3 ms·
In other words, LLMs are probabilistic, not deterministic.
by jqpabc123 6mo ago
In other words, LLMs are probabilistic, not deterministic.
- sscaryterry 6mo agoDare I say, so are humans?
- jqpabc123 6mo agoThis used to be a big reason why we used computers --- to help eliminate the probability of error. But apparently, not so much any more.
- somewhereoutth 6mo agoRight, it was the perfect match: Humans for fuzzy touchy feely stuff, computers for hard edged correct calculations. How have we managed to screw this up so badly?
- irishcoffee 6mo agoI think the big unmentioned elephant in the room is the gambling/dopamine aspect of using an LLM. It’s to the point where people at $dayjob joke about it… but they’re not joking. That’s how it got screwed up so badly. We have a bunch of engineers paying money to open loot boxes and they get visibly upset when they run out of tokens. LLM companies have done an absolutely brilliant job of figuring out how to burn more tokens quickly, couch it as “more advanced” and people throw money at them. I realize this wasn’t the thrust of your point, but tangentially, we fucked it up so badly because people desperately want to ignore this bit, and instead of looking at these tools analytically, there are the ardent defenders and the staunchly opposed… much like every other topic under the sun these days. I use the free stuff work pays for, and I’ve never hit any token limit or anything like that. But I’m also trying extremely hard to ensure my skillsets don’t atrophy. I just use the web interface and ask questions. I have no interest in tying my development experience directly into an LLM, not after what I’ve seen at work over the last few weeks.
- somewhereoutth 6mo agoGambling is right. And not just the dopamine, habitual gamblers remember the wins and forget the losses, so tend to believe they are 'ahead'. In time the bean counters will come and sober everyone up, the bottom line can't be argued with.
- jqpabc123 6mo agoIn time the bean counters will come and sober everyone up Lawyers are going to be involved in this too.
- mpyne 6mo agoDigital computers were named after the humans whose jobs they automated out of existence. They were invented to reduce cost of computation, not to eliminate the probability of error per se. Ask a Windows 11 user, they'll tell you computers still make errors.
- card_zero 6mo agoNo, I'm pretty sure it does it on purpose.
- suttontom 6mo agoAt this point this argument has crossed over into whataboutism.
- kibwen 6mo agoDeterminism is a red herring here. The problem is that LLMs are inductive systems, not deductive systems. This makes them powerfully general, and yet inherently unreliable.