4 ms·

The day can’t come fast enough where we just see things like this as trivial misuse of the tool— like using a hammer to drive in a screw. We use the hammer for

The day can’t come fast enough where we just see things like this as trivial misuse of the tool— like using a hammer to drive in a screw. We use the hammer for nails and the screwdriver for screws. We use LLM for exploring data with language, and our brains for reasoning.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
> We use LLM for exploring data with language, and our brains for reasoning I know this is very cynical of me, but I am becoming very convinced that this is actually the biggest draw to AI for a lot of people They don't want to use their brains People talk about how it can summarize long text for them. This is framed as being a time saver, but I'm positive for a lot of people they just don't want to read the full text It can generate images for people who don't want to learn how to draw, or save them money by not hiring artists
- hooverd 2y ago
  If you're generating long text to send to people and summarizing long text that people send to you, you're just wasting other people's time. They also talk about democratizing art- are they using LLMs' probably vast corpus of art feedback to improve their own work? Well, no.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    Yes. Please. Stop. AI summaries are often terrible and miss anything resembling a subtle point. Generating long form from a summary is just literally packing the summary with obvious information and made up bullshit. LLMs generate text, not knowledge. They are great for parsing human culture… but not good at thinking.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    The only proper and actually useful use-case for LLM-summarized text I've seen so far was the one I first saw used in ChatGPT's UI itself. All the rest, including Apple's notifications, was so obviously problematic that it smells "investment bubble" from a thousand miles.
- dinfinity 2y ago
  > This is framed as being a time saver, but I'm positive for a lot of people they just don't want to read the full text Yes, those can be very much the same thing and it does not mean that people don't want to use their brains. If I encounter a long article and have serious doubts as to whether it will be worth my time, reading a summary first helps a lot. In fact, now that we're on the subject: _Proper_ journalism is _supposed_ to provide the key points at the beginning of the text (as opposed to some silly information free nonsense meant to 'set the scene' or 'hook you in'). Don't bury the lead/lede. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) Half of the value of reading things via HN is seeing the top comment be a summary of the key points of the linked content. It's very, very valuable in this day and age where good writing has taken a back seat to making money.
ColinEberhardt 2y ago
> We use the hammer for nails and the screwdriver for screws The difference is, the hammers and screwdrivers perform a single task, and have been designed and optimised for that specific task. LLMs are much more versatile and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Yet, at the same time, their capabilities are ill defined.
- corytheboyd 2y ago
  I know my example is very contrived, I wasn’t trying very hard, just went with the first thing that came to mind. > LLMs are much more versatile and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Yet, at the same time, their capabilities are ill defined. That’s my point, I want to skip to the part where we know what LLMs are good for, what they are bad for, and just consider them another tool at our disposal. We’re still in the phase of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, and it is exhausting more often than not.
  - ColinEberhardt 2y ago
    > That’s my point, I want to skip to the part where we know what LLMs are good for, what they are bad for, and just consider them another tool at our disposal. Totally agree with that.
    - nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
      Wish there was a sober source of discussion around this, alas we're bombarded with "AGI is here" articles from the NYT and "it's so over for programmers" 24/7.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    My take is: GOOD: Language parsing. BAD: Information retrieval. We are now seeing the LLM is used to parse the question and retrieve information from elsewhere. Before you would ask the LLM who the president of the US was and the LLM would autocomplete. Now the LLM constructs a query through a tool and searches the internet for an answer. It parsed the entire internet to have enough data to learn about language, but you don't necessarily want to depend on what it learned, other than to parse the syntax of the user.
K0balt 2y ago
I just think of LLMs as “what if my uncle Steve went to college” because it’s like that. And if I’m using quants it’s q5kM =1 beer. Q4=6 beers Still, drunk , educated uncle Steve is pretty handy sometimes.
drewcoo 2y ago
> We use LLM for exploring data with language That seems problematic, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HARKing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HARKing

bluefirebrand 2y ago

> We use LLM for exploring data with language, and our brains for reasoning I know this is very cynical of me, but I am becoming very convinced that this is actually the biggest draw to AI for a lot of people They don't want to use their brains People talk about how it can summarize long text for them. This is framed as being a time saver, but I'm positive for a lot of people they just don't want to read the full text It can generate images for people who don't want to learn how to draw, or save them money by not hiring artists

hooverd 2y ago
If you're generating long text to send to people and summarizing long text that people send to you, you're just wasting other people's time. They also talk about democratizing art- are they using LLMs' probably vast corpus of art feedback to improve their own work? Well, no.
- K0balt 2y ago
  Yes. Please. Stop. AI summaries are often terrible and miss anything resembling a subtle point. Generating long form from a summary is just literally packing the summary with obvious information and made up bullshit. LLMs generate text, not knowledge. They are great for parsing human culture… but not good at thinking.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  The only proper and actually useful use-case for LLM-summarized text I've seen so far was the one I first saw used in ChatGPT's UI itself. All the rest, including Apple's notifications, was so obviously problematic that it smells "investment bubble" from a thousand miles.
dinfinity 2y ago
> This is framed as being a time saver, but I'm positive for a lot of people they just don't want to read the full text Yes, those can be very much the same thing and it does not mean that people don't want to use their brains. If I encounter a long article and have serious doubts as to whether it will be worth my time, reading a summary first helps a lot. In fact, now that we're on the subject: _Proper_ journalism is _supposed_ to provide the key points at the beginning of the text (as opposed to some silly information free nonsense meant to 'set the scene' or 'hook you in'). Don't bury the lead/lede. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) Half of the value of reading things via HN is seeing the top comment be a summary of the key points of the linked content. It's very, very valuable in this day and age where good writing has taken a back seat to making money.

ColinEberhardt 2y ago

> We use the hammer for nails and the screwdriver for screws The difference is, the hammers and screwdrivers perform a single task, and have been designed and optimised for that specific task. LLMs are much more versatile and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Yet, at the same time, their capabilities are ill defined.

corytheboyd 2y ago
I know my example is very contrived, I wasn’t trying very hard, just went with the first thing that came to mind. > LLMs are much more versatile and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Yet, at the same time, their capabilities are ill defined. That’s my point, I want to skip to the part where we know what LLMs are good for, what they are bad for, and just consider them another tool at our disposal. We’re still in the phase of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, and it is exhausting more often than not.
- ColinEberhardt 2y ago
  > That’s my point, I want to skip to the part where we know what LLMs are good for, what they are bad for, and just consider them another tool at our disposal. Totally agree with that.
  - nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
    Wish there was a sober source of discussion around this, alas we're bombarded with "AGI is here" articles from the NYT and "it's so over for programmers" 24/7.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  My take is: GOOD: Language parsing. BAD: Information retrieval. We are now seeing the LLM is used to parse the question and retrieve information from elsewhere. Before you would ask the LLM who the president of the US was and the LLM would autocomplete. Now the LLM constructs a query through a tool and searches the internet for an answer. It parsed the entire internet to have enough data to learn about language, but you don't necessarily want to depend on what it learned, other than to parse the syntax of the user.

K0balt 2y ago

I just think of LLMs as “what if my uncle Steve went to college” because it’s like that. And if I’m using quants it’s q5kM =1 beer. Q4=6 beers Still, drunk , educated uncle Steve is pretty handy sometimes.

drewcoo 2y ago

> We use LLM for exploring data with language That seems problematic, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HARKing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HARKing