this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
398 points (98.3% liked)

Technology

59374 readers
3714 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You cannot in all seriousness use a LLM as a research tool. That is explicitly not what it is useful for. A LLM's latent space is like a person's memory : sure there is some accurate data in there, but also a lot of "misremembered" or "misinterpreted" facts, and some bullshit.

Think of it like a reasoning engine. Provide it some data which you have researched yourself, and ask it to aggregate it, or summarize it, you'll get some great results. But asking it to "do the research for you" is plain stupid. If you're going to query a probabilistic machine for accurate information, you'd be better off rolling dice.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Exactly my point - except that the word "reasoning" is far too generous, as it implies that there would be some way for it to guarantee that its logic is sound, not just highly resembling legible text.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand. Have you ever worked an office job? Most humans have no way to guarantee their logic is sound yet they are the ones who do all of the reasoning on earth. Why would you have higher standards for a machine?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have higher expectations for machines than humans, yes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like a recipe for disappointment tbh. But on the other hand, sounds like you trust techno marketing a bit too much.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No, I just know how to spot the lies in a datasheet.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I"m not sure what lie and what datasheet you're referring to ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Just in general.