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> How would you trust that the agent is following the criteria, and how sure that the criteria is specific enough? How do you know if a spam filter heuristic w

> How would you trust that the agent is following the criteria, and how sure that the criteria is specific enough? How do you know if a spam filter heuristic works only when intended? You test it. Hard. On the thousands of emails in your archive, on edge-cases you prepare manually, and on the incoming mails. If it doesn't work for some cases, write tests that test for this, adjust prompt and run the test suite. It won't ever work in 100% of all cases, but neither do spam filters and we still use them.

th0ma5 2y ago
This is the location of the arguments. When they work they're "magical" but when they don't work "well people or other things are just as bad" ... And this means that you just cannot reason with the mysticism people have surrounding these things because show stopper problems are minimized or it is implied that they can somehow be reduced. The whole rest of computing does not work this way. So, you can't get the magic of reliable systems from probabilistic outcomes, and people confusing these things are seriously holding back honest and real discussions about probabilistic systems. (Not to harp on you specifically here, the whole language of the field is seriously confusing these issues)
- famouswaffles 2y ago
  It's one thing if you're up against the staunch reliability of traditional algorithmic systems but if you're not then it's just silly to hang on it. You are not getting 100% on email handling whatever method you wish to use. You compare LLMs or probabilistic systems to the best of your alternatives. There are niches where the lack of complete reliability would be a deal breaker. This isn't one of them and it would be weird to act like it were. People aren't sweeping anything under the rug. It simply just isn't a showstopper.
  - th0ma5 2y ago
    I don't think people are aware of the line at all. You ask five different people which things are reliable in any of these systems and you'll get five different guesses. C'mon here.
    - famouswaffles 2y ago
      That's not what i'm talking about though. The point is that for spam detection, LLMs are up against other probabilistic measures. No-one sane is detecting spam with if-then's. You simply do not have the luxury of rigid reliability.

th0ma5 2y ago

This is the location of the arguments. When they work they're "magical" but when they don't work "well people or other things are just as bad" ... And this means that you just cannot reason with the mysticism people have surrounding these things because show stopper problems are minimized or it is implied that they can somehow be reduced. The whole rest of computing does not work this way. So, you can't get the magic of reliable systems from probabilistic outcomes, and people confusing these things are seriously holding back honest and real discussions about probabilistic systems. (Not to harp on you specifically here, the whole language of the field is seriously confusing these issues)

famouswaffles 2y ago
It's one thing if you're up against the staunch reliability of traditional algorithmic systems but if you're not then it's just silly to hang on it. You are not getting 100% on email handling whatever method you wish to use. You compare LLMs or probabilistic systems to the best of your alternatives. There are niches where the lack of complete reliability would be a deal breaker. This isn't one of them and it would be weird to act like it were. People aren't sweeping anything under the rug. It simply just isn't a showstopper.
- th0ma5 2y ago
  I don't think people are aware of the line at all. You ask five different people which things are reliable in any of these systems and you'll get five different guesses. C'mon here.
  - famouswaffles 2y ago
    That's not what i'm talking about though. The point is that for spam detection, LLMs are up against other probabilistic measures. No-one sane is detecting spam with if-then's. You simply do not have the luxury of rigid reliability.