[ChrisMarshallNY]

As someone who has done “self-directed” learning, for my entire life (high school dropout, with a GED), I can certainly relate.

I like to learn new stuff, every day. I have found LLMs to be a godsend, here. Makes it much easier to just barge into unfamiliar territory.

Whenever I come across essays like this, I like to post The Gap, by Ira Glass[0]; one of the more encouraging short essays out there.

[0] https://vimeo.com/85040589

[andrew_lettuce]

LLMs can definitely be helpful, but you need your radar set to 11 because they will convincingly feed you smart sounding nonsense when you are most at risk.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Oh yeah, but the same goes for almost any information source (especially these days).

[abalashov]

Yeah, but this is like saying that one needn't focus so much on LLMs making mistakes because humans also mistakes.

They do, but the shape of the way LLMs will confidently mislead you is quite different to the way misinformed humans, or even the malevolent and mendacious humans, will mislead you.

[brookst]

There are plenty of authoritative reference books full of errors. Teachers in every subject can be wrong, convincingly.

[abalashov]

Yes, but human errors are based on genuine and elaborate misconceptions (or propagandistic intent), not squishy, facile "you're right to push back on that, I straight up made that up" type stuff.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I just apply the "Wikipedia model" to things like LLMs (and StackOverflow, which can be just as bad -but without the admitting error part).

I look for citations and footnotes. In many cases, accuracy isn't something that I worry about, as bad info becomes apparent, almost immediately. In cases where it matters, though, I may try a couple of verifications.

One problem with humans, is that we can be quite insecure, and will fight to the death to defend a provably wrong position, because we can't bear to be seen as in error.

[dpkirchner]

I wish humans that make up "facts" would admit to it as readily as LLMs do. Even though I know it's just a training trick to ground the response.

[varjag]

It's not anywhere close. Like, by four orders of magnitude.