4 ms·

I see we're reaching the 'you're holding it wrong' stage with LLMs.

lionkor 3y ago
It's more like "the limitations you point out are fixed by paying more money", which is the OpenAI way.
viraptor 3y ago
I don't see anything wrong with pointing it out. If I find a previous legal case with a heading that vaguely sounds like something that could be applicable to me and try to use it as an argument, you'd likely say the same: previous cases could be useful, but you need to know how to use that record properly.
- namaria 3y ago
  Are you comparing legal proceedings to a chatbot?
  - viraptor 3y ago
    I'm comparing the usage of two resources which can be helpful or completely misleading, depending on how familiar you are with their purpose/limitations and your experience with them.
rcxdude 3y ago
It is an issue with the tech, and it's probably not an easy one to fix. Performance depends a lot on how its used, but even when performance is poor the output is often convincing.
- cookieperson 3y ago
  The first few times I tried chat gpt I tried asking it goofy questions to try to break it. Then I asked it questions across various fields I have information on. It answered each question incorrectly in a way that bothered me. The. I tried asking it about a field I didn't know about, and googled for the answer. Wrong again. I literally never had it give me an answer that mattered. I have a colleague who is gungho chat bot coding. The guy is smart, but ever since he started using it, he's adopted some weird ideas about what code should look like which are based on easily googleable chatgpt lies and he refuses to hear anyone else out. It's kinda sad how confidently wrong chatbots can infect people and stunt their growth...
- namaria 3y ago
  Exactly my point. If the system gives you results that are worse than not using it, and the solution is to bolt on more stuff to the system, maybe it's time to take a step back and think long and hard if having it in production is a good idea.
ben_w 3y ago
By analogy: "We can't fly into space, the propellers will have nothing to push against" "We have rockets for that, they're more expensive but don't have that limitation." "I see we're reaching the 'you're holding it wrong' stage with propulsion."
- cookieperson 3y ago
  I think their point still stands. We have people and bots shilling chatgpt on a minutely cadence all over the internet right now talking about how "it is the same thing as a person" "look at how it is always correct in these complicated cases" then whenever something doesn't work there's mass gas lighting..."you didn't use the latest version!" "You probably engineered a fake prompt so it would fail!" "You just don't know how to use it" To people who understand the technology your reply is fair. But it doesn't account for the millions of people who don't and are spewing manic sentiment about it's capabilities on the regular. A lot of companies adopt this strategy for broken technology because it fosters a cult like group of zealots for a short period of time while they go off and try to fix everything. In my experience it usually doesn't last long.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Thanks! The way you steeled their point was much more convincing than what I had replied to, and made it clear to me what I had overlooked.
- namaria 3y ago
  Failing to understand that you can't reduce everything to a single vector and claim "this is the worse it's ever gonna be... it's only gonna get better... when it this reaches 10x or 100x what it is now you'll see what it's really capable of" is a perfect analogy in fact for the hype around LLMs. EDIT: found another way in which you're illustrating my point - yeah propellers and LLMs are great for flying under a hard ceiling. We need something entirely different to reach orbit. You can't just tell people to bolt on rockets to propeller driven aircraft, you need to invent something entirely different, like spacecraft.
- usrbinbash 3y ago

It's more like "the limitations you point out are fixed by paying more money", which is the OpenAI way.

I don't see anything wrong with pointing it out. If I find a previous legal case with a heading that vaguely sounds like something that could be applicable to me and try to use it as an argument, you'd likely say the same: previous cases could be useful, but you need to know how to use that record properly.

namaria 3y ago
Are you comparing legal proceedings to a chatbot?
- viraptor 3y ago
  I'm comparing the usage of two resources which can be helpful or completely misleading, depending on how familiar you are with their purpose/limitations and your experience with them.

rcxdude 3y ago

It is an issue with the tech, and it's probably not an easy one to fix. Performance depends a lot on how its used, but even when performance is poor the output is often convincing.

cookieperson 3y ago
The first few times I tried chat gpt I tried asking it goofy questions to try to break it. Then I asked it questions across various fields I have information on. It answered each question incorrectly in a way that bothered me. The. I tried asking it about a field I didn't know about, and googled for the answer. Wrong again. I literally never had it give me an answer that mattered. I have a colleague who is gungho chat bot coding. The guy is smart, but ever since he started using it, he's adopted some weird ideas about what code should look like which are based on easily googleable chatgpt lies and he refuses to hear anyone else out. It's kinda sad how confidently wrong chatbots can infect people and stunt their growth...
namaria 3y ago
Exactly my point. If the system gives you results that are worse than not using it, and the solution is to bolt on more stuff to the system, maybe it's time to take a step back and think long and hard if having it in production is a good idea.

ben_w 3y ago

By analogy: "We can't fly into space, the propellers will have nothing to push against" "We have rockets for that, they're more expensive but don't have that limitation." "I see we're reaching the 'you're holding it wrong' stage with propulsion."

cookieperson 3y ago
I think their point still stands. We have people and bots shilling chatgpt on a minutely cadence all over the internet right now talking about how "it is the same thing as a person" "look at how it is always correct in these complicated cases" then whenever something doesn't work there's mass gas lighting..."you didn't use the latest version!" "You probably engineered a fake prompt so it would fail!" "You just don't know how to use it" To people who understand the technology your reply is fair. But it doesn't account for the millions of people who don't and are spewing manic sentiment about it's capabilities on the regular. A lot of companies adopt this strategy for broken technology because it fosters a cult like group of zealots for a short period of time while they go off and try to fix everything. In my experience it usually doesn't last long.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Thanks! The way you steeled their point was much more convincing than what I had replied to, and made it clear to me what I had overlooked.
namaria 3y ago
Failing to understand that you can't reduce everything to a single vector and claim "this is the worse it's ever gonna be... it's only gonna get better... when it this reaches 10x or 100x what it is now you'll see what it's really capable of" is a perfect analogy in fact for the hype around LLMs. EDIT: found another way in which you're illustrating my point - yeah propellers and LLMs are great for flying under a hard ceiling. We need something entirely different to reach orbit. You can't just tell people to bolt on rockets to propeller driven aircraft, you need to invent something entirely different, like spacecraft.
usrbinbash 3y ago