7 ms·

Scoring 96 percentile among humans taking the exam without moving goal posts would have been science fiction two years ago. Now it’s suddenly not good enough an

Scoring 96 percentile among humans taking the exam without moving goal posts would have been science fiction two years ago. Now it’s suddenly not good enough and the fact a computer program can score decent among passing lawyers and first time test takers is something to sneer at. The fact I can talk to the computer and it responds to me idiomatically and understands my semantic intent well enough to be nearly indistinguishable from a human being is breath taking. Anyone who views it as anything less in 2024 and asserts with a straight face they wouldn’t have said the same thing in 2020 is lying. I do however find the paper really useful in contextualizing the scoring with a much finer grain. Personally I didn’t take the 96 percentile score to be anything other than “among the mass who take the test,” and have enough experience with professional licensing exams to know a huge percentage of test takers fail and are repeat test takers. Placing the goal posts quantitatively for the next levels of achievement is a useful exercise. But the profusion of jaded nerds makes me sad.

QuantumGood 2y ago
It scored less than 50% when compared to people who had taken the test once.
Workaccount2 2y ago
The nerds aren't jaded, they are worried. I'd be too if my job needed nothing more than a keyboard to be completed. There are a lot of people here who need to squeeze another 20-40 years out of a keyboard job.
- threeseed 2y ago
  Similar comments were made that microwaves will eliminate cooking. At the end of the day (a) LLMs aren't accurate enough for many use cases and (b) there is far more to knowledge worker's jobs than simply generating text.
- imtringued 2y ago
  You're assuming that keyboard jobs are easier simply because the models were built to output text, but nothing prevents physical motion to be easier simply due to sheer repetitiveness. In fact, you can get away with building dedicated robots e.g. for drywall spraying and sanding, whereas the keyboard guys tend to have to switch tasks all the time.
d0mine 2y ago
On any topic that I understand well, LLM output is garbage: it requires more energy to fix it than to solve the original problem to begin with. Are we sure these exams are not present in the training data? (ability to recall information is not impressive for a computer) Still I'm terrible at many many tasks e.g., drawing from description and the models widen significantly types of problems that I can even try (where results can be verified easily, and no precision is required)
- munchler 2y ago
  > On any topic that I understand well, LLM output is garbage: it requires more energy to fix it than to solve the original problem to begin with. That's probably true, which is why human most knowledge workers aren't going away any time soon. That said, I have better luck with a different approach: I use LLM's to learn things that I don't already understand well. This forces me to actively understand and validate the output, rather than consume it passively. With an LLM, I can easily ask questions, drill down, and try different ideas, like I'm working with a tutor. I find this to be much more effective than traditional learning techniques alone (e.g. textbooks, videos, blog posts, etc.).
  - LamaOfRuin 2y ago
    I would classify all of those as "non-traditional" learning techniques, unless you actually mean using a textbook while taking a class with a human teacher. Well written textbooks are consumable on their own for some people, but most are not written for that.
    - djmips 2y ago
      That's a good observation about textbooks and helps explain why I had difficulties trying to teach myself topics from a textbook alone!
      - ghaff 2y ago
        A lot just aren't very good but they also tend to make assumptions about prior knowledge in line with what would be typical prerequisites for a class and some degree of guidance.
iLoveOncall 2y ago
> The fact I can talk to the computer and it responds to me idiomatically and understands my semantic intent well enough to be nearly indistinguishable from a human being is breath taking That's called a programming language. It's nothing new.
- fooker 2y ago
  It's a programming language except the programming part, and the language part.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    How is the text you write not a language, and how is writing instructions that computers follow not programming? Edit: LLMs biggest feat is being a natural language interpreter, so it can run natural language scripts. It is far from perfect at it, but that is still programming.
    - utensil4778 2y ago
      Sure, in the way that you program your dog to play fetch.
seizethecheese 2y ago
By 96th percentile do you mea 69th? From the abstract: > data from a recent July administration of the same exam suggests GPT-4’s overall UBE percentile was below the 69th percentile, and 48th percentile on essays. Third, examining official NCBE data and using several conservative statistical assumptions, GPT-4’s performance against first-time test takers is estimated to be 62nd percentile, including 42nd percentile on essays. Fourth, when examining only those who passed the exam (i.e. licensed or license-pending attorneys), GPT-4’s performance is estimated to drop to 48th percentile overall, and 15th percentile on essays.
api 2y ago
It’s the hype. We could invent warp drive but if it was hyped as the cure for cancer, poverty, war, and the gateway to untold riches and immortality while simultaneously being the most dangerous invention in history destined to completely destroy humanity people would be “oh ho hum we made it to Centauri in a week” pretty fast. Add some obnoxious pseudo-intellectual windbags building a cult around it and people would be down right turned off. Hype is also taken as a strong contrarian indicator by most scientific and engineering types. A lot of hype means it’s snake oil. This heuristic is actually correct more often than it’s not, but it is occasionally wrong.
mattgreenrocks 2y ago
I have difficulty being optimistic about LLMs because they don’t benefit my work now, and I don’t see a way that they enhance our humanity. They’re explicitly pitched as something that should eat all sorts of jobs. The problem isn’t the LLMs per se, it’s what we want to do with them. And, being human, it becomes difficult to separate the two. Also, they seem to attract people who get real aggressive about defending them and seem to attach part of their identity onto them, which is weird.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 2y ago
The real problem is that tests used for humans are callibrated based on the way different human abilities correlate: they aren't objectives themselves, they are convenient proxies. But they aren't meaningful for anything other than humans since the correlations between abilities which make them reasonable proxies are not the same. The idea that these kind of test results prove anything (other than the utility of the tested LLM for humans cheating on the exam) is only valid if you assume not only that the LLM is actually an AGI, but that it's an AGI that is indistinguishable, psychometrically, from a human. (Which makes a nice circular argument, since these test results are often cited to prove that the LLMs are, or are approaching, AGI.)
- derbOac 2y ago
  This is a good point. I've noticed one thing that LLMs seem to have trouble with is going "off task". There are often very structured evaluation scenarios, with a structured set of items and possible responses (even if defined in a an abstract sense). Performance in those settings is often ok to excellent, but when the test scenario changes, the LLM seems to not be able to recognize it, or fails miserably. The Obama pictures were a good example of that. Humans could recognize what was going on when the task frame changed, but the AI started to fail miserably. Me and my friends, similarly, often trick LLMs in interactive tasks by starting to go "off script", where the "script" is some assumption that we're acting in good faith with regard to the task. My guess is humans would have a "WTF?" response, or start to recognize what was happening, but a LLM does not. In the human realm there's an extra-test world, like you're saying, but for the LLM there's always a test world, and nothing more. If I'm being honest with myself my guess is a lot of these gaps will be filled over the next decade or so, but there will always be some model boundaries, defined not by the data using to estimate the model, but by the framework the model exists within.
viking123 2y ago
Yeah it’s insane, I am actually scared the llm is like sentient and secretly plotting to kill me. I bet we have like full AGI next year because Elon said so and Sam Altman probably has AGI already internally at Open AI. I am actually selling my house now and going all in Nvidia and just live in my car until we get the AGI
keefle 2y ago
The profusion of jaded nerds, although saddening at times, seems to be pushing science forward. I have a feeling that a prolonged sense of "Awe" can hinder progression at times, and the lack of it is usually a sign of the adaptability of a group (how quick new developments are normalized?)

QuantumGood 2y ago

It scored less than 50% when compared to people who had taken the test once.

Workaccount2 2y ago

The nerds aren't jaded, they are worried. I'd be too if my job needed nothing more than a keyboard to be completed. There are a lot of people here who need to squeeze another 20-40 years out of a keyboard job.

threeseed 2y ago
Similar comments were made that microwaves will eliminate cooking. At the end of the day (a) LLMs aren't accurate enough for many use cases and (b) there is far more to knowledge worker's jobs than simply generating text.
imtringued 2y ago
You're assuming that keyboard jobs are easier simply because the models were built to output text, but nothing prevents physical motion to be easier simply due to sheer repetitiveness. In fact, you can get away with building dedicated robots e.g. for drywall spraying and sanding, whereas the keyboard guys tend to have to switch tasks all the time.

d0mine 2y ago

On any topic that I understand well, LLM output is garbage: it requires more energy to fix it than to solve the original problem to begin with. Are we sure these exams are not present in the training data? (ability to recall information is not impressive for a computer) Still I'm terrible at many many tasks e.g., drawing from description and the models widen significantly types of problems that I can even try (where results can be verified easily, and no precision is required)

munchler 2y ago
> On any topic that I understand well, LLM output is garbage: it requires more energy to fix it than to solve the original problem to begin with. That's probably true, which is why human most knowledge workers aren't going away any time soon. That said, I have better luck with a different approach: I use LLM's to learn things that I don't already understand well. This forces me to actively understand and validate the output, rather than consume it passively. With an LLM, I can easily ask questions, drill down, and try different ideas, like I'm working with a tutor. I find this to be much more effective than traditional learning techniques alone (e.g. textbooks, videos, blog posts, etc.).
- LamaOfRuin 2y ago
  I would classify all of those as "non-traditional" learning techniques, unless you actually mean using a textbook while taking a class with a human teacher. Well written textbooks are consumable on their own for some people, but most are not written for that.
  - djmips 2y ago
    That's a good observation about textbooks and helps explain why I had difficulties trying to teach myself topics from a textbook alone!
    - ghaff 2y ago
      A lot just aren't very good but they also tend to make assumptions about prior knowledge in line with what would be typical prerequisites for a class and some degree of guidance.

iLoveOncall 2y ago

> The fact I can talk to the computer and it responds to me idiomatically and understands my semantic intent well enough to be nearly indistinguishable from a human being is breath taking That's called a programming language. It's nothing new.

fooker 2y ago
It's a programming language except the programming part, and the language part.
- Jensson 2y ago
  How is the text you write not a language, and how is writing instructions that computers follow not programming? Edit: LLMs biggest feat is being a natural language interpreter, so it can run natural language scripts. It is far from perfect at it, but that is still programming.
  - utensil4778 2y ago
    Sure, in the way that you program your dog to play fetch.

seizethecheese 2y ago

By 96th percentile do you mea 69th? From the abstract: > data from a recent July administration of the same exam suggests GPT-4’s overall UBE percentile was below the 69th percentile, and 48th percentile on essays. Third, examining official NCBE data and using several conservative statistical assumptions, GPT-4’s performance against first-time test takers is estimated to be 62nd percentile, including 42nd percentile on essays. Fourth, when examining only those who passed the exam (i.e. licensed or license-pending attorneys), GPT-4’s performance is estimated to drop to 48th percentile overall, and 15th percentile on essays.

api 2y ago

It’s the hype. We could invent warp drive but if it was hyped as the cure for cancer, poverty, war, and the gateway to untold riches and immortality while simultaneously being the most dangerous invention in history destined to completely destroy humanity people would be “oh ho hum we made it to Centauri in a week” pretty fast. Add some obnoxious pseudo-intellectual windbags building a cult around it and people would be down right turned off. Hype is also taken as a strong contrarian indicator by most scientific and engineering types. A lot of hype means it’s snake oil. This heuristic is actually correct more often than it’s not, but it is occasionally wrong.

mattgreenrocks 2y ago

I have difficulty being optimistic about LLMs because they don’t benefit my work now, and I don’t see a way that they enhance our humanity. They’re explicitly pitched as something that should eat all sorts of jobs. The problem isn’t the LLMs per se, it’s what we want to do with them. And, being human, it becomes difficult to separate the two. Also, they seem to attract people who get real aggressive about defending them and seem to attach part of their identity onto them, which is weird.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 2y ago

The real problem is that tests used for humans are callibrated based on the way different human abilities correlate: they aren't objectives themselves, they are convenient proxies. But they aren't meaningful for anything other than humans since the correlations between abilities which make them reasonable proxies are not the same. The idea that these kind of test results prove anything (other than the utility of the tested LLM for humans cheating on the exam) is only valid if you assume not only that the LLM is actually an AGI, but that it's an AGI that is indistinguishable, psychometrically, from a human. (Which makes a nice circular argument, since these test results are often cited to prove that the LLMs are, or are approaching, AGI.)

derbOac 2y ago
This is a good point. I've noticed one thing that LLMs seem to have trouble with is going "off task". There are often very structured evaluation scenarios, with a structured set of items and possible responses (even if defined in a an abstract sense). Performance in those settings is often ok to excellent, but when the test scenario changes, the LLM seems to not be able to recognize it, or fails miserably. The Obama pictures were a good example of that. Humans could recognize what was going on when the task frame changed, but the AI started to fail miserably. Me and my friends, similarly, often trick LLMs in interactive tasks by starting to go "off script", where the "script" is some assumption that we're acting in good faith with regard to the task. My guess is humans would have a "WTF?" response, or start to recognize what was happening, but a LLM does not. In the human realm there's an extra-test world, like you're saying, but for the LLM there's always a test world, and nothing more. If I'm being honest with myself my guess is a lot of these gaps will be filled over the next decade or so, but there will always be some model boundaries, defined not by the data using to estimate the model, but by the framework the model exists within.

viking123 2y ago

Yeah it’s insane, I am actually scared the llm is like sentient and secretly plotting to kill me. I bet we have like full AGI next year because Elon said so and Sam Altman probably has AGI already internally at Open AI. I am actually selling my house now and going all in Nvidia and just live in my car until we get the AGI

keefle 2y ago

The profusion of jaded nerds, although saddening at times, seems to be pushing science forward. I have a feeling that a prolonged sense of "Awe" can hinder progression at times, and the lack of it is usually a sign of the adaptability of a group (how quick new developments are normalized?)