5 ms·

> Copilot gives you popular responses not correct ones. That also sums up most of the issues with LLMs in general in one sentence.

TheRoque 3y ago
Sums up the issues with democracy too, and a ton of other stuff
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sambazi 3y ago
  educating the "low-hanging fruit" is much more effective in moving the average than piling on excellence.
- ape4 3y ago
  Democracy is a bit different. Hopefully the goal is a democratic government isn't to be intelligent but is to just make people's lives good (better?). In theory if people find their lives are getting worse then they can replace the government. But, sure, there are many examples of it not working. Such has the government making gas prices low because the people want that when its polluting the planet that the people live on.
baby 3y ago
With humans too
steve1977 3y ago
Which is why the term Artificial Intelligence is really a misnomer for LLMs. Artificial Mediocracy might be more fitting.
- throwaway20304 3y ago
  Do you think people with IQ below 80 are not intelligent?
  - oblio 3y ago
    I'm not sure about your angle here, but I thought IQ was calibrated to have 100 as the average value? So wouldn't 80 mean that someone is... kinda dumb?
    - steve1977 3y ago
      I guess the problem is that the term "intelligent" is ambiguous and overloaded. So in one usage someone who is kinda dumb would still be intelligent, just less intelligent than others. In another usage, we use the term to describe someone of above average intelligence (which is technically not really correct and actually not very intelligent).
      - oblio 3y ago
        > So in one usage someone who is kinda dumb would still be intelligent, just less intelligent than others. 100 IQ = 50% of the population is smarter than this. 80 IQ = not sure what the percentage is, but >50% of the population is smarter than this. If any of the tables here are to be believed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Historical_IQ_classification_tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Historical_I... then 80 IQ could mean 80% of the population is smarter. I'll rephrase my "kinda dumb" to "dumb as rocks".
        billyjmc 3y ago
        From the main Wiki entry on IQ tests: “The raw score of the norming sample is usually (rank order) transformed to a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15.” So, you’re not too far off numerically. 80 IQ is only a -1.33 Z-score. So, 9th percentile. 91% of people score higher than 80 IQ.
    - throwaway20304 3y ago
- baz00 3y ago
  That's the most accurate term I've heard to describe the situation. I think it could get worse though because when I've seen mediocre people work with mediocre people they generate sub-mediocre solutions through trying to be clever and failing spectacularly at it.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    LLMs at the moment feel a bit like a buzwword-throwing dilbertian pointy haired boss. The use terms they heard somewhere and with some luck, they use them in the proper context... but without actually understanding them. Edit: And yeah, I think I know what you mean. The expectation (or hope) that collaboration of mediocre people results in some above-average end by means of some magical synergy effect very rarely works in real life.
- danielvaughn 3y ago
  Artificial Average
- Zambyte 3y ago
  It is artificial intelligence, it just isn't artificial general intelligence, nor artificial general knowledge. LLMs are artificial linguistic intelligence. They are really good at linguistic operations that require intelligence, like summarizing long text, transforming disrespectful text into professional looking text, translation between languages to a certain degree, etc. It is not possible to ask an LLM for factual knowledge, without providing it the source of the fact. Without a source of the fact, you can only ask an LLM to generate an answer to the question that is linguistically convincing. And they can do a really good job at that. They can accidentally encode factual knowledge by predicting the next word correctly, but that should be regarded as an accident.
- jacobr1 3y ago
  A sci-fi series I read on occasion uses term "artificial stupids"
firtoz 3y ago
Evals do help to account for correctness when it comes to LLMs
ahoka 3y ago
I propose calling it artificial non-diligence.
diggan 3y ago
I'm not sure you can claim that the essential functionality of something is the issue with something. The whole idea of LLMs is that they chose the most likely token based on the tokens before, and then sometimes chose less likely tokens. But it's all based on likelihoods. Probably there is a huge education part missing from this, if people aren't aware that this is how it works, and they think that any LLM can "creatively" come up with it's own chain of tokens based on nothing.

TheRoque 3y ago

Sums up the issues with democracy too, and a ton of other stuff

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sambazi 3y ago
educating the "low-hanging fruit" is much more effective in moving the average than piling on excellence.
ape4 3y ago
Democracy is a bit different. Hopefully the goal is a democratic government isn't to be intelligent but is to just make people's lives good (better?). In theory if people find their lives are getting worse then they can replace the government. But, sure, there are many examples of it not working. Such has the government making gas prices low because the people want that when its polluting the planet that the people live on.

baby 3y ago

With humans too

steve1977 3y ago

Which is why the term Artificial Intelligence is really a misnomer for LLMs. Artificial Mediocracy might be more fitting.

throwaway20304 3y ago
Do you think people with IQ below 80 are not intelligent?
- oblio 3y ago
  I'm not sure about your angle here, but I thought IQ was calibrated to have 100 as the average value? So wouldn't 80 mean that someone is... kinda dumb?
  - steve1977 3y ago
    I guess the problem is that the term "intelligent" is ambiguous and overloaded. So in one usage someone who is kinda dumb would still be intelligent, just less intelligent than others. In another usage, we use the term to describe someone of above average intelligence (which is technically not really correct and actually not very intelligent).
    - oblio 3y ago
      > So in one usage someone who is kinda dumb would still be intelligent, just less intelligent than others. 100 IQ = 50% of the population is smarter than this. 80 IQ = not sure what the percentage is, but >50% of the population is smarter than this. If any of the tables here are to be believed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Historical_IQ_classification_tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Historical_I... then 80 IQ could mean 80% of the population is smarter. I'll rephrase my "kinda dumb" to "dumb as rocks".
      - billyjmc 3y ago
        From the main Wiki entry on IQ tests: “The raw score of the norming sample is usually (rank order) transformed to a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15.” So, you’re not too far off numerically. 80 IQ is only a -1.33 Z-score. So, 9th percentile. 91% of people score higher than 80 IQ.
  - throwaway20304 3y ago
baz00 3y ago
That's the most accurate term I've heard to describe the situation. I think it could get worse though because when I've seen mediocre people work with mediocre people they generate sub-mediocre solutions through trying to be clever and failing spectacularly at it.
- steve1977 3y ago
  LLMs at the moment feel a bit like a buzwword-throwing dilbertian pointy haired boss. The use terms they heard somewhere and with some luck, they use them in the proper context... but without actually understanding them. Edit: And yeah, I think I know what you mean. The expectation (or hope) that collaboration of mediocre people results in some above-average end by means of some magical synergy effect very rarely works in real life.
danielvaughn 3y ago
Artificial Average
Zambyte 3y ago
It is artificial intelligence, it just isn't artificial general intelligence, nor artificial general knowledge. LLMs are artificial linguistic intelligence. They are really good at linguistic operations that require intelligence, like summarizing long text, transforming disrespectful text into professional looking text, translation between languages to a certain degree, etc. It is not possible to ask an LLM for factual knowledge, without providing it the source of the fact. Without a source of the fact, you can only ask an LLM to generate an answer to the question that is linguistically convincing. And they can do a really good job at that. They can accidentally encode factual knowledge by predicting the next word correctly, but that should be regarded as an accident.
jacobr1 3y ago
A sci-fi series I read on occasion uses term "artificial stupids"

firtoz 3y ago

Evals do help to account for correctness when it comes to LLMs

ahoka 3y ago

I propose calling it artificial non-diligence.

diggan 3y ago

I'm not sure you can claim that the essential functionality of something is the issue with something. The whole idea of LLMs is that they chose the most likely token based on the tokens before, and then sometimes chose less likely tokens. But it's all based on likelihoods. Probably there is a huge education part missing from this, if people aren't aware that this is how it works, and they think that any LLM can "creatively" come up with it's own chain of tokens based on nothing.