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Natural language is an unnatural interface

varunshenoy.substack.com

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Re: Natural language is an unnatural interface

#91

Post by paisible »

I'm really confused by "Anecdotally, most people use LLMs for ~4 basic natural language tasks" and "Most LLM applications use some combination of these four". I'm not sure about the `ELI5` use-case, and feels like this is only true for a very limited type of use-cases people currently use LLMs for.

For conversational FAQ-type use-cases like the ones described by OP perhaps a few basic prompts suffice (although anything requiring the agent to have "agency" in its replies would necessarily require prompt engineering) - but what about all the other ways that people can use LLMs to analyze, transform and generate data?

Re: Natural language is an unnatural interface

#92

Post by barrkel »

kaba0 wrote: post #58
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best voice assistant I ever had was the one I DIY-ed around 2007, using Microsoft Speech API and a cheap piezoelectric mike I soldered to a long cable, hung off the wardrobe, and plugged into PC. The code itself was a mashup of MS SAPI demo of "controlled language" interface and some tutorials for how to control WinAMP with WM_USER messages in WinAPI. I designed a little tree of commands, maybe 3 level deep, wrot…

Cool project! Just to chime a bit into the topic at hand, I guess part of the reason why our experiences with our self-made creations were overly positive is that we were familiar with what could it do, and what were the “magic prompts” for achieving that. Today’s systems are expected to handle a much more diverse input space (though with LLMs it should be absolutely feasible). My experience with siri’s “hey siri” re…

All I ever really use the assistants for is:

  - get a weather forecast for today
  - set an alarm or timer
  - control smart light bulbs
  - play a song
IMO a huge input space is a negative feature. Either the input space should be explicitly limited and known, or it should be almost totally complete (which isn't really feasible). Attempting to cover a large input space without completeness just means that it's really unreliable for new inputs.

Re: Natural language is an unnatural interface

#93

Post by kaba0 »

barrkel wrote: post #92
kaba0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool project! Just to chime a bit into the topic at hand, I guess part of the reason why our experiences with our self-made creations were overly positive is that we were familiar with what could it do, and what were the “magic prompts” for achieving that. Today’s systems are expected to handle a much more diverse input space (though with LLMs it should be absolutely feasible). My experience with siri’s “hey siri” re…

All I ever really use the assistants for is: - get a weather forecast for today - set an alarm or timer - control smart light bulbs - play a song IMO a huge input space is a negative feature. Either the input space should be explicitly limited and known, or it should be almost totally complete (which isn't really feasible). Attempting to cover a large input space without completeness just means that it's really unrel…

I think today’s LLMs more than fit the bill for the latter — most of what I might ask from Siri are easily answered more intelligently by ChatGPT. And I say that as someone who is overall quite skeptical of LLMs, and think they are way overhyped — this is a niche they could easily and competently fit.
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