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by Scarblac 852 days ago
> Its purpose is to try to answer common questions

Yes. And therefore people should be able to assume that the answers are correct.

Some people have heard of ChatGPT, and some of those have heard that they hallucinate, sure. But that's still not that many people. And they don't know that a question answering chat bot like this is the same technology!
1 comments
AnthonyMouse 852 days ago
> And therefore people should be able to assume that the answers are correct.

Why is that a necessary requirement? Something can be useful without it being perfect.

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ado__dev 852 days ago
If I am trying to interact with a company and they tell me to use their chatbot, I expect that chatbot to provide me with accurate answers 100% of the time (or to say it can't help me in the event that I ask a question that it's not meant to solve, and connect me to a representative who can).

If I have to double-triple check elsewhere to make sure that the chatbot is correct, then what's the point of using the chat bot in the first place? If you can't trust it 99% of the time, or if the company says "use this, but nothing it says should be taken as fact", then why would i waste my time?

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silverquiet 852 days ago
This is why I’m a bit vexed by all the hype around LLMs. It reminds me of talking to a friend’s mother who was suffering from dementia - she could have a perfectly lucid conversation with you and then segue into stories that were obviously fictions that existed only within her head. She was a nice lady, but not someone who you would hire to represent your company; she was considered disabled.

Awhile back another commenter called them a “demented Clippy” which about sums them up for me.

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ado__dev 852 days ago
Yeah totally. LLMs have a lot of awesome use cases. But as chatbots, they need a lot of guardrails, and even then, I'm highly skeptical if they improve the experience over a simple searchable FAQs or docs.
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AnthonyMouse 852 days ago
> If I have to double-triple check elsewhere to make sure that the chatbot is correct, then what's the point of using the chat bot in the first place?

Because you can ask it a question in natural language and it will give you an answer you can type into a search engine to see if it's real. Before you didn't know the name of the thing you were looking for, now you do.

> If you can't trust it 99% of the time, or if the company says "use this, but nothing it says should be taken as fact", then why would i waste my time?

The rate at which it makes stuff up isn't 99%, is the point. For common questions, better than half of the answers have some basis in reality.

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