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I find it equally worrying how so many techies continue to dismiss LLMs as “bullshit generators “. I struggle to see how even the current GPT-4 is any worse th

I find it equally worrying how so many techies continue to dismiss LLMs as “bullshit generators “. I struggle to see how even the current GPT-4 is any worse than your average human. How this is dismissed because it’s not 100% perfect (might at add, “yet”) is beyond me.

rpastuszak 4y ago
I don't dismiss them. I think there's a huge potential in LLMs, but they _also_ happen to be really good at generating plausible, difficult to detect bullshit. Now, people seem to miss or ignore that fact, and I think is a very risky path. I'd say that ca. 8/10 founders who pitched to me an idea leveraging LLMs completely missed that limitation. An example would be something like using LLMs as a replacement for therapy. > How this is dismissed because it’s not 100% perfect (might at add, “yet”) is beyond me. Again, I'm not dismissing them, but the current tech behind GPT or LLaMA has no concept of "correctness". These models don't understand what they're saying and this is not a trivial issue to fix. > I struggle to see how even the current GPT-4 is any worse than your average human. Where, how, and what do you mean by worse? I'm pretty sure there are cases where I'd agree with you, but this is a very broad statement.
klyrs 4y ago
I don't want "your average human" tutoring my child. I don't "dismiss" gpt4, I give it a failing grade. Just like Tesla's so called full self driving: it is not ready for prime time, and embracing it before it is has has legitimately concerning risk.
krainboltgreene 4y ago
> I struggle to see how even the current GPT-4 is any worse than your average human. In addition to techies believing LLMs ar emore than bullshit generators they also appear to think humans are incredibly simple machines. I'm so glad the tech industry is given so much money and power over the rest of us without actually being forced to understand us.
version_five 4y ago
You may want to read the AI Mirror article recently posted. They can appear very "human-like" but they are just generating patterns. I'm more worried that either demographics on HN have shifted or a lot of formerly smart and skeptical people now have been taken in so completely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34850890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34850890

rpastuszak 4y ago

I don't dismiss them. I think there's a huge potential in LLMs, but they _also_ happen to be really good at generating plausible, difficult to detect bullshit. Now, people seem to miss or ignore that fact, and I think is a very risky path. I'd say that ca. 8/10 founders who pitched to me an idea leveraging LLMs completely missed that limitation. An example would be something like using LLMs as a replacement for therapy. > How this is dismissed because it’s not 100% perfect (might at add, “yet”) is beyond me. Again, I'm not dismissing them, but the current tech behind GPT or LLaMA has no concept of "correctness". These models don't understand what they're saying and this is not a trivial issue to fix. > I struggle to see how even the current GPT-4 is any worse than your average human. Where, how, and what do you mean by worse? I'm pretty sure there are cases where I'd agree with you, but this is a very broad statement.

klyrs 4y ago

I don't want "your average human" tutoring my child. I don't "dismiss" gpt4, I give it a failing grade. Just like Tesla's so called full self driving: it is not ready for prime time, and embracing it before it is has has legitimately concerning risk.

krainboltgreene 4y ago

> I struggle to see how even the current GPT-4 is any worse than your average human. In addition to techies believing LLMs ar emore than bullshit generators they also appear to think humans are incredibly simple machines. I'm so glad the tech industry is given so much money and power over the rest of us without actually being forced to understand us.

version_five 4y ago

You may want to read the AI Mirror article recently posted. They can appear very "human-like" but they are just generating patterns. I'm more worried that either demographics on HN have shifted or a lot of formerly smart and skeptical people now have been taken in so completely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34850890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34850890