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Its use is very much in question - but it is certainly a powerful tool, and that combination is worrisome. Much like the social graph, it is going to have a pro

Its use is very much in question - but it is certainly a powerful tool, and that combination is worrisome. Much like the social graph, it is going to have a profound impact on how we interact online and with each other, and that impact will not be known for some time, even though we may be feeling it now, unawares. In a decade, maybe less, we will have some picture of the use and power of these models, there will be meetings in front of congress on how tech companies have used them, etc. Just look at what is happening in education right now. It is ultimately going to force a complete reinvention of the written assignment. This is just the beginning, even if the tool appears to be a mostly-useless toy for any real-world applications.

jfengel 4y ago
The fact that it has a notable downside is certainly interesting. School assignments are well suited to LLMs because they also don't present new information. That's not what they're for; they're for assessing what the student knows. They're usually fairly obvious, but it's hard to prove. Unlike much ordinary copypaste plagiarism, you can't trivially reject it as cheating. That forces teachers to think of new ways to test student knowledge... an interesting challenge, if not exactly a "use".
wilsonnb3 4y ago
> It is ultimately going to force a complete reinvention of the written assignment. If by complete reinvention you mean returning to what we used to do, which is write essays with a pencil during class without using a computer. > This is just the beginning, even if the tool appears to be a mostly-useless toy for any real-world applications. It is not possible to tell on this side where LLMs (or any invention) fall on the spectrum of 3D tv to the smartphone. It will become apparent in the future and 50% of us will have been wrong but anyone who claims to know is just BSing.

jfengel 4y ago

The fact that it has a notable downside is certainly interesting. School assignments are well suited to LLMs because they also don't present new information. That's not what they're for; they're for assessing what the student knows. They're usually fairly obvious, but it's hard to prove. Unlike much ordinary copypaste plagiarism, you can't trivially reject it as cheating. That forces teachers to think of new ways to test student knowledge... an interesting challenge, if not exactly a "use".

wilsonnb3 4y ago

> It is ultimately going to force a complete reinvention of the written assignment. If by complete reinvention you mean returning to what we used to do, which is write essays with a pencil during class without using a computer. > This is just the beginning, even if the tool appears to be a mostly-useless toy for any real-world applications. It is not possible to tell on this side where LLMs (or any invention) fall on the spectrum of 3D tv to the smartphone. It will become apparent in the future and 50% of us will have been wrong but anyone who claims to know is just BSing.