11 ms·

Same here. The ability to “talk to an expert” about any topic I’m curious about and ask very specific questions has been invaluable to me. It reminds me of be

by atonse 2y ago

Same here. The ability to “talk to an expert” about any topic I’m curious about and ask very specific questions has been invaluable to me. It reminds me of being a kid and asking my grandpa a million questions, like how light bulbs worked, or what was inside his radio, or how do we have day and night. And before anyone talks about accuracy or hallucinations, these conversations usually are treated as starting off points to then start googling specific terms, people, laws, treaties, etc to dig deeper and verify. Last year during a visit to my first Indian reservation, I had a whole bunch of questions that nobody in person had answers to. And ChatGPT was invaluable in understanding concepts like where a reservation’s autonomy begins and ends. And why certain tribes are richer than others. What happens when someone calls 911 on a reservation. Or speeds. Or wants to start a factory without worrying about import/export rules. And what causes some tribes to lose their language faster than others. And 20 other questions like this. And most of those resulted in google searches to verify the information. But I literally could never do this before. Same this year when I’m visiting family in India. To learn about the politics, the major players, WHY they are considered major players (like the Chief Minister of Bengal or Uttar Pradesh or Maharashtra being major players because of their populations and economies). Criticisms, explanations of laws, etc etc. For insanely curious people who often feel unsatisfied with the answers given by those around them, it’s the greatest thing ever.

stravant 2y ago
One of my favorite successes was getting an LLM to write me a program to graph how I subjectively feel the heat of steam coming off of the noodles I'm pouring the water out from as a function of the ambient temperature. I was wondering which effects were at play and the graph matched my subjective experience well.
1209412comb 2y ago
Semi-related but I find that sometime it just completely ruined a type of conversation. Like as in your example, I would previously asked people "how would 911 handle an US Reservation Area", and watch how my friends think and reason. To me getting a conclusive answer was not a point. Now they just copy & paste Chat GPT, no fun haha.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  That's just the 2020s version of how Google and smartphones ruined the ages-old social pastime of arguing about trivia in a pub :P
- atonse 2y ago
  Yeah it can definitely be a crutch too in some situations. I notice it with my kids where they’ll want to tell me about something but then seek a video or something to show it. Sometimes I have to say “no! just use your words to describe it! I want to hear your description”
  - Hugsun 2y ago
    I think it's good of you to make them critically engage with the subject by verbalizing it themselves. Evidence suggests that video consumption is relatively un-engaging mentally, likely as it demands nothing of you.
stingraycharles 2y ago
For me the problem is that you always need to double-check this particular type of expert, as it can be confidently wrong about pretty much any topic. It's useful as a starting point, not as a definitive expert answer.
- brookst 2y ago
  What human experts do you blindly trust without double checking?
  - CobrastanJorji 2y ago
    Most human experts, when asked about their area of expertise, don't parrot what some guy said as joke on Reddit five years ago. Most lawyers, when you ask them to write a brief, will cite only real cases.
    - spotplay 2y ago
      "Most" is the key word here. In my experience that's also the case for LLMs.
    - Fricken 2y ago
      I coined the term "fancy cruise control" on reddit, as a joke, to describe Autopilot. One of the mods of the self-driving car sub thought the term was so funny he made a joke subreddit for it. A few years later Tesla lawyers invoked the term in court to downplay the capabilities of autopilot in court.
  - shafyy 2y ago
    LLM proponents really have succeeded in moving the overton window on this discussion. "Sure, you cannot trust LLMs, but you cannot trust humans, either".
    - brookst 2y ago
      I don’t think “Overton window” works in that construction. It typically refers to the range of politically acceptable opinions. LLMs are too new to have such a thing. It sounds like you’re an “LLM opponent” (whatever that means) who believes the appropriate standard is infallibility? I don’t even get that line of thinking, but you’re welcome to it. But let’s not pretend this is a decades-long topic with a social consensus that people try to influence.
croes 2y ago
How do you know the answers are correct? More than once I got eloquent answer that are completely wrong.
- brookst 2y ago
  How do you address this problem with people? More than once a real live person has told me something that was wrong,
  - szundi 2y ago
    and people just don't know what they don't know - they just answer sillyness the same way
  - fzeindl 2y ago
    You can divide your approach to asking questions with people (and I do believe this is something people do): 1. You ask someone you can trust for facts and opinions on topics, but you keep in mind that the answer might only be right in 90% of the cases. Also people tend to tell you if the are not sure. 2. For answers you need to rely on you ask people who are legally or professionally responsible if they give you wrong advice: doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, the police etc. ChatGPT can‘t lose it‘s job if it informs you incorrectly.
    - dvdbloc 2y ago
      If ChatGPT keeps giving you wrong answers wouldn’t this make paying customers leave? Effectively “losing its job”. But I guess you could say it acts more like the person that makes stuff up at work if they don’t know, instead of saying they don’t know.
      - Zambyte 2y ago
        > But I guess you could say it acts more like the person that makes stuff up at work if they don’t know, instead of saying they don’t know. I have had language models tell me it doesn't know. Usually when using a RAG-based system like Perplexity, but they can say they don't know when prompted properly.
sollewitt 2y ago
LLMs suffer from the "Igon Value Problem" https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem Similar to reading a pop sci book, you're getting an entertainment from a thing with no actual understanding of the source material rather than an education.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Zambyte 2y ago
  So they have reached human level intelligence :D
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Oh so you mean I have at my fingertips a tool that can generate me a Scientific American issue on any topic I fancy? That's still some non-negative utility right there :).
  - scott_w 2y ago
    A Scientific American issue where the authors have no idea that they don’t know a topic so just completely make up the content, including the sources. At least magazine authors are reading the sources before misunderstanding the content (or asking the authors what the research means). I don’t even trust the summaries after watching LLMs think we have meetings about my boss’s cat just because I mentioned it once as she sniffed the camera…
    - wilg 2y ago
      Its good to not trust it but that's not the same as it having no idea. There is a lot of value in being close for many tasks!
      - scott_w 2y ago
        I think it’s a very dangerous place to be in an area you’re not familiar with. I can read Python code and figure out if it’s what I want or not. I couldn’t read an article about physics and tell you what’s accurate and what’s not. Legal Eagle has a great video on how ChatGPT was used to present a legal argument, including made up case references! Stuff like this is why I’m wary to rely on it in areas outside of my expertise.
zwnow 2y ago
Talk to an expert? You are aware of them hallucinating right?
delusional 2y ago
> And most of those resulted in google searches to verify the information. But I literally could never do this before. Could you elaborate on this? What happened before when you had that type of questions? What was stopping you from tamping "911 emergency indian reservation" into google and learning that the "Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation" has their own 911 dispatch? In my youth, before the internet was everywhere, we were taught that we could always ask the nearest librarian and that they would help us find some useful information. The information was all there, in books, the challenge was to know which books to read. As I got older, and Google started to become more available, we were taught how to filter out bad information. The challenge shifted from finding information into how not to find misinformation. When I hear what you say here, I'm reminded of that shift. There doesn't seem to be any fundamental change there, expect may that it makes it harder not to find misinformation by obscuring the source of the information, which I was taught was an important indicator of its legitimacy.
- atonse 2y ago
  The change is that when I am immersed in that scenario (on holiday and without any normal life distractions so I can truly learn about this topic), then my mind is the most curious about that topic. The alternative is that when I return from vacation, I get back to the busy life and am only reminded of these questions in casual conversations.
ithadtobe119 2y ago
(throwaway account because of what I'm about to say, but it needs to be said) While my main use case for LLMs is coding just like most people here, there are lots of areas that are being ignored. Did you know llama 3.X models have been trained as psychotherapists? It's been invaluable to dump and discuss feelings with it in ways I wouldn't trust any regular person. When real therapists also cost more than what people can afford (and will have you committed if you say the wrong thing), this ends up being a very good option. And you know how escorts are traditionally known as therapists lite? Yeah, it works in reverse too. The main use case most are sleeping on is, well, emotional porn and erotic role play. Let me explain. My generation (i.e. Z) doesn't do drugs, we don't drink, we don't go out. Why? Because we can hang on discord, play games, scroll tiktok and goon to our heart's content. 60% of gen Z men are single, 30% women. The loneliness epidemic hit hard along with covid. It's basically a match made in heaven for LLMs that can pretend to love you, like everything about you, ask you about your day, and of course, can sext on a superhuman level. When you're lonely enough, the fact that it's all just simulated doesn't matter one bit. It's so interesting that the porn industry is usually on the forefront of innovation, adopting blueray and hddvd and whatnot before anyone else, but they're largely asleep on this and so is everyone else who doesn't want to touch of it with a 10ft pole. Well except maybe c.ai to some extent. The business case is there and it's a wide open market that OAI, Anthropic, Google and the rest won't ever stoop down to themselves, so the bar for entry is far lower. Right now the best experience is known to be heading over to r/locallama by doing it yourself, but there's millions to be made for someone who improves it and figures out a platform to sell it on in the next few years. It can be done well enough with existing properly tuned, open weight, apache licensed LLMs and progress isn't stopping.
- hawk_ 2y ago
  While I empathize with the therapeutic effects, wouldn't this create even more powerful echo chambers? May be so many men and women of your generation are single because of already established echo chambers. It's in our nature to crave outside acceptance of who we are. But may be taken to extreme, when we stop being wanting to be challenged at all we could lose touch with reality, society...
  - 2y ago
netdevphoenix 2y ago
> The ability to “talk to an expert” about any topic I’m curious about and ask very specific questions has been invaluable to me. It is dangerous to assume that LLMs are experts on any topic. With or without quotes. You are getting a super fast journalist intern with a huge memory but inability to reason critically, lacking understanding about anything and huge unreliability when it comes to answering questions (you can get completely different answers to the same question depending on how you answer it and sometimes even the same question can get you different answers). LLMs are very useful and are a true game changer. But calling that expertise is a disservice to the true experts.
- pera 2y ago
  It's scary to think that we are moving into this direction: I can see how in the next few years politicians and judges will use LLMs as neutral experts. And all in the hand of a few big tech corporations...
  - SamPatt 2y ago
    They aren't just in the hands of big corporations though. The open source, local LLM community is absolutely buzzing right now. Yes, the big companies are making the models, but enough of them are open weights that they can be fine tuned and run however you like. I think LLMs genuinely do present an opportunity to be neutral experts, or at the least neutral third parties. If they're run in completely transparent ways, they may be preferable to humans in some circumstances.
    - svieira 2y ago
      The whole problem is that they are not neutral. They token-complete based on the corpus that was fed into them and the dimensions that were extracted out of those corpuses and the curve-fitting done to those dimensions. Being "completely transparent" means exposing _all_ of that, but that's too large for anyone to reasonably understand without becoming an expert in that particular model. And then we're right back to "trusting expert human beings" again.
mort96 2y ago
The ability to "talk to an expert" on any topic would indeed have been very useful. Sadly, we have the ability to talk to something which tries very very hard to appear as an expert despite knowing nothing about the subject. A human who knows some things pretty well but will talk about stuff they don't know with the same certainty and authority as they walk about stuff they know is a worthless conversation partner. In my experience,"AI" is that but significantly worse.
HPsquared 2y ago
The amount of value creation is off the scale. It's like when people started using Google, or Google maps.
Hugsun 2y ago
I mostly feel sorry for grandpa, he'll receive much less of these questions, if any. This is partially because I expect to become this grandpa and already suspect that some people aren't asking me questions they would be, if they had no access to chatgpt.
greentxt 2y ago
Libraries and books were pretty cool too though. You could go to a library and find information on anything and a librarian would help you. Not super efficient but good for humans.
ben_w 2y ago
> The ability to “talk to an expert” about any topic I’m curious about and ask very specific questions has been invaluable to me. Even the ability to talk to a university work placement student/intern in any topic is very useful, never mind true experts. Even Google's indexing and Wikipedia opened up a huge quantity of low-hanging fruit for knowledge sharing; Even to the extent that LLMs must be treated with caution because the default mode is over-confident, and even to the extent one can call them a "blurry JPEG of the internet", LLMs likewise make available a lot of low-hanging fruit before we get to an AI that reasons more like we do from limited examples.
cardanome 2y ago
In the not so distant past we already had a tool that allowed us to look up any question that came into our minds. It was super fast and always provided you with sources. It never hallucinated. It was completely free except for some advertisement. You could build a whole career out of being good at using it. It was a search engine. Young people might not remember but there was a time when Google wasn't shite but actually magic.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > we already had a tool that allowed us to look up any question that came into our minds … It never hallucinated. … It was a search engine. Except for all the times the search results were wrong answers. https://searchengineland.com/when-google-gets-it-wrong-direct-answers-with-debatable-incorrect-weird-content-223073 https://searchengineland.com/when-google-gets-it-wrong-direc...
  - cardanome 2y ago
    Being biased is not the same as hallucinating. LLMs have both problems. At least you could check whether a source was reputable and where the bias was. With LLM's the connection between the answer and the source is completely lost. You can't even tell why it answered a certain way.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > Being biased is not the same as hallucinating. LLMs have both problems. I didn't deny either of those things, I said that search engines also hallucinate — my actual link gave several examples, including "King of the United States" -> "Barack Obama". Just because it showed the link to breitbart doesn't mean it was not hallucinating. > At least you could check whether a source was reputable and where the bias was. The former does not imply the latter. You could tell where a search engine got an answer from, but not which answers were hidden — an argument that I saw some on the American right make to criticise Google for failing to show their version of events. > With LLM's the connection between the answer and the source is completely lost. You can't even tell why it answered a certain way. Also not so. The free version of ChatGPT supports search directly, so it allows you to have references.
cess11 2y ago
I've been "talking" quite a bit with Ollama models, they're often confidently wrong about Wikipedia level stuff and even if the system prompt is explicitly constrained in this regard. Usually I get Wikipedia as understood by a twelve year old with the self-confidence of adult Peter Thiel. If it isn't factually wrong, it's often subtly wrong in the way that a cursory glance at some web search results is unlikely to rectify. It takes more time for me to verify the stuff they output than grabbing a book off Anna's Archive or my payed collections and looking something up immediately. I'd rather spend that time making notes than waiting for the LLM to respond and double checking it.
coliveira 2y ago
How do you know the AI didn't hallucinate the answers? For topics like these, where there is little information available, the probability of hallucination is very high.
footy 2y ago
> For insanely curious people who often feel unsatisfied with the answers given by those around them, it’s the greatest thing ever. As an insanely curious person who's often unsatisfied with the answers given by those around me, I can't agree. The greatest thing ever is libraries. I don't want to outsource my thinking to a computer any more than I want to outsource it to the people around me.

by atonse 2y ago

stravant 2y ago

One of my favorite successes was getting an LLM to write me a program to graph how I subjectively feel the heat of steam coming off of the noodles I'm pouring the water out from as a function of the ambient temperature. I was wondering which effects were at play and the graph matched my subjective experience well.

1209412comb 2y ago

Semi-related but I find that sometime it just completely ruined a type of conversation. Like as in your example, I would previously asked people "how would 911 handle an US Reservation Area", and watch how my friends think and reason. To me getting a conclusive answer was not a point. Now they just copy & paste Chat GPT, no fun haha.

Sharlin 2y ago
That's just the 2020s version of how Google and smartphones ruined the ages-old social pastime of arguing about trivia in a pub :P
atonse 2y ago
Yeah it can definitely be a crutch too in some situations. I notice it with my kids where they’ll want to tell me about something but then seek a video or something to show it. Sometimes I have to say “no! just use your words to describe it! I want to hear your description”
- Hugsun 2y ago
  I think it's good of you to make them critically engage with the subject by verbalizing it themselves. Evidence suggests that video consumption is relatively un-engaging mentally, likely as it demands nothing of you.

stingraycharles 2y ago

For me the problem is that you always need to double-check this particular type of expert, as it can be confidently wrong about pretty much any topic. It's useful as a starting point, not as a definitive expert answer.

brookst 2y ago
What human experts do you blindly trust without double checking?
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  Most human experts, when asked about their area of expertise, don't parrot what some guy said as joke on Reddit five years ago. Most lawyers, when you ask them to write a brief, will cite only real cases.
  - spotplay 2y ago
    "Most" is the key word here. In my experience that's also the case for LLMs.
  - Fricken 2y ago
    I coined the term "fancy cruise control" on reddit, as a joke, to describe Autopilot. One of the mods of the self-driving car sub thought the term was so funny he made a joke subreddit for it. A few years later Tesla lawyers invoked the term in court to downplay the capabilities of autopilot in court.
- shafyy 2y ago
  LLM proponents really have succeeded in moving the overton window on this discussion. "Sure, you cannot trust LLMs, but you cannot trust humans, either".
  - brookst 2y ago
    I don’t think “Overton window” works in that construction. It typically refers to the range of politically acceptable opinions. LLMs are too new to have such a thing. It sounds like you’re an “LLM opponent” (whatever that means) who believes the appropriate standard is infallibility? I don’t even get that line of thinking, but you’re welcome to it. But let’s not pretend this is a decades-long topic with a social consensus that people try to influence.

croes 2y ago

How do you know the answers are correct? More than once I got eloquent answer that are completely wrong.

brookst 2y ago
How do you address this problem with people? More than once a real live person has told me something that was wrong,
- szundi 2y ago
  and people just don't know what they don't know - they just answer sillyness the same way
- fzeindl 2y ago
  You can divide your approach to asking questions with people (and I do believe this is something people do): 1. You ask someone you can trust for facts and opinions on topics, but you keep in mind that the answer might only be right in 90% of the cases. Also people tend to tell you if the are not sure. 2. For answers you need to rely on you ask people who are legally or professionally responsible if they give you wrong advice: doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, the police etc. ChatGPT can‘t lose it‘s job if it informs you incorrectly.
  - dvdbloc 2y ago
    If ChatGPT keeps giving you wrong answers wouldn’t this make paying customers leave? Effectively “losing its job”. But I guess you could say it acts more like the person that makes stuff up at work if they don’t know, instead of saying they don’t know.
    - Zambyte 2y ago
      > But I guess you could say it acts more like the person that makes stuff up at work if they don’t know, instead of saying they don’t know. I have had language models tell me it doesn't know. Usually when using a RAG-based system like Perplexity, but they can say they don't know when prompted properly.

sollewitt 2y ago

LLMs suffer from the "Igon Value Problem" https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem Similar to reading a pop sci book, you're getting an entertainment from a thing with no actual understanding of the source material rather than an education.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Zambyte 2y ago
So they have reached human level intelligence :D
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Oh so you mean I have at my fingertips a tool that can generate me a Scientific American issue on any topic I fancy? That's still some non-negative utility right there :).
- scott_w 2y ago
  A Scientific American issue where the authors have no idea that they don’t know a topic so just completely make up the content, including the sources. At least magazine authors are reading the sources before misunderstanding the content (or asking the authors what the research means). I don’t even trust the summaries after watching LLMs think we have meetings about my boss’s cat just because I mentioned it once as she sniffed the camera…
  - wilg 2y ago
    Its good to not trust it but that's not the same as it having no idea. There is a lot of value in being close for many tasks!
    - scott_w 2y ago
      I think it’s a very dangerous place to be in an area you’re not familiar with. I can read Python code and figure out if it’s what I want or not. I couldn’t read an article about physics and tell you what’s accurate and what’s not. Legal Eagle has a great video on how ChatGPT was used to present a legal argument, including made up case references! Stuff like this is why I’m wary to rely on it in areas outside of my expertise.

zwnow 2y ago

Talk to an expert? You are aware of them hallucinating right?

delusional 2y ago

> And most of those resulted in google searches to verify the information. But I literally could never do this before. Could you elaborate on this? What happened before when you had that type of questions? What was stopping you from tamping "911 emergency indian reservation" into google and learning that the "Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation" has their own 911 dispatch? In my youth, before the internet was everywhere, we were taught that we could always ask the nearest librarian and that they would help us find some useful information. The information was all there, in books, the challenge was to know which books to read. As I got older, and Google started to become more available, we were taught how to filter out bad information. The challenge shifted from finding information into how not to find misinformation. When I hear what you say here, I'm reminded of that shift. There doesn't seem to be any fundamental change there, expect may that it makes it harder not to find misinformation by obscuring the source of the information, which I was taught was an important indicator of its legitimacy.

atonse 2y ago
The change is that when I am immersed in that scenario (on holiday and without any normal life distractions so I can truly learn about this topic), then my mind is the most curious about that topic. The alternative is that when I return from vacation, I get back to the busy life and am only reminded of these questions in casual conversations.

ithadtobe119 2y ago

(throwaway account because of what I'm about to say, but it needs to be said) While my main use case for LLMs is coding just like most people here, there are lots of areas that are being ignored. Did you know llama 3.X models have been trained as psychotherapists? It's been invaluable to dump and discuss feelings with it in ways I wouldn't trust any regular person. When real therapists also cost more than what people can afford (and will have you committed if you say the wrong thing), this ends up being a very good option. And you know how escorts are traditionally known as therapists lite? Yeah, it works in reverse too. The main use case most are sleeping on is, well, emotional porn and erotic role play. Let me explain. My generation (i.e. Z) doesn't do drugs, we don't drink, we don't go out. Why? Because we can hang on discord, play games, scroll tiktok and goon to our heart's content. 60% of gen Z men are single, 30% women. The loneliness epidemic hit hard along with covid. It's basically a match made in heaven for LLMs that can pretend to love you, like everything about you, ask you about your day, and of course, can sext on a superhuman level. When you're lonely enough, the fact that it's all just simulated doesn't matter one bit. It's so interesting that the porn industry is usually on the forefront of innovation, adopting blueray and hddvd and whatnot before anyone else, but they're largely asleep on this and so is everyone else who doesn't want to touch of it with a 10ft pole. Well except maybe c.ai to some extent. The business case is there and it's a wide open market that OAI, Anthropic, Google and the rest won't ever stoop down to themselves, so the bar for entry is far lower. Right now the best experience is known to be heading over to r/locallama by doing it yourself, but there's millions to be made for someone who improves it and figures out a platform to sell it on in the next few years. It can be done well enough with existing properly tuned, open weight, apache licensed LLMs and progress isn't stopping.

hawk_ 2y ago
While I empathize with the therapeutic effects, wouldn't this create even more powerful echo chambers? May be so many men and women of your generation are single because of already established echo chambers. It's in our nature to crave outside acceptance of who we are. But may be taken to extreme, when we stop being wanting to be challenged at all we could lose touch with reality, society...
- 2y ago

netdevphoenix 2y ago

> The ability to “talk to an expert” about any topic I’m curious about and ask very specific questions has been invaluable to me. It is dangerous to assume that LLMs are experts on any topic. With or without quotes. You are getting a super fast journalist intern with a huge memory but inability to reason critically, lacking understanding about anything and huge unreliability when it comes to answering questions (you can get completely different answers to the same question depending on how you answer it and sometimes even the same question can get you different answers). LLMs are very useful and are a true game changer. But calling that expertise is a disservice to the true experts.

pera 2y ago
It's scary to think that we are moving into this direction: I can see how in the next few years politicians and judges will use LLMs as neutral experts. And all in the hand of a few big tech corporations...
- SamPatt 2y ago
  They aren't just in the hands of big corporations though. The open source, local LLM community is absolutely buzzing right now. Yes, the big companies are making the models, but enough of them are open weights that they can be fine tuned and run however you like. I think LLMs genuinely do present an opportunity to be neutral experts, or at the least neutral third parties. If they're run in completely transparent ways, they may be preferable to humans in some circumstances.
  - svieira 2y ago
    The whole problem is that they are not neutral. They token-complete based on the corpus that was fed into them and the dimensions that were extracted out of those corpuses and the curve-fitting done to those dimensions. Being "completely transparent" means exposing _all_ of that, but that's too large for anyone to reasonably understand without becoming an expert in that particular model. And then we're right back to "trusting expert human beings" again.

mort96 2y ago

The ability to "talk to an expert" on any topic would indeed have been very useful. Sadly, we have the ability to talk to something which tries very very hard to appear as an expert despite knowing nothing about the subject. A human who knows some things pretty well but will talk about stuff they don't know with the same certainty and authority as they walk about stuff they know is a worthless conversation partner. In my experience,"AI" is that but significantly worse.

HPsquared 2y ago

The amount of value creation is off the scale. It's like when people started using Google, or Google maps.

Hugsun 2y ago

I mostly feel sorry for grandpa, he'll receive much less of these questions, if any. This is partially because I expect to become this grandpa and already suspect that some people aren't asking me questions they would be, if they had no access to chatgpt.

greentxt 2y ago

Libraries and books were pretty cool too though. You could go to a library and find information on anything and a librarian would help you. Not super efficient but good for humans.

ben_w 2y ago

> The ability to “talk to an expert” about any topic I’m curious about and ask very specific questions has been invaluable to me. Even the ability to talk to a university work placement student/intern in any topic is very useful, never mind true experts. Even Google's indexing and Wikipedia opened up a huge quantity of low-hanging fruit for knowledge sharing; Even to the extent that LLMs must be treated with caution because the default mode is over-confident, and even to the extent one can call them a "blurry JPEG of the internet", LLMs likewise make available a lot of low-hanging fruit before we get to an AI that reasons more like we do from limited examples.

cardanome 2y ago

In the not so distant past we already had a tool that allowed us to look up any question that came into our minds. It was super fast and always provided you with sources. It never hallucinated. It was completely free except for some advertisement. You could build a whole career out of being good at using it. It was a search engine. Young people might not remember but there was a time when Google wasn't shite but actually magic.

ben_w 2y ago
> we already had a tool that allowed us to look up any question that came into our minds … It never hallucinated. … It was a search engine. Except for all the times the search results were wrong answers. https://searchengineland.com/when-google-gets-it-wrong-direct-answers-with-debatable-incorrect-weird-content-223073 https://searchengineland.com/when-google-gets-it-wrong-direc...
- cardanome 2y ago
  Being biased is not the same as hallucinating. LLMs have both problems. At least you could check whether a source was reputable and where the bias was. With LLM's the connection between the answer and the source is completely lost. You can't even tell why it answered a certain way.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Being biased is not the same as hallucinating. LLMs have both problems. I didn't deny either of those things, I said that search engines also hallucinate — my actual link gave several examples, including "King of the United States" -> "Barack Obama". Just because it showed the link to breitbart doesn't mean it was not hallucinating. > At least you could check whether a source was reputable and where the bias was. The former does not imply the latter. You could tell where a search engine got an answer from, but not which answers were hidden — an argument that I saw some on the American right make to criticise Google for failing to show their version of events. > With LLM's the connection between the answer and the source is completely lost. You can't even tell why it answered a certain way. Also not so. The free version of ChatGPT supports search directly, so it allows you to have references.

cess11 2y ago

I've been "talking" quite a bit with Ollama models, they're often confidently wrong about Wikipedia level stuff and even if the system prompt is explicitly constrained in this regard. Usually I get Wikipedia as understood by a twelve year old with the self-confidence of adult Peter Thiel. If it isn't factually wrong, it's often subtly wrong in the way that a cursory glance at some web search results is unlikely to rectify. It takes more time for me to verify the stuff they output than grabbing a book off Anna's Archive or my payed collections and looking something up immediately. I'd rather spend that time making notes than waiting for the LLM to respond and double checking it.

coliveira 2y ago

How do you know the AI didn't hallucinate the answers? For topics like these, where there is little information available, the probability of hallucination is very high.

footy 2y ago

> For insanely curious people who often feel unsatisfied with the answers given by those around them, it’s the greatest thing ever. As an insanely curious person who's often unsatisfied with the answers given by those around me, I can't agree. The greatest thing ever is libraries. I don't want to outsource my thinking to a computer any more than I want to outsource it to the people around me.