[tstrimple]

This is one of the things which annoys me most about anti-LLM hate. Your peers aren't right all the time either. They believe incorrect things and will pursue worse solutions because they won't acknowledge a better way. How is this any different from a LLM? You have to question everything you're presented with. Sometimes that Stack Overflow answer isn't directly applicable to your exact problem but you can extrapolate from it to resolve your problem. Why is an LLM viewed any differently? Of course you can't just blindly accept it as the one true answer, but you literally cannot do that with humans either. Humans produce a ton of shit code and non-solutions and it's fine. But when an LLM does it, it's a serious problem that means the tech is useless. Much of the modern world is built on shit solutions and we still hobble along.

[lazide]

Everyone knows humans can be idiots. The problem is that people seem to think LLMs can’t be idiots, and because they aren’t human there is no way to punish them. And then people give them too much credit/power, for their own purposes.

Which makes LLMs far more dangerous than idiot humans in most cases.

[brookst]

No. Nobody thinks LLMs are perfect. That’s a strawman.

And… I am really not sure punishment is the answer to fallibility, outside of almost kinky Catholicism.

The reality is these things are very good, but imperfect, much like people.

[Mordisquitos]

> No. Nobody thinks LLMs are perfect. That’s a strawman.

I'm afraid that's not the case. Literally yesterday I was speaking with an old friend who was telling us how one of his coworkers had presented a document with mistakes and serious miscalculations as part of some project. When my friend pointed out the mistakes, which were intuitively obvious just by critically understanding the numbers, the guy kept insisting "no, it's correct, I did it with ChatGPT". It took my friend doing the calculations explicitly and showing that they made no sense to convince the guy that it was wrong.

[thecupisblue]

Sorry man, but I literally know of startups invested into by YC where CEO's for 80% of their management decisions/vision/comms use ChatGPT ... or should I say some use Claude now, as they think it's smarter and does not make mistakes.

Let that sink in.

[onion2k]

I wouldn't be surprised if GPT genuinely makes better decisions than an inexperienced, first-time CEO who has only been a dev before, especially if the person prompting it has actually put some effort into understanding their own weaknesses. It certainly wouldn't be any worse than someone who's only experience is reading a few management books.

[lazide]

And here is a great example of the problem.

An LLM doesn’t make decisions. It generates text that plausibly looks like it made a decision, when prompted with the right text.

[beardedwizard]

Why is this distinction lost in every thread on this topic, I don't get it.

[djeastm]

I think they just mean that GPT produced text that a human then makes a decision using (rather than "GPT making a decision")

[onion2k]

Yeah, that's fair. I should have said something like "GPT generates a less biased description of a decision than an inexperienced manager", and that using that description as the basis of an actual decision likely leads to better outcomes.

I don't think there's much of a difference in practise though.

[sirsinsalot]

Think of all the human growth and satisfaction being lost to risk mitigation by offloading the pleasure of failure to Machines.

[lazide]

Ah, but machines can’t fail! So don’t worry, humans will still get to experience the ‘pleasure’. But won’t be able to learn/change anything.

[lazide]

Clearly you haven’t been listening to any CEO press releases lately?

And when was the last time a support chatbot let you actually complain or bypass to a human?

[0points]

Not people.

Certain gullible people, who tends to listen to certain charlatans.

Rational, intelligent people wouldn't consider replacing a skilled human worker with a LLM that on a good day can compete with a 3-year old.

You may see the current age as litmus for critical thinking.

[pineaux]

Its quite stunning to frame it as anti-LLM hate. It's on the pro-LLM people to convince the anti-LLM people that choosing for LLMs is an ethically correct choice with all the necessary guardrails. It's also on the pro-LLM people to show the usefulness of the product. If pro-LLM people are right, it will be a matter of time before these people will see the errors of their ways. But doing an ad-hominem is a sure way of creating a divide...

[mplewis]

Humans can tell you how confident they are in something being right or wrong. An LLM has no internal model and cannot do such a thing.

[swiftcoder]

> Humans can tell you how confident they are in something being right or wrong

Humans are also very confidently wrong a considerable portion of the time. Particularly about anything outside their direct expertise

[daveguy]

That's still better than never being able to make an accurate confidence assessment. The fact that this is worse outside your expertise is a main reason why expertise is so valued in hiring decisions.

[SketchySeaBeast]

People only being willing to say they are unsure some of the time is still better than LLMs. I suppose, given that everything is outside of their area of expertise, it's very human of them.

[gf000]

But human stupidity, while itself can be sometimes an unknown unknown with its creativity, is a mostly known unknown.

LLMs fail in entirely novel ways you can't even fathom upfront.

[halgir]

> LLMs fail in entirely novel ways you can't even fathom upfront.

Trust me, so do humans. Source: have worked with humans.

[sirsinsalot]

GenAI has a 100% failure to enjoy quality of life, emotional fulfillment and psychological safety.

Id say those are the goals we should be working for. That's the failure we want to look at. We are humans.