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> There's a fundamental problem with all these "summary" tasks, and it's obvious from the disclaimer that's on all these AI products: "AI can be wrong, you must
by slibhb 2y ago
> There's a fundamental problem with all these "summary" tasks, and it's obvious from the disclaimer that's on all these AI products: "AI can be wrong, you must verify this".
> A summary for which you must always read the un-summarized text is useless as a summary, this should be obvious to literally everyone
Nah, it's still useful if the summary is usually right or mostly right. At the limit, it's not even clear that something can be summarized perfectly.
Consider that the alternative to reading the summary often isn't reading the entire text yourself. It's reading nothing.
Also, in my experience, these tools often fail when it comes to questions with a definitive answer. E.g. if you pass them a lot of text and ask a detailed question with a very clear answer, they often get it wrong. But when your question is vague like "summarize the text," they're very useful.
- thwarted 2y agoit's still useful if the summary is usually right or mostly right. And you'd confirm that by having to read the unsummarized content. Thus useless. Consider that the alternative to reading the summary often isn't reading the entire text yourself. It's reading nothing. Reading an inaccurate summary is actually less useful than reading nothing. It's not like the utility of the summary is to exercise a reading muscle.
- jimkleiber 2y agoI agree. Heck, even reading clickbait headlines can cause adverse effects, even if they've summarized the text properly.
- temporarely 2y agoThis is correct. There is a social context to this matter. The advocates of 'almost right is most cases is ok no harm done' are ignoring the (likely) operational and utility context of these tools.
- slibhb 2y agoYou can just assume it's right or mostly right and move on with your life. We're not talking about designing spaceships here. Being wrong is allowed. > Reading an inaccurate summary is actually less useful than reading nothing. It's not like the utility of the summary is to exercise a reading muscle. No it's not. You're acting like these tools generately wildly inaccurate text. Even when they're wrong, they're mostly accurate. Almost everything people read is a mostly accurate summary, whether it's from some guy's article or wikipedia. We rarely go to the primary source. edit - as a concrete example, I did my taxes this year with help from ChatGPT. It was a big improvement over using Google or reading through the instructions myself. And if it was wrong, well, maybe I'll get a bill or a check in the mail, but that was always a possibility and making a mistake on your taxes isn't illegal.
- layer8 2y ago> making a mistake on your taxes isn't illegal. It is when it amounts to tax evasion.
- slibhb 2y agoTax evasion hinges upon intent. If it's a mistake, it's not illegal.
- abduhl 2y ago>> And if it was wrong, well, maybe I'll get a bill or a check in the mail, but that was always a possibility and making a mistake on your taxes isn't illegal. If this is your approach to your taxes then you are probably wasting your time by using either of Google or ChatGPT. Just punch some numbers in to TurboTax based on a quick skim of the buttons, say “good enough for government work,” and wait for a check or a bill in the mail baby.
- slibhb 2y agoI don't want to pay someone for software to do my taxes.
- j-pb 2y agoYou're ignoring the case where I the author want to create a summary of my own work, to be published along side it.
- phil-martin 2y agoIt’s certainly not perfect, but I would definitely not class it as useless in many circumstances Asking it to do a summary on a paper or meeting notes I’m mot familiar with, yes the utility is very limited exactly the way you’ve pointed out. However, asking it to summarise or shorten a paper or meeting notes I’ve been directly involved in - that has enormous utility for me. It provides me a quick starting point to create summaries, and I get to see if the salient points are addressed, and if not, I get to add them in. I’m no a fast writer, and often experience writers block, so having a fast way to start is enourmously useful to me.
- timeon 2y ago> Consider that the alternative to reading the summary often isn't reading the entire text yourself. It's reading nothing. But that could be actually good alternative. Sometimes its simply not worth it. You can loose more time with the tool that will give you uncertain summary.
- ADeerAppeared 2y ago> Consider that the alternative to reading the summary often isn't reading the entire text yourself. It's reading nothing. Having no information is always preferable to having wrong information.
- bal00ns 2y agoDo you find yourself refusing to read articles or papers unless you’re first 100% sure that everything stated in them is absolutely true? Having to approach something with a certain amount of skepticism is not something that was newly introduced with LLM’s.