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There's a dead comment on here that I think could spur some interesting conversation, it said: > Tim, you aren't important enough for an LLM to have an accurat

There's a dead comment on here that I think could spur some interesting conversation, it said: > Tim, you aren't important enough for an LLM to have an accurate summary for you That's part of the problem though, right? How is the end-user (the question-asker) of a chat robot supposed to know that? These things are advertised as machines to answer any question, they answer them with confidence that *feels* authoritative in a way that a webpage, with all of its surrounding context, does not.

Majestic121 2y ago
Indeed, it's OK not to have an accurate summary, but if you don't I'd expect the LLM to answer 'tim who ?'
awfulneutral 2y ago
The main thing I want LLMs to help with is obscure stuff. If the answer is mainstream or well known, I can get it more reliably through a normal web search.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  By the very nature of its training data, the obscure stuff will be the stuff these models are the worst at.
  - awfulneutral 2y ago
    Yeah, I guess I should have said I think AI chat interfaces in general would be more useful if they could help with the questions that weren't already easy to answer. Sometimes I can get use out of an LLM chat, but it's really hit or miss.
  - sroussey 2y ago
    Depends on how obscure and how much SEO competition there is.
- DrSiemer 2y ago
  By far their most useful and reliable feature is asking them for stuff I already know, but can't be bothered to look up the details for or write out myself. It saves me from dealing with thick layers of SEO crap, cookie banners and many of the incorrect answers. Sure, it would be nice if we had an LLM that could help us with the more unusual questions. But for that we would either need much better training data, full of all those unknown answers (which does not exist), or a totally different system that can actually think for itself instead of just mimicking existing human output.
  - awfulneutral 2y ago
    That's interesting, you mean something you forgot but could verify when you see the answer? Or something you know, but you need a write-up for it or something?
    - DrSiemer 2y ago
      Many of the work I do involves things I have done before in some form. But all that knowledge is spread out over multiple languages and libraries and the details are often hazy. LLM's are excellent at stuff that has been done before and they are also fantastic for transposing code from one language to the other. Looking up code in old projects takes time and brain RAM. Spelling out the steps in pseudo code and then prompt guiding an LLM through figuring out the required code often works great for smaller tasks. I've also learned many new tricks by just asking it why it made certain choices.
      - awfulneutral 2y ago
        I see, thanks for the explanation!
acchow 2y ago
People ask Reddit and Quora and read the confident responses cautiously. I’m certain people will learn to do the same with LLMs. These are still new tech and people are figuring it out.
- ametrau 2y ago
  I feel bad for poo-pooing the safety efforts. When it goes properly mainstream it will be amazing the dumb things people will believe about it and try to do with it.
- awfulneutral 2y ago
  On Reddit/Quora there is more context. You can see other replies, upvote count, and evaluate based on "fishy-ness" of the overall tone of writing. But with an LLM chat every answer has the same obnoxious college essay format, where it writes an entire blog article to say one thing. I find it pretty hard to gauge if something is plausible or not. If I know I'm going to have to verify with a web search anyway, I might as well go straight to the web search most of the time.
blakesterz 2y ago
The best part of that comment now is Tim Bray responded to it!
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
>That's part of the problem though, right? Not really, do normal people assume that they're important enough to be the only Their Name of note in the world that their opinions would be known. Absurd level of narcissism.
Groxx 2y ago
It's one of the biggest answer-analysis issues with LLMs, yeah. Non-experts can't spot when they're being blatantly lied to because it's pretty much always plausible, because that's what they do - produce plausible continuations of what came before.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
weare138 2y ago
The issue is it still answers the question confidently and authoritatively. I don't think any reasoned person has an expectation these LLMs will magically know the answer to any question we ask, which is fine, but when it doesn't have an authoritative answer that should be the answer. Like when Google Search says it can find any results, just tell us that. Besides, if we have to invest time to verify the answers then we could have just done the research and answered the question ourselves to begin with.

Majestic121 2y ago

Indeed, it's OK not to have an accurate summary, but if you don't I'd expect the LLM to answer 'tim who ?'

awfulneutral 2y ago

The main thing I want LLMs to help with is obscure stuff. If the answer is mainstream or well known, I can get it more reliably through a normal web search.

JohnFen 2y ago
By the very nature of its training data, the obscure stuff will be the stuff these models are the worst at.
- awfulneutral 2y ago
  Yeah, I guess I should have said I think AI chat interfaces in general would be more useful if they could help with the questions that weren't already easy to answer. Sometimes I can get use out of an LLM chat, but it's really hit or miss.
- sroussey 2y ago
  Depends on how obscure and how much SEO competition there is.
DrSiemer 2y ago
By far their most useful and reliable feature is asking them for stuff I already know, but can't be bothered to look up the details for or write out myself. It saves me from dealing with thick layers of SEO crap, cookie banners and many of the incorrect answers. Sure, it would be nice if we had an LLM that could help us with the more unusual questions. But for that we would either need much better training data, full of all those unknown answers (which does not exist), or a totally different system that can actually think for itself instead of just mimicking existing human output.
- awfulneutral 2y ago
  That's interesting, you mean something you forgot but could verify when you see the answer? Or something you know, but you need a write-up for it or something?
  - DrSiemer 2y ago
    Many of the work I do involves things I have done before in some form. But all that knowledge is spread out over multiple languages and libraries and the details are often hazy. LLM's are excellent at stuff that has been done before and they are also fantastic for transposing code from one language to the other. Looking up code in old projects takes time and brain RAM. Spelling out the steps in pseudo code and then prompt guiding an LLM through figuring out the required code often works great for smaller tasks. I've also learned many new tricks by just asking it why it made certain choices.
    - awfulneutral 2y ago
      I see, thanks for the explanation!

acchow 2y ago

People ask Reddit and Quora and read the confident responses cautiously. I’m certain people will learn to do the same with LLMs. These are still new tech and people are figuring it out.

ametrau 2y ago
I feel bad for poo-pooing the safety efforts. When it goes properly mainstream it will be amazing the dumb things people will believe about it and try to do with it.
awfulneutral 2y ago
On Reddit/Quora there is more context. You can see other replies, upvote count, and evaluate based on "fishy-ness" of the overall tone of writing. But with an LLM chat every answer has the same obnoxious college essay format, where it writes an entire blog article to say one thing. I find it pretty hard to gauge if something is plausible or not. If I know I'm going to have to verify with a web search anyway, I might as well go straight to the web search most of the time.

blakesterz 2y ago

The best part of that comment now is Tim Bray responded to it!

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

>That's part of the problem though, right? Not really, do normal people assume that they're important enough to be the only Their Name of note in the world that their opinions would be known. Absurd level of narcissism.

Groxx 2y ago

It's one of the biggest answer-analysis issues with LLMs, yeah. Non-experts can't spot when they're being blatantly lied to because it's pretty much always plausible, because that's what they do - produce plausible continuations of what came before.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

weare138 2y ago

The issue is it still answers the question confidently and authoritatively. I don't think any reasoned person has an expectation these LLMs will magically know the answer to any question we ask, which is fine, but when it doesn't have an authoritative answer that should be the answer. Like when Google Search says it can find any results, just tell us that. Besides, if we have to invest time to verify the answers then we could have just done the research and answered the question ourselves to begin with.