[soulofmischief]

I have no idea what to do right now, I use ChatGPT all day while studying new concepts. It condenses time needed to understand complex new information by several magnitudes, and at this juncture studying without it seems pointless, it's rapidly become an extra layer in my brain.

[simulosius]

> I have no idea what to do right now

Well, humanity has managed to "know what to do" for thousands of years but here you are, completely lost without ChatGPT. Achievement unlocked .

[soulofmischief]

Did you read my comment? I'm not saying I'm bored, I'm saying I wasn't initially sure how to best proceed with my day, which involves a lot of fast-paced knowledge acquisition which generalized LLMs make possible.

[Alifatisk]

Please do not rely on these tools, they should not be a dependency of your thinking.

My bookshelf have a 100% uptime!

[soulofmischief]

Next you'll tell me I shouldn't use a calculator, or a computer at all.

The conceptual level at which I work benefits massively from the recent developments in LLMs, and to stop training myself for the new meta means to drastically fall behind and possibly miss my goals. There is absolutely no reason not to evolve alongside this new technology.

[danjoredd]

Imagine that the calculator breaks, and you need to do some quick math. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Cell Phones and such.) It is good to know how to do math without a calculator for those edge cases where one is not available, or when you can't do the equations that you need with it.

Calculators are good. Calculators are useful. Calculators accelerate your workflow beyond what your ancestors could do. Not knowing how to do math without one is still a hindrance, hence why we still need math classes. You need to know the underlying theory of why the calculators do what they do in order for them to be useful.

It's the same with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a fantastic tool that can benefit your workflow. I use it all the time myself. However, being 100% dependent on it for work is a dangerous game. If it goes down(like today) or the company behind it makes a change that makes it less useful, you still need to know how to do your job without it. That's why OP's comment is worrying. They said that they feel unable to work without it. It reminds me of that Avengers quote: "If you are nothing without the Iron Man suit, you shouldn't have it."

[soulofmischief]

The point of my previous comment was that the kind of work I do is not "quick math" and taking GPT out of the equations reduces my velocity by magnitudes. Calculators aren't going to disappear and no astrophysicist is going to do massive multi-dimensional calculations by hand.

> If you are nothing without the Iron Man suit, you shouldn't have it.

It's a nice thought, but I can apply this chain of reasoning to no end of technologies without which scientific progress in a given domain would entirely halt.

[danjoredd]

> Taking GPT out of the equations reduces my velocity by magnitudes.

But you should still know how to do it regardless. Because of situations like this. That is the point of my comment. If you can't do your job without ChatGPT, you don't have any business working in your field to begin with. Even if it's at a reduced speed, you still need to know how to do your job.

>It's a nice thought, but I can apply this chain of reasoning to no end of technologies without which scientific progress in a given domain would entirely halt.

Not really. To do advanced stuff you have to understand the basics. This goes for almost every field. You can't build the next-level Javascript app without knowing what an if-else does. You can't be a doctor without knowing a little chemistry and biology. Even in a job like construction, you need to be able to do simple math to make sure your measurements are correct.

Saying that advanced tools should be used for things like programming without understanding the basics is a logical fallacy. It's the same argument that managers sometimes use. You know, the "programmers only copy and paste from stack overflow. Why do we pay you so much?" Asking chatGPT for code means nothing if you don't know how to apply it and search for bugs. And to use code from ChatGPT, you need to know how to do your job without it. Otherwise, you will only produce code that, at best, sucks and, at worst, doesn't work.

[capableweb]

> But you should still know how to do it regardless. Because of situations like this. That is the point of my comment. If you can't do your job without ChatGPT, you don't have any business working in your field to begin with. Even if it's at a reduced speed, you still need to know how to do your job.

I'm currently using ChatGPT for a bunch of AI/ML that I don't know how the insides are working. But I'm able to build models from scratch that does exactly what I want, with 99% accuracy in my test cases, without actually knowing what the model does, but together with GPT4 + automatic hyperparameter tuning, I'm able to build models I can use in production.

Does it matter if I know exactly how everything inside in the model works, if I can get it to work exactly to my specification without it?

This is essentially how I started programming as well way back in time. I didn't know exactly what the Perl code I copy-pasted did, but if it solved the problem, it solved the problem. It brought me and my family out of poverty, and at that point I couldn't care less about how the magic actually was done, just that it did work.

Obviously now I have more knowledge about web field in general and 10+ languages that I no longer have to use any docs to be productive with, and maybe that'll happen with AI/ML eventually as well, but for a person who is starting with something new and wanna be productive quickly, GPT4 is a godsend.

[fellInchoate]

> Not really. To do advanced stuff you have to understand the basics.

Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of these abstractions? Can you read the machine code that your C compiler produces? How much of electrical engineering do you need to know to write a bash script? The physics of how a NAND gate is implemented?

It's obviously in the early stages, and I don't disagree with you completely today -- but this will just be one more layer on top of an already deep stack of abstractions that underlie all of computing.

[Alifatisk]

These tools should be an extension of you, not a reliance.

See, I’d still be able to do my math without a calculator (to some extent)

Your comment above sounds like you get paralyzed when ClosedAi (OpenAi)s service have outage.

Why would you want to depend on a private corporation to this extent?

It blows my mind!

[Jevon23]

>The conceptual level at which I work

Oh come off it lol

[soulofmischief]

Don't misinterpret me. I'm not claiming superiority in any sense, I'm describing that my type of work is conceptual.

[onemoresoop]

The calculator is not a service but a tool. Until LLMS don't become just a tool don't rely on them too much or expect it be broken and have a workaround for that.

[soulofmischief]

I have backup local LLMs which I used during the outage. This doesn't prevent the fact that for now, ChatGPT-4 wins out in output quality.

This won't remain true for long and so it is actually harmful to my career to not invest time learning how to use these tools now, instead of waiting for the time when they are perfect.

[quickthrower2]

If your calculator breaks, it isn't hard to buy a new one, or borrow one, or revert to pen/paper.

[slikrick]

the fact you even think they are comparable to a calculator is scary. they're not in any way comparable.

[soulofmischief]

Can you please elaborate?

[JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B]

ChatGPT is the black box that is pushing the buttons of the calculator for you. You don’t learn maths or programming with this service.

If the calculator is broken, I can still work slowly but I understand what I do. Without experience, you can’t understand what the black box is giving you.

[soulofmischief]

You're just projecting your own ignorance on the process.

I constantly learn new maths or programming while working alongside LLMs. They increase and augment my experience, they don't subtract from it.

You need a developed strategy when it comes to work and research, and if you already have a good one, adding GPT as a resource only helps you.

[Alifatisk]

chatGPT is a service. A calculator is hardware.

[dingus9001]

At least calculators don't give you plain wrong information

[klohto]

I too bring my horse everywhere. I do not rely on such devious gas monsters on 4 wheels.

[willsmith72]

This is why wherever I travel in the world I print out paper maps of every city and village I think I might go, I don't want to get a dependency on a digital map. My paper maps have a 100% uptime.

\s

[Erikun]

This is a level of dystopian helplessness I have a hard time wrapping my head around.

[selfhoster11]

LLMs are not a bad tool, provided you control them. Using Llama 2 deployed locally is far from dystopian.

[Erikun]

It's not the tool that is dystopian, it's the mindset expressed in the post.

[soulofmischief]

What is dystopian about my mindset? Are you sure you correctly understood my post?

[adorton]

How do you know the information you're getting is factual?

[djbusby]

I just use it to kick start my learning process. It's basically the quick summary of Topic. And I ask GPT to cite sources. Then you can jump into to more authoritative articles/etc. Can't trust it blindly.

[danjoredd]

This is the proper way to use ChatGPT. Relying on it as a source is a bad idea. However, it's handy for finding reliable sources to read further.

[soulofmischief]

I will ask you the same question about the information which you read on the internet.

Whatever your answer is, apply that to ChatGPT. It is no different.

[adorton]

Yeah but if I'm doing research online I'm going to stick with sources I consider reliable, written by real people and not a text generator. So I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're trying to make.

[soulofmischief]

Please read my responses to your sibling commenters.

[slikrick]

you read sources and original works, did you actually think this was a gotcha? you are depriving yourself of proper learning and knowledge lol

[soulofmischief]

No, you're just making hasty judgements.

I read scientific papers, articles and references in one pane while keeping GPT open in another pane to help me make the most use out of the knowledge in the quickest timeframe. I frequently browse additional resources in order to corroborate information.

Please do not project onto me. Ask questions about my process before assuming I'm "depriving myself", which you are likely ironically doing yourself in light of your attitude towards GPT.

[dingus9001]

have you ever considered devoting your full attention to what you're reading? And that doing that enough will improve your scientific reading comprehension to the point you don't need to rely on chatgpt mangling the information into nonsense?

[soulofmischief]

> have you ever considered devoting your full attention to what you're reading

have you ever considered being less assumptive and judgemental? you have absolutely no insight into my reading comprehension ability, and have no idea what my process is like.

> you don't need to rely on chatgpt mangling the information into nonsense

except that doesn't happen? It only strengthens my understanding by allowing me to ask questions?

you really need to look at how you're approaching this conversation and calibrate. instead of this mess of assumptions and loaded questions, ask a real, open-minded question such as "what does your workflow look like? what are the pros/cons of this approach?"

if my system works for me, I don't need to prove it to you, however you yourself are missing out on a new style of research which will become incredibly common.

[dingus9001]

The simple answer is don't rely on information you find on the internet, SEO killed that years ago. And chatgpt was trained on that awful mess. Go read an actual book

[rvz]

Stochastic parrots don't give you the original source. In fact they make up sources on the spot.

That is worse than a search engine.

[soulofmischief]

You and your sibling commenters made a lot of assumptions about my workflow without asking the right questions, and by and large you are totally wrong about my approach.

[nisegami]

For a lot of use-cases, it actually doesn't matter that much.

[hecksideci_1]

Try out Bing Chat. GPT4 is the basis for Bing Chat. It can be annoying with its message limits, lack of chat history, and tendency to point you to websites. Though, you can switch it to creative mode which is pretty similar to the workflow of ChatGPT, the GPT4 version.

[soulofmischief]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, Bing Chat leaves a bad taste in my mouth due to user agent restriction and other shitty behaviors, which I have no desire to work around.

[willsmith72]

Is it still only in edge?

[soulofmischief]

You can spoof your user agent from what I understand.

[Tommstein]

Why bother, Phind uses GPT-4 (sometimes) without Microsoft's Edge restriction bullshit.

[nickthegreek]

get API access and use https://github.com/Bin-Huang/chatbox when the web UI is down.

[soulofmischief]

Chatbox is neat. I have API access but I'd rather not pay for large-context GPT-4 requests while I already have pro, it's good to spend this time improving on llama.cpp's built-in chat server if you ask me :)

Edit: And we're back!

[dingus9001]

Relying on chatgpt is a great way to learn everything wrong and not even know why everything you learned was wrong