5 ms·
It seems very hard to maintain the belief that LLMs are useless in the face of the fact that millions of people are using them. It's very much "nobody goes the
by empath75 1y ago
It seems very hard to maintain the belief that LLMs are useless in the face of the fact that millions of people are using them. It's very much "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"
- tptacek 1y agoI think you'd be crazy to say LLMs are blockchain-style hype when it comes to software development but I don't begrudge anybody who believes they're not currently workable for the kinds of problems they work on; I think reasonable people can disagree about how ready for prime time they are for production software development. But for math tutoring? If you claim LLM math tutoring is demoware, you're very clearly telling on yourself.
- tjr 1y agoI have seen LLMs fabricate bogus calculations; I personally would be hesitant to use an LLM as my one and only source of math learning, but I suppose using it in conjunction with something like Math Academy mitigates that issue? You've clearly had good success here, but any problem areas with the LLM to watch out for?
- badsectoracula 1y agoI wouldn't trust the LLM's raw output to be correct, but math is provable and if there was a filter between the LLM's output (which would be in some more rigid/structured format, not free form text) and whatever the user sees that tries to prove the LLM's output is correct (and try again if it goes wrong[0]), then i can see LLMs being perfectly fine for that. In fact i'd say in general anything that LLMs produce that can be "statically checked" in some way, can be fine to rely on. You most likely need more than a chat interface though, but i think in general it is plausible for such solutions to exit. [0] hopefully it wont end up always failing, ending up in an infinite loop :-P
- csmeyer 1y ago(OP) In my post, I actually ask the question of whether a student would _want_ to interact with the tutor, not if the tutor is capable of providing good instruction. These are drastically different critiques.
- rsynnott 1y agoOn that basis you'll also be adopting TCM, and homeopathy, and dowsing, and all major religions simultaneously, and all major fad diets simultaneously? Like, "lots of people like this thing and think it is helping them" is not terribly strong evidence that it is actually helping them. It's not a good argument.
- simonw 1y agoHow about "lots of people like this thing" where many of those people are credible professionals who I have respected from LONG before they started using LLMs?
- rsynnott 1y agoAgain, it's not _hugely_ strong evidence. Linus Pauling won _two_ Nobel prizes, was unquestionably brilliant... but that doesn't mean I'm going to start megadosing vitamin C anytime soon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research_and_vitamin_C_advocacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research...). (See also Newton and alchemy, and the list goes on.)
- simonw 1y agoThe experts I respect on this are people who's expertise is in software development, so when they say "this stuff helps me do what I do better and faster" I trust them more than if they said "I've started megadosing vitamin C and it's amazing". It helps that what they're discovering matches my own personal experience as well.
- kiitos 1y agothere are just as many equally-qualified experts who have been consistently giving exactly the opposite feedback/signal, which you never seem to acknowledge or incorporate into your comments
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]