2 ms·

> a question related to retirement planning and 401K allocations, Traditional vs Roth. I had a finical advisor tell me one thing, but I heard a contrary view fr

> a question related to retirement planning and 401K allocations, Traditional vs Roth. I had a finical advisor tell me one thing, but I heard a contrary view from someone else that made some sense. The AI took the side of the finial advisor [...] This did not feel like a chat with an intelligent being It is a great natural language ETL-type tool for all sorts of things. Curate the words you use into directives; have it search and return data, research answers, present facts (or alternates), focus on specific areas, do comparisons, include an adversarial take, etc But "talk to it" like it's human and you are likely leaking emotionality-based expression, so that's what you'll get back. Tell it some version of "but I heard a contrary view from someone else that made some sense" now it's triggered it into some weird role-play partner path where it outputs an argument over something it never understood in the first place, or goes the self-flagation route. > For those who never push back on answers, they're going to have a bad time I have trouble internalizing why "push back" or "vicious arguments" ever enter the picture. I get how it happens, people unwittingly contaminate their queries and context with emotionality and essentially end up arguing with themself. Thus fail to see why anyone picks a conversational expression to help with accomplishing pragmatic tasks when that "chat" expression style is seeking a friend, acquaintance, or adversary to continue a "conversation" with.

al_borland 2mo ago
This isn’t what’s being sold. The OP is also saying things like, “frontier AI models demonstrate intelligence at human levels or above.” If this is true, a user shouldn’t need to curate their words to maintain the illusion of intelligence from the system. If LLMs are just a tool, with limits, just like every tool, then what you say is easy to accept, learn, and adapt to. For the last several years we’ve been told to bring natural language to it, the tools adapts to the user, and many have called it intelligent. People are accepting the first answers from an LLM as established truth, regardless of how the question was framed. I’m using it how the people selling it are saying to use it. And when I do that, it’s not very good. If they want to adjust their messaging and scale back the hyperbolic claims, then I can adjust how I use it, my expectations for it, and maybe have a more positive view. Until that happens, I’ll judge it based on the high bar they’ve set for themselves, where it routinely falls short.
- 1659447091 2mo ago
  > I’m using it how the people selling it are saying to use it. And when I do that, it’s not very good. [...] That is definitely one way to go about it. Going through life stubbornly insisting on using a thing only in the way it is marketed instead of in a way that optimizes its usefulness (or its cost/benefit) for you seems more burdensome than necessary. There is also a saying about the definition of insanity that may be relevant to the above Also, my suggestion was for your use-case: a pragmatic data retrieval, parsing, and presentation task. For creative fiction uses giving directives would likely return a similarly bad experience

al_borland 2mo ago

This isn’t what’s being sold. The OP is also saying things like, “frontier AI models demonstrate intelligence at human levels or above.” If this is true, a user shouldn’t need to curate their words to maintain the illusion of intelligence from the system. If LLMs are just a tool, with limits, just like every tool, then what you say is easy to accept, learn, and adapt to. For the last several years we’ve been told to bring natural language to it, the tools adapts to the user, and many have called it intelligent. People are accepting the first answers from an LLM as established truth, regardless of how the question was framed. I’m using it how the people selling it are saying to use it. And when I do that, it’s not very good. If they want to adjust their messaging and scale back the hyperbolic claims, then I can adjust how I use it, my expectations for it, and maybe have a more positive view. Until that happens, I’ll judge it based on the high bar they’ve set for themselves, where it routinely falls short.

1659447091 2mo ago
> I’m using it how the people selling it are saying to use it. And when I do that, it’s not very good. [...] That is definitely one way to go about it. Going through life stubbornly insisting on using a thing only in the way it is marketed instead of in a way that optimizes its usefulness (or its cost/benefit) for you seems more burdensome than necessary. There is also a saying about the definition of insanity that may be relevant to the above Also, my suggestion was for your use-case: a pragmatic data retrieval, parsing, and presentation task. For creative fiction uses giving directives would likely return a similarly bad experience