5 ms·

Feels exactly the way my 2 year old behaves. How does a fan work: Swish swish swish swish Where do these clouds come from: Points to a far away direction in

by evnix 2mo ago

Feels exactly the way my 2 year old behaves. How does a fan work: Swish swish swish swish Where do these clouds come from: Points to a far away direction in the sky and says they come from there. Who does all these roads, trees and environment belong to? It all belongs to me. Obviously. They have an answer ready for every question you throw at them and they will answer it with absolute certainty. I will have to wait and see at what age does the concept of "I don't know" develop.

Gud 2mo ago
The difference between your two year old is that an LLM gives useful information. Yesterday I decarboxylated some weed buds in preparation of making a cannabis tincture using the QWET method. Curious how Claude would respond, I asked how to do it. It walked me through the process and gave accurate, nuanced answers. Let me know what your 2 year old thinks I should do.
- pistoriusp 2mo ago
  Aren't you missing OP's point entirely? Which is: If the LLM didn't have useful information it would still give you an answer... Helpful or not.
  - Gud 2mo ago
    Not really, since any LLM will answer all those questions competently. It's a known fact that LLMs sometimes are wrong and hallucinates an answer, but this is exceedingly rare. Having access to a decent LLM is like having an expert with me. Are they always right? No, but the analogy with a two year old simply doesn't hold up.
    - pistoriusp 2mo ago
      > Since any LLM will answer all those questions competently That's false. The LLM will only answer competently if it was trained on that data; and if it has enough data to make the correct connections between your question and the "correct" answer. In the case of this article they're specifically saying the LLM has limited training.
    - throw0101a 2mo ago
      > Not really, since any LLM will answer all those questions competently. How would you know if it didn't?
      - Gud 2mo ago
        I normally research topics thoroughly, if they are important. I don't trust a single source of truth.
        throw0101a 2mo ago
        > I don't trust a single source of truth. A prudent strategy, but I'm not sure how prevalent it is in the general population. (Or even if people do look at multipole "sources", they're in a self-reinforcing echo chamber that may reject contradictory information.)
    - desterothx 2mo ago
      yes, except experts are capable of saying I don't know, while LLMs will rather give any answer than do so most of the time
    - budsniffer952 2mo ago
      Look at the responses in this thread and others, arguing with these people is futile. I now read the absolute dumbest shit on HackerNews when it comes to AI. "It can't write code! It's always wrong!" And no one ever demonstrates any of it, even if it is counter to the experiences of others. I'd feel bad if most of these people weren't total jerks...
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
- KeplerBoy 2mo ago
  That is in the training data. Confidently and correctly answering in-distribution questions (possiibly with a tool call) is expected by now.
- neuroticnews25 2mo ago
  Gemini estimated that male cannabis plant leaves I decarboxylated will have negligible thc content and give me mild relaxation at best, the real effect was it was the highest I've ever been.
  - hnbad 2mo ago
    To be fair, I have yet to lead a conversation with Gemini that doesn't just consist of me having to check its responses and point out that they're objectively incorrect only for it to "apologize" and then give me the next wrong answer, while always making sure to end with a new conversation teaser. Granted, I've only been using the free version but I've been getting significantly more mileage out of those from ChatGPT and Claude. I guess it might be a feature that Gemini is more often obviously wrong from the start (e.g. by giving sources that don't support its claims whatsoever) but considering this is the AI from the company that had become synonymous with the concept of trying to find information on the Internet, that's pretty damn pathetic.
    - someothherguyy 2mo ago
      That is because it bases its responses on web searches with hits like comments in threads like these or blog articles that were generated from systems trained based on threads like these from the previous iteration of scrapers and generative language models.
  - Gud 2mo ago
    Gemini sucks though. Are you using the paid version? The free one that has basically replaced the regular search, is totally useless because of how shallow it searches. ChatGPT, which is usually quite reliable, refuses to answer me because law. In the end, an extraction should work any plant material depending on potency, skill and available equipment. After the extraction you can evaporate the ethanol(carefully since it’s highly flammable) and increase potency. A mix of own research(basically emulating others) combined with strong models we can do a lot more than we can do ourselves.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  Claude and ChatGPT have between them identified one mystery plant in my garden confidently as about a dozen different things. Even though they will get chemistry right more often than me, I still wouldn't want to ingest the result of it walking me through that on a drug, psychoactive or otherwise. Any given answer might be right, but I'm not a trained chemist and don't know how to safely test things.

by evnix 2mo ago

Gud 2mo ago

The difference between your two year old is that an LLM gives useful information. Yesterday I decarboxylated some weed buds in preparation of making a cannabis tincture using the QWET method. Curious how Claude would respond, I asked how to do it. It walked me through the process and gave accurate, nuanced answers. Let me know what your 2 year old thinks I should do.

pistoriusp 2mo ago
Aren't you missing OP's point entirely? Which is: If the LLM didn't have useful information it would still give you an answer... Helpful or not.
- Gud 2mo ago
  Not really, since any LLM will answer all those questions competently. It's a known fact that LLMs sometimes are wrong and hallucinates an answer, but this is exceedingly rare. Having access to a decent LLM is like having an expert with me. Are they always right? No, but the analogy with a two year old simply doesn't hold up.
  - pistoriusp 2mo ago
    > Since any LLM will answer all those questions competently That's false. The LLM will only answer competently if it was trained on that data; and if it has enough data to make the correct connections between your question and the "correct" answer. In the case of this article they're specifically saying the LLM has limited training.
  - throw0101a 2mo ago
    > Not really, since any LLM will answer all those questions competently. How would you know if it didn't?
    - Gud 2mo ago
      I normally research topics thoroughly, if they are important. I don't trust a single source of truth.
      - throw0101a 2mo ago
        > I don't trust a single source of truth. A prudent strategy, but I'm not sure how prevalent it is in the general population. (Or even if people do look at multipole "sources", they're in a self-reinforcing echo chamber that may reject contradictory information.)
  - desterothx 2mo ago
    yes, except experts are capable of saying I don't know, while LLMs will rather give any answer than do so most of the time
  - budsniffer952 2mo ago
    Look at the responses in this thread and others, arguing with these people is futile. I now read the absolute dumbest shit on HackerNews when it comes to AI. "It can't write code! It's always wrong!" And no one ever demonstrates any of it, even if it is counter to the experiences of others. I'd feel bad if most of these people weren't total jerks...
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
KeplerBoy 2mo ago
That is in the training data. Confidently and correctly answering in-distribution questions (possiibly with a tool call) is expected by now.
neuroticnews25 2mo ago
Gemini estimated that male cannabis plant leaves I decarboxylated will have negligible thc content and give me mild relaxation at best, the real effect was it was the highest I've ever been.
- hnbad 2mo ago
  To be fair, I have yet to lead a conversation with Gemini that doesn't just consist of me having to check its responses and point out that they're objectively incorrect only for it to "apologize" and then give me the next wrong answer, while always making sure to end with a new conversation teaser. Granted, I've only been using the free version but I've been getting significantly more mileage out of those from ChatGPT and Claude. I guess it might be a feature that Gemini is more often obviously wrong from the start (e.g. by giving sources that don't support its claims whatsoever) but considering this is the AI from the company that had become synonymous with the concept of trying to find information on the Internet, that's pretty damn pathetic.
  - someothherguyy 2mo ago
    That is because it bases its responses on web searches with hits like comments in threads like these or blog articles that were generated from systems trained based on threads like these from the previous iteration of scrapers and generative language models.
- Gud 2mo ago
  Gemini sucks though. Are you using the paid version? The free one that has basically replaced the regular search, is totally useless because of how shallow it searches. ChatGPT, which is usually quite reliable, refuses to answer me because law. In the end, an extraction should work any plant material depending on potency, skill and available equipment. After the extraction you can evaporate the ethanol(carefully since it’s highly flammable) and increase potency. A mix of own research(basically emulating others) combined with strong models we can do a lot more than we can do ourselves.
ben_w 2mo ago
Claude and ChatGPT have between them identified one mystery plant in my garden confidently as about a dozen different things. Even though they will get chemistry right more often than me, I still wouldn't want to ingest the result of it walking me through that on a drug, psychoactive or otherwise. Any given answer might be right, but I'm not a trained chemist and don't know how to safely test things.