'm less interested in the "LLM's aren't ever useful to science" part of the point. The point that actual LLM usage in science will mostly be for cases where they seem useful but actually introduce subtle problems is mu…

I have also seen trainees introduce subtle problems when they think they know more than they do.

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

#895

Post by btbuildem »

selcuka wrote: post #157
taberiand wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been saying this about llms for a while - if you know what you want, how to ask for it, and what the correct output will look like, LLMs are fantastic (at least Claude Sonnet is). And I mean that seriously, they are a highly effective tool for productive development for senior developers. I use it to produce whole classes, large sql queries, terraform scripts, etc etc. I then look over that output, iterate on…

> they are a highly effective tool for productive development for senior developers I think this is the most important bit many people miss. It is advertised as an autonomous software developer, or something that can take a junior to senior levels, but that's just advertising. It is actually most useful for senior developers, as it does the grunt work for them, while grunt work is actually useful work for a junior de…

Precisely -- you have to be experienced in your field to use these tools effectively.

These are power tools for the mind. We've been working with the equivalent of hand tools, now something new came along. And yeah, a hole hawg will throw you clear off a ladder if you're not careful -- does that mean you're going to bore 6" holes in concrete ceilings by hand? Think not.

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

#896

Post by brookst »

mdp2021 wrote: post #697
brookst wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is pretty ironic in a thread littered with people asserting LLMs are useless because they can hallucinate and create illogical outputs.

So in your reading people who consider the weakness of LLMs a definite problem should call humans generally "adequate". Were people capable to lift concrete pillars, cranes would not be sought. Edit: #@!! snipers. Speak up.

Can’t tell what you’re trying to say or who you’re angry at. Rephrase please?

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

#897

Post by brookst »

knowitnone wrote: post #826
brookst wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that says… what? The entire LLM technology is worthless for all applications, from all implementations? A company I worked for spent millions on a customer service solution that never worked. I wouldn’t say that contracted software is useless.

If it makes data up, then it is worthless for all implementations. I'd rather it said I don't have info on this question.

Does “it” apply to Homo sapiens as well?

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

#898

Post by abecedarius »

gloosx wrote: post #545
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…

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…

If it's just cash-heads pushing a narrative, where do Bengio and Hinton fit? Stuart Russell? Doug Hofstadter?

I mean fine, argue that they're mistaken to be concerned, if that's your belief. But dismissing it all as obvious shilling is not that argument.

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

#899

Post by Zamaamiro »

pfdietz wrote: post #757
KoolKat23 wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more a lack of understanding of it's limitations, it'd be different if they asked for it to write a python script to collate the data.

Ah, it's like communism, then (to its diehards). It cannot fail, it can only be failed.

This is an odd non-sequitur.

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

#900

Post by giantrobot »

bachmeier wrote: post #298
snitty wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks really over index when an LLM is very good for their use case. And most of the folks here are coders, at which they're already good and getting better. For some tasks they're still next to useless, and people who do those tasks understandably don't get the hype. Tell a lab biologist or chemist to use an LLM to help them with their work and they'll get very little useful out of it. Ask an attorney to use it and…

Strongly in agreement. I've tried them and mostly come away unimpressed. If you work in a field where you have to get things right, and it's more work to double check and then fix everything done by the LLM, they're worse than useless. Sure, I've seen a few cases where they have value, but they're not much of my job. Cool is not the same as valuable. If you think "it can't quite do what I need, I'll wait a little lon…

> If you work in a field where you have to get things right, and it's more work to double check and then fix everything done by the LLM, they're worse than useless.

Most programmers understand reading code is often harder than writing it. Especially when someone else wrote the code. I'm a bit amused by the cognitive dissonance of programmers understanding that and then praising code handed to them by an LLM.

It's not that LLMs are useless for programming (or other technical tasks) but they're very junior practitioners. Even when they get "smarter" with reasoning or more parameters their nature of confabulation means they can't be fully trusted in the way their proponents suggest we trust them.

It's not that people don't make mistakes but they often make reasonable mistakes. LLMs make unreasonable mistakes at random. There's no way to predict the distribution of their mistakes. I can learn a human junior developer sucks at memory management or something. I can ask them to improve areas they're weak in and check those areas of their work in more detail.

I have to spend a lot of time reviewing all output from LLMs because there's rarely rhyme or reason to their errors. They save me a bunch of typing but replace a lot of my savings with reviews and debugging.

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