[mediaman]

This is endlessly brought up as if the human operating the tool is an idiot.

I agree that if the user is incompetent, cannot learn, and cannot learn to use a tool, then they're going to make a lot of mistakes from using GPTs.

Yes, there are limitations to using GPTs. They are pre-trained, so of course they're not going to know about some easter egg in DDG. They are not an oracle. There is indeed skill to using them.

They are not magic, so if that is the bar we expect them to hit, we will be disappointed.

But neither are they useless, and it seems we constantly talk past one another because one side insists they're magic silicon gods, while the other says they're worthless because they are far short of that bar.

[breve]

The ability to say "I don't know" is not a high bar. I would say it's a basic requirement of a system that is not magic.

[throwawaylaptop]

Based on your example, basically any answer would be "I don't know 100%".

You could ask me as a human basically any question, and I'd have answers for most things I have experience with.

But if you held a gun to head and said "are you sure???" I'd obviously answer "well damn, no I'm not THAT sure".

[johnnyanmac]

It'd at least be an honest one that recognizes that we shouldn't be trusting the tech wholesale yet.

>But if you held a gun to head and said "are you sure???" I'd obviously answer "well damn, no I'm not THAT sure".

okay, who's holding a gun to Sam Altman's head?

[riwsky]

Perhaps LLMs are magic?

[cindyllrn]

I see your point

Some of the best exchanges that I participated in or witnessed involved people acknowledging their personal limits, including limits of conclusions formed a priori

To further the discussion, hearing the phrase you mentioned would help the listener to independently assess a level of confidence or belief of the exchange

But then again, honesty isn't on-brand for startups

It's something that established companies say about themselves to differentiate from competitors or even past behavior of their own

I mean, if someone prompted an llm weighted for honesty, who would pay for the following conversation?

Prompt: can the plan as explained work?

Response: I don't know about that. What I do know is on average, you're FUCKED.

[chrsw]

> The ability to say "I don't know" is not a high bar.

For you and I, it's not. But for these LLMs, maybe it's not that easy? They get their inputs, crunch their numbers, and come out with a confidence score. If they come up with an answer they're 99% confident in, by some stochastic stumbling through their weights, what are they supposed to do?

I agree it's a problem that these systems are more likely to give poor, incorrect, or even obviously contradictory answers than say "I don't know". But for me, that's part of the risk of using these systems and that's why you need to be careful how you use them.

[kuschku]

but they're not. Ofyen the confidence value is much lower. I should have an option to see how confident it is. (maybe set the opacity of each token to its confidence?)

[furyofantares]

Logits aren't confidence about facts. You can turn on a display like this in the openai playground and you will see it doesn't do what you want.

[johnnyanmac]

>If they come up with an answer they're 99% confident in, by some stochastic stumbling through their weights, what are they supposed to do?

As much as Fi, from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was mocked for this, this is the exact behavior a machine should do (not that Fi is a machine, but she operated as such).

Give a confidence score the way we do in statistics, make sure to offer sources, and be ready to push back on more objective answers. accomplish those and I'd be way more comfortable using them as a tool.

>hat's part of the risk of using these systems and that's why you need to be careful how you use them.

Adn we know in 2025 how careful the general user is of consuming bias and propaganda, right?

[otabdeveloper4]

The confidence score is about the likelihood of this token appearing in this context.

LLMs don't operate in facts or knowledge.