3 ms·

Seeing value in LLM answers is apophenia. It's an understandable human condition but still. There can be value in SO answers, there can not be in LLM as it's j

by chx 3y ago

Seeing value in LLM answers is apophenia. It's an understandable human condition but still. There can be value in SO answers, there can not be in LLM as it's just automated plagiarism without understanding anything.

falcor84 3y ago
There's immense value in ChatGPT's answers, you just need to accept that it's fallible.
- practice9 3y ago
  I think most of the critique is coming from the people that made their mind up already or used only GPT-3.5 in the past. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: a) "ChatGPT is stupid! Also, plagiarism! No value!" b) " I wrote a carelessly bad prompt and it responded with a seemingly bad answer!" c) " This confirms my biases!" I find that when I provide it with enough context and a set of requirements (as I would with a non-AI engineer), it's very good at problem solving.
dlkf 3y ago
How does the issue of plagiarism bear on its utility? That’s like saying it’s impossible to get value out of listening to a torrented mp3. I’m not sure understanding is an inherent issue either. When I Google ”weather lisbon,” Google spits out a number. The app doesn’t ”understand” anything, but it still helps me plan my day.
ben_w 3y ago
> automated plagiarism without understanding anything I'm old enough to remember the memes campaigning to rename "software engineering" to "googling StackOverflow", so plagiarism isn't a point against the value of an LLM, and given the case of an LLM made by StackOverflow using StackOverflow data it's also not a legal issue.
naasking 3y ago
> there can not be in LLM as it's just automated plagiarism without understanding anything. Conjecture. We lack a mechanistic understanding of "understanding", so you can't make this claim. Human answers are also fallible, so how do you know that human cognition isn't also statistical pattern matching similar to what's used in LLMs? If it is, then they are understanding, their understanding just has flaws.

by chx 3y ago

falcor84 3y ago

There's immense value in ChatGPT's answers, you just need to accept that it's fallible.

practice9 3y ago
I think most of the critique is coming from the people that made their mind up already or used only GPT-3.5 in the past. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: a) "ChatGPT is stupid! Also, plagiarism! No value!" b) " I wrote a carelessly bad prompt and it responded with a seemingly bad answer!" c) " This confirms my biases!" I find that when I provide it with enough context and a set of requirements (as I would with a non-AI engineer), it's very good at problem solving.

dlkf 3y ago

How does the issue of plagiarism bear on its utility? That’s like saying it’s impossible to get value out of listening to a torrented mp3. I’m not sure understanding is an inherent issue either. When I Google ”weather lisbon,” Google spits out a number. The app doesn’t ”understand” anything, but it still helps me plan my day.

ben_w 3y ago

> automated plagiarism without understanding anything I'm old enough to remember the memes campaigning to rename "software engineering" to "googling StackOverflow", so plagiarism isn't a point against the value of an LLM, and given the case of an LLM made by StackOverflow using StackOverflow data it's also not a legal issue.

naasking 3y ago

> there can not be in LLM as it's just automated plagiarism without understanding anything. Conjecture. We lack a mechanistic understanding of "understanding", so you can't make this claim. Human answers are also fallible, so how do you know that human cognition isn't also statistical pattern matching similar to what's used in LLMs? If it is, then they are understanding, their understanding just has flaws.