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I find that these conversations on HN end up covering similar positions constantly. I believe that most positions are resolved if 1) you accept that these are
by intended 2y ago
I find that these conversations on HN end up covering similar positions constantly.
I believe that most positions are resolved if
1) you accept that these are fundamentally narrative tools. They build stories, In whatever style you wish. Stories of code, stories of project reports. Stories or conversations.
2) this is balanced by the idea that the core of everything in our shared information economy is Verification.
The reason experts get use out of these tools, is because they can verify when the output is close enough to be indistinguishable from expert effort.
Domain experts also do another level of verification (hopefully) which is to check if the generated content computes correctly as a result - based on their mental model of their domain.
I would predict that that LLMs are deadly in the hands of people who can’t gauge the output, and will end up driving themselves off of a cliff, while experts will be able to use it effectively on tasks where verification of the output has a comparative effort advantage, over the task of creating the output.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gh0stcat 2y agoYou've perfectly captured my experience as well, I typically only trust it and have good experiences with LLMs when I have enough domain expertise to get to at least a 95% confidence the output is correct. (Specific to my domain of work, I don't always need "perfect"). I also can mostly use it as a first pass for getting the idea of where to begin research, after that I lose confidence that the more detailed and advanced content it is giving me is accurate. There is a gray area though where a domain expert might have a false sense of confidence, and over time experience "Skill Drift", where they lose expertise because they are only ever verifying a lossy compression of information, rather than re-setting their context with real world information. I am mostly concerned with that last bit.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoYup succinct summarization of the current state. This works across domains from research to software engineering.
- intended 2y agoNew LinkedIn Post.