4 ms·
The same way you double check with any other method you prefer? Duh. LLMs are vastly superior to compile and spread knowledge than any other thing preceding th
by moralestapia 11mo ago
The same way you double check with any other method you prefer? Duh.
LLMs are vastly superior to compile and spread knowledge than any other thing preceding them.
- contagiousflow 11mo agoYou double check every university lecture you've been apart of?
- nkmnz 11mo agoThat's what is called "studying" or "reading a textbook", isn't it?
- IshKebab 11mo agoUhm no? Reading a textbook is obviously not the same as fact checking a textbook.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- nkmnz 11mo agoParent was writing about a university LECTURE which is different from a TEXTBOOK (which is different from primary sources), so yeah, consulting other sources is checking the facts.
- IshKebab 11mo agoOh I see what you're saying. It was slightly ambiguous. But in any case, I didn't read a single textbook at uni; it was all lecture notes provided by the lecturers (fill-in-the-gaps actually which worked waaaay better than you'd think). So the answer is still no - I didn't fact check them and I didn't need to because they didn't wildly hallucinate like AI does.
- moralestapia 11mo agoThe real answer is: You should have a mental model about how the world works and the fundamental rules of the context where you're operating. Even though you might not know something, you eventually develop an intuition of what makes sense and what doesn't. And yes, that applies even to "university lectures" since a lot of professors make mistakes/are wrong plenty of times. Taking an LLM's output at face value would be dumb, yes. But it would be equally dumb to take only what's written on a book at face value, or a YouTube video, or anyone you listen to. You have to dig in, you have to do the homework. LLMs make it much easier for you to do this homework. Sure, they still make mistakes, but they get you 90% of the way in minutes(!) and almost for free.
- tjr 11mo agoI don't think it's (necessarily) equally dumb. Maybe if comparing LLM output to a book chosen at random. But I would feel much safer taking a passage from Knuth at face value than a comparable LLM passage on algorithms.
- wat10000 11mo agoDid you just sit there in class and then never do anything with what you learned afterwards? That certainly isn't how I approached university.
- contagiousflow 11mo agoDoing something with the knowledge given in a lecture is very distinct from fact checking it
- wat10000 11mo agoI'd say it's a subset of fact checking it. You can check facts without doing anything else, but doing something with the knowledge is inherently checking it. If the lecture presents some programming technique, and I implement it, I'll find out pretty quickly if it's wrong.
- bpt3 11mo agoThey are faster, but I don't see how they are vastly superior to a course designed and offered by a subject matter expert in the field.
- bdangubic 11mo agothey have been trained on material not just by single subject matter expert but all of them :)
- bpt3 11mo agoThey have not, because a large portion of the knowledge obtained by subject matter experts in any given field has never been published. Also, hallucinations are still a thing, and there's a reason why LLMs do not outperform subject matter experts in nearly every field.
- bdangubic 11mo agoI was being facetious but am now extremely curious about large portion of the knowledge obtained by subject matter experts in any given field has never been published - this is not only strange to me in the small but you are claiming that this is large portion so I am wondering if you have any example(s) to share?
- bpt3 11mo agoAh, sorry I missed that. Academics, whose entire careers are based on publishing knowledge, only publish a fraction of their total knowledge obtained over their career. Estimates are that only 10-20% of all knowledge is explicit.
- moralestapia 11mo agoYou can't beat a Caltech-tier lecture, for sure. But you know many people have access to that? You do know. Thousands, and I'm being generous. LLMs level the playing field for the other 8 billion people. Reminds of this article[1] that was featured yesterday and which I think was great! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46254794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46254794
- croes 11mo agoProfessionals who know there subject are still the best way
- amitav1 11mo agoThat's true, but they are also a) a lot more expensive and b) unlike LLMs, the vast majority of professionals have family and friends and need sleep and food, and as such are not available 24/7/365