6 ms·
My guess for the reason behind this is that LLMs have more facts memorized, and thus can make more reasonable and well-researched sounding answers. If you ask a
by metalcrow 1y ago
My guess for the reason behind this is that LLMs have more facts memorized, and thus can make more reasonable and well-researched sounding answers. If you ask an LLM vs a Human "Is a stack in computer science a) a data structure that is first in first out or b) a data structure that is first in last out" the LLM can say stuff resembling "Based on Dijkstra's algorithm proof given in 1943 and the nature of Turing complete languages being traditionally a top-down oriented system, a stack is ..." while a human is just going to say "It's B because that's what a stack is".
- CJefferson 1y agoBased on reading bad AI generated student essays it’s worse than that, LLMs are happy to “fill in the blanks” with whatever made up fact would make their argument look best. Most people can’t lie that smoothly, and most readers don’t check carefully, unless they are already an expert in the area. Any kind of maths proof is particularly bad, they will look convincing and clear until you read them very carefully and see all the holes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- AlexCoventry 1y agoIt depends on the AI. ChatGPT's higher models (o1-pro/o3/o4-mini-high) have some kind of limited capability to detect errors in the user's thinking, and have relatively few hallucinations.
- smeej 1y agoIt's funny you mention this, because my father operates exactly as you describe the LLMs, making facts up on the spot, lying smoothly and keeping track of the lies... ...and he's built his whole career in sales because of it. He despises the existence of Google, because the last thing a pathological bullshitter wants is fact-checking in pockets! It's taken me nearly 40 years to understand that anchoring statements in reality is just a completely meaningless endeavor for him. He does not care what is true. He cares only what is convincing. I've been wondering for about a year now why I feel like I can tell LLM work from human work so much more easily than most people, when the only "tell" I can put my finger on is, "The hair stands up on the back of my neck," but this explains ALL of it.
- MattGaiser 1y agoIn his line of work, it doesn't matter what is true.
- Llamamoe 1y agoI feel like a good half of humanity operates this way, with it being far more prevalent in boomers than younger generations. It doesn't matter what is backed by evidence to them, instead they rely on anecdotes and persuasive quips and factoids. Having a friend who claims to have experienced X and listing off several other anecdotes means more to them than any amount of evidence.
- smeej 1y agoThe truly scary thing to me is watching them start to believe the anecdotes they've stolen from people and presented as their own stories actually did happen to them, as they lose their marbles. I've spent much of my life learning to tell when people are making things up, but telling when they genuinely believe something that's completely wrong is a very different skill. It's especially frustrating when they change the narrative of a real story about something where there were multiple witnesses (e.g., my mom and my siblings), then come to believe the narrative, and then accuse us of conspiring to gaslight them. On the one hand, I get why that would be disorienting and scary, to have a whole group of people telling you you're wrong about something you're sure you remember. On the other hand...karma?
- armchairhacker 1y agoLLMs also never get tired of arguing. They'll respond to every point from a gish-gallop and provide quality-sounding replies to points that are obviously (to an informed person) flawed or seem (but aren't necessarily) mal-intentioned. EDIT: LLMs also aren't egocentric; they'll respond in the other person's style (grammar, tone, and perhaps maintain their "subtext" like assumptions), and they're less likely to omit important information that would be implicit to them but not the other person.
- sitkack 1y agoAny qualities you ascribe to an LLM is part of its RLHF, ask to get irritated or lazy and it will simulate those qualities. They are high dimensional text simulators. They can and do simulate anything.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoI asked an LLM and it said "A stack is a data structure that follows the Last In, First Out (LIFO) principle. This means that the last element added to the stack is the first element to be removed."
- hansmayer 1y agoYikes:( I am so worried about the damage that will be caused by the misuse of these tools. Already a lot of young folks will just mindlessly trust whatever the magic oracle spits out at them. We need to go back to testing people with pen and paper I suppose.
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoI read this and I see a common thinking fallacy, when someone is inclined to believe something a priori they fit the evidence to their a priori beliefs.
- hansmayer 1y agoNo, its fairly simple - I misread
- koakuma-chan 1y agoI mean, is it wrong? It seems correct. Unless I'm missing something.
- hansmayer 1y agoOops, my bad. I seem to have misread. Sorry.
- thinkcritical 1y agoNo, a stack is LIFO like it said. A queue is FIFO or in other words LILO “Last In Last Out”.
- Sharlin 1y agoThe gap between LLM and human cases was greater in the deceptive case. This may, of course, simply reflect the fact that random humans are bad at lying.
- hammock 1y agoReminds me of the horrific state of student debate competitions today where the winning strategy is to incomprehensibly rattle off as many arguments as quickly as possible with strange breathy sounds in between
- azemetre 1y agoDo you have a YouTube video demonstrating this? My only experience with debate is from the TV show Community.
- justonceokay 1y agoThis one is very short but conveys the idea well. Not all debate is like this but it is definitely a real phenomenon https://youtu.be/LMO27PAHjrY https://youtu.be/LMO27PAHjrY
- cwmoore 1y agoA small step for a man, a giantleapfrogmankind.
- OJFord 1y agoHamdiddle-eedah-hamdiddle-ah (do do do do dodododo expi-ali-do-cious) What is the point of that? They're incomprehensible. (For those who haven't watched it: the video just shows people talking very fast, it doesn't explain why, kind of implies it's somehow good or impressive.)
- nimih 1y agoThe point is to win debate tournaments. In particular, it is (or at least was, when I competed in policy debate in high school and college in the 00s) strategically advantageous to maximize the number of distinct arguments, each with their own set of supporting evidence (usually read verbatim from a prepared excerpt of a news article or authoritative reference or whatever), you make within the allocated time. This incentivizes talking extremely quickly, which requires a fair bit of practice to become proficient at (and to understand).
- SoftTalker 1y agoI learned a stack is like a stack of plates in a cafeteria. That seems a better answer than either of those.
- nickpsecurity 1y agoThey also have more persuasive conversations in their pretraining data. That includes tons of marketing material, cons, and bullying. They are also as bold as you want them to be about imitating such tactics. They have no remorse or legal accountability either.
- rstuart4133 1y ago> My guess for the reason behind this is that LLMs have more facts memorized, From https://ai.meta.com/research/cicero/ https://ai.meta.com/research/cicero/ : When playing 40 games against human players, CICERO achieved more than double the average score of the human players and ranked in the top 10% of participants who played more than one game There are not a lot of facts to know when playing diplomacy. It's all about manipulating the other guy with words.