3 ms·
The sell of Wikipedia was never "we'll think so you don't have to", it was never going to disarm you of your skepticism and critical thought, and you can actual
by camgunz 2y ago
The sell of Wikipedia was never "we'll think so you don't have to", it was never going to disarm you of your skepticism and critical thought, and you can actually check the sources. LLMs are sold as "replace knowledge work(ers)", you cannot check their sources, and the only way you can check their work is by going to something like Wikipedia. They're just fundamentally different things.
- trashtester 2y agoWikipedia is one of the better sources out there for topics that are not seen as political. For politically loaded topics, though, Wikipedia has become increasingly biased towards one side over the past 10-15 years.
- 4ggr0 2y agosource: the other side (conveniently works in any direction)
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> The sell of Wikipedia was never "we'll think so you don't have to", it was never going to disarm you of your skepticism and critical thought, and you can actually check the sources. You can check them, but Wikipedia doesn't care what they say. When I checked a citation on the French Toast page, and noted that the source said the opposite of what Wikipedia did by annotating that citation with [failed verification], an editor showed up to remove that annotation and scold me that the only thing that mattered was whether the source existed, not what it might or might not say.
- camgunz 2y agoI feel like I hear a lot of criticism about Wikipedia editors, but isn't Wikipedia overall pretty good? I'm not gonna defend every editor action or whatever, but I think the product stands for itself.
- rcxdude 2y agoIt's scored better than other encyclopedias it has been compared against, which is something.
- gonzobonzo 2y agoWikipedia is overall pretty good, but it sometimes contains erroneous information. LLMs are overall pretty good, but they sometimes contain erroneous information. The weird part is when people get really concerned that someone might treat the former as a reliable source, but then turn around and argue that people should treat the latter as a reliable source.
- camgunz 2y agoI had a moment of pique where I was just gonna copy paste my reply to this rehash of your original point that is non-responsive to what I wrote, but I've found myself. Instead, I will link to the Wikipedia article for Equivocation [0] and ChatGPT's answer to "are wikipedia and LLMs alike?" [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation [1]: https://chatgpt.com/share/67e6adf3-3598-8003-8ccd-68564b7194d8 https://chatgpt.com/share/67e6adf3-3598-8003-8ccd-68564b7194...
- kragen 2y agoWikipedia occasionally has errors, which are usually minor. The LLMs I've tried occasionally get things right, but mostly emit limitless streams of plausible-sounding lies. Your comment paints them as much more similar than they are.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoIn my experience, it's really common for wikipedia to have errors, but it's true that they tend to be minor. And yes, LLMs mostly just produce crazy gibberish. They're clearly worse than wikipedia. But I don't think wikipedia is meeting a standard it should be proud of.
- 2y ago