[nzach]

I don't really understand why people bash so hard on LLMs. In some cases it is a spectacularly bad tool, I get that. But it is only a tool.

Imagine if you have a judge giving out sentences based on astrology books. I don't think anyone would argue the problem would be resolved by banning astrology books from our libraries.

[TiredOfLife]

From Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame)

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

[netdevphoenix]

Reminds me of a quote that says that science progresses one scientist's funeral at a time as push back against new ideas often comes from older scientists regardless of the empirical merits of the idea.

[ourguile]

I believe the main issue in regard to LLMs is that there is a real chance of the prevalence and ease of use of LLMs to erode critical thinking skills. Regardless of boilerplate warnings to "check the validity of answers" coming from the LLM, plenty of people in society outside of this tech savvy audience wouldn't even know where to begin. There was a recent Big Think article on this: https://bigthink.com/thinking/artificial-intelligence-critic....

To be fair, I do think there are plenty of uses for LLMs, but with adoption skyrocketing there really are no guardrails against misuse.

[nzach]

I don't really believe that LLMs will make us dumber. It only changes what we decide to put our attention. It's the same that happened with Google, it changed our relationship with information. Even though it has several shortcomings the ability of just look things up instead of having to hold everything in our heads was a net positive for society.

And I suspect the same will happen for LLMs, in the end we will just start thinking in "another level of abstraction". We are still in the early days and still have a lot to learn about how to properly use this new toll but I think LLMs are a positive change for society.

[aeturnum]

Sure, that judge is a problem, but I think your metaphor is a bit mal-formed.

In your example you should probably drop the judge, but you should also make a rule saying astrology books aren't a legitimate source of sentence guidance. That's what people are annoyed about re:LLMs. People keep insisting they are a legit source in different situations.

You wouldn't ban them overall, but you do want some kind of society-level taboo against relying on them. You can't just deal with it on the level of people who get fooled into using them.

[nzach]

>you should also make a rule saying astrology books aren't a legitimate source of sentence guidance

My example was absurd on purpose, I didn't want to bring an example where people could respond with "well, actually..."

But in the real world that is rarely the case, imagine substituting "astrology book" for "Bible/Quran/..." Would that be considered a legitimate source of sentence guidance? I'm sure people would spend years arguing about that...

As a society we need to understand that LLM hallucination is no different than a bloom filter giving you a false-positive.

[aeturnum]

Then I guess I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Are you saying that the problem is unsolvable and people should just accept that?

[nzach]

My point is that LMM is a tool, and we should never attribute any sort of blame to our tools. The blame should always be with the humans.

[Retric]

It’s fine to blame a car’s heater when the design is so poor it can’t keep the cabin warm when it’s only 0C outside.

Thus being a spectacularly bad tool is itself a cause to assign blame.

[topaz0]

That's all well and good except that we look out and see all of the actively bad uses being hyped as the way of the future, at untold expense in both dollars and energy. The LLM is just a model that is what it is, bashing it doesn't make sense. People are bashing how it is used, both currently and in prospect.

[dylan604]

First graph, okay. Second graph, the wheels come off in spectacular fashion (unless you're from Florida).

Banning books does not ban knowledge. It just makes it a bit more inconvenient. Banning drugs has not stopped people from getting access.

[adamtaylor_13]

.... WAT.

Just kick out the judge who clearly... lacks judgment.

[KaiserPro]

congratulations on missing the point of the hypothetical example