2 ms·

People ask questions to get answers. For me, it feels quite important? Especially when search engines start to push them?

by nicce 4mo ago

fooker 4mo ago
Just because it is important for the use case does not mean we can make it work. It's a pretty well known fundamental limitation of the technology. No amount of elbow grease will get it there. There's an interesting tradeoff here, a year or two ago maybe it got facts right 50% of the time. Everyone knew not to rely on it. Now, suppose we are 90% of the way there, only technically proficient people would know not to trust it. (like not adding Internet Explorer toolbars! Or remembering to use ad blockers..) A few years later, suppose we have spend a lot of money and effort getting it 99% of the way there, trusting it would be somewhat natural by then. And then for the important 1% of the situations, it would stand to cause real harm. 1% seems low, but for a million invocations, you'd have 10000 mistakes.
- xboxnolifes 4mo ago
  Your progression is basically the exact same progression as things like Wikipedia, and web search in ggeneral. So, I guess we dont need to hypothesis. Just look around and see how its played out. How many people take the first result on Google as gospel when looking things up?
  - fooker 4mo ago
    Google search and Wikipedia both started out being fairly reliable to their source of truth. Google pretty much guaranteed that their top results were relevant to the search query. And wikipedia had an army of people making sure everything was backed up by the references. Crucially, neither claimed to be an arbiter of truth.
    - xboxnolifes 4mo ago
      I don't recall any LLM provider claiming to be a arbiter of truth.
      - fooker 4mo ago
        Here you go - https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2030159267689632121 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2030159267689632121 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1948572708369039542 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1948572708369039542

People ask questions to get answers. For me, it feels quite important? Especially when search engines start to push them?

by nicce 4mo ago

People ask questions to get answers. For me, it feels quite important? Especially when search engines start to push them?

fooker 4mo ago

Just because it is important for the use case does not mean we can make it work. It's a pretty well known fundamental limitation of the technology. No amount of elbow grease will get it there. There's an interesting tradeoff here, a year or two ago maybe it got facts right 50% of the time. Everyone knew not to rely on it. Now, suppose we are 90% of the way there, only technically proficient people would know not to trust it. (like not adding Internet Explorer toolbars! Or remembering to use ad blockers..) A few years later, suppose we have spend a lot of money and effort getting it 99% of the way there, trusting it would be somewhat natural by then. And then for the important 1% of the situations, it would stand to cause real harm. 1% seems low, but for a million invocations, you'd have 10000 mistakes.

xboxnolifes 4mo ago
Your progression is basically the exact same progression as things like Wikipedia, and web search in ggeneral. So, I guess we dont need to hypothesis. Just look around and see how its played out. How many people take the first result on Google as gospel when looking things up?
- fooker 4mo ago
  Google search and Wikipedia both started out being fairly reliable to their source of truth. Google pretty much guaranteed that their top results were relevant to the search query. And wikipedia had an army of people making sure everything was backed up by the references. Crucially, neither claimed to be an arbiter of truth.
  - xboxnolifes 4mo ago
    I don't recall any LLM provider claiming to be a arbiter of truth.
    - fooker 4mo ago
      Here you go - https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2030159267689632121 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2030159267689632121 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1948572708369039542 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1948572708369039542