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That hasn't been my experience. Purely anecdotal, but it seems to me that if a topic has been written about with a high degree of accuracy a small number of ti

by skohan 3y ago

That hasn't been my experience. Purely anecdotal, but it seems to me that if a topic has been written about with a high degree of accuracy a small number of times, AI is more likely to be factual than a topic for which there is a lot of low quality information available.

jltsiren 3y ago
A few situations I have encountered: 1. Sufficiently obscure technical details in some field of research. There are several high-quality sources, but each of them uses its own terminology with subtly different definitions. Many immediate consequences are also left unsaid, because you can't say everything if you want to keep the paper readable. Anyone with sufficient background should see them anyway. 2. Word etymologies. There are often many competing explanations with varying degrees of plausibility and popularity, and many sources with varying degrees of credibility. The things the LLM hallucinates are often quite interesting. 3. Questions with well-defined answers that are overshadowed by something far more popular. Like, for example, what did Caesar do on the night before crossing Rubicon.
- skohan 3y ago
  I still think specific, esoteric knowledge gets devalued. The way I experience AI is that it's like a super-powered search. It's like having an undergrad with limited knowledge read everything and come back to you with an answer. Based on their own limited knowledge on complex topics, they're not always going to come back to you with the correct answer, but it gives you a heck of a better starting point than if you were to search for it yourself from scratch. So what that means regarding esoteric knowledge is that the specific detail you were looking for is no longer hidden beneath 5 layers of obscura - you at least get pointed to the general area of the solution, and then maybe you have to read a paper or two to get the details you need. And instead of having to read 5 other papers to understand that one, you can ask questions and get decent answers about the terms you don't understand etc. So imo it becomes less valuable to yourself be an encyclopedia of esoteric knowledge, since that knowledge becomes more accessible. It's like how being an expert on any road system become much less valuable with the advent of GPS.

by skohan 3y ago

jltsiren 3y ago

A few situations I have encountered: 1. Sufficiently obscure technical details in some field of research. There are several high-quality sources, but each of them uses its own terminology with subtly different definitions. Many immediate consequences are also left unsaid, because you can't say everything if you want to keep the paper readable. Anyone with sufficient background should see them anyway. 2. Word etymologies. There are often many competing explanations with varying degrees of plausibility and popularity, and many sources with varying degrees of credibility. The things the LLM hallucinates are often quite interesting. 3. Questions with well-defined answers that are overshadowed by something far more popular. Like, for example, what did Caesar do on the night before crossing Rubicon.

skohan 3y ago
I still think specific, esoteric knowledge gets devalued. The way I experience AI is that it's like a super-powered search. It's like having an undergrad with limited knowledge read everything and come back to you with an answer. Based on their own limited knowledge on complex topics, they're not always going to come back to you with the correct answer, but it gives you a heck of a better starting point than if you were to search for it yourself from scratch. So what that means regarding esoteric knowledge is that the specific detail you were looking for is no longer hidden beneath 5 layers of obscura - you at least get pointed to the general area of the solution, and then maybe you have to read a paper or two to get the details you need. And instead of having to read 5 other papers to understand that one, you can ask questions and get decent answers about the terms you don't understand etc. So imo it becomes less valuable to yourself be an encyclopedia of esoteric knowledge, since that knowledge becomes more accessible. It's like how being an expert on any road system become much less valuable with the advent of GPS.