Honestly, no. What “AI” needs is people better understanding how it actually works. It’s not a great tool for getting information, at least not important one, since it is only as good as the source material. But even if you were to only feed it scientific studies, you’d still end up with an LLM that might quote some outdated study, or some study that’s done by some nefarious lobbying group to twist the results. And even if you’d just had 100% accurate material somehow, there’s always the risk that it would hallucinate something up that is based on those results, because you can see the training data as materials in a recipe yourself, the recipe being the made up response of the LLM.
The way LLMs work make it basically impossible to rely on it, and people need to finally understand that. If you want to use it for serious work, you always have to fact check it.
People need to realise what LLMs actually are. This is not AI, this is a user interface to a database. Instead of writing SQL queries and then parsing object output, you ask questions in your native language, they get converted into queries and then results from the database are converted back into human speech. That’s it, there’s no AI, there’s no magic.
Sure, if by “database” you mean “tool that takes every cell in every table, calculates their likelihood of those cells appearing near each other, and then discards the data”. Which is a definition of “database” that stretches the word beyond meaning.
Natural language inputs for data retrieval have existed for a very long time. They used to involve retrieving actual data, though.
You understand that even LLM’s boosters would describe it the same way I did, right? I hate the damn thing, they adore it, but we all agree on the facts: it’s not a data retrieval system, it’s a statistical pattern generator.
Honestly, no. What “AI” needs is people better understanding how it actually works. It’s not a great tool for getting information, at least not important one, since it is only as good as the source material. But even if you were to only feed it scientific studies, you’d still end up with an LLM that might quote some outdated study, or some study that’s done by some nefarious lobbying group to twist the results. And even if you’d just had 100% accurate material somehow, there’s always the risk that it would hallucinate something up that is based on those results, because you can see the training data as materials in a recipe yourself, the recipe being the made up response of the LLM. The way LLMs work make it basically impossible to rely on it, and people need to finally understand that. If you want to use it for serious work, you always have to fact check it.
This guy gets it. Thanks for the excellent post.
People need to realise what LLMs actually are. This is not AI, this is a user interface to a database. Instead of writing SQL queries and then parsing object output, you ask questions in your native language, they get converted into queries and then results from the database are converted back into human speech. That’s it, there’s no AI, there’s no magic.
Sure, if by “database” you mean “tool that takes every cell in every table, calculates their likelihood of those cells appearing near each other, and then discards the data”. Which is a definition of “database” that stretches the word beyond meaning.
Natural language inputs for data retrieval have existed for a very long time. They used to involve retrieving actual data, though.
data based
/rimshot.mid
Try to use ChatGPT in your own application before you talk nonsense, ok?
You understand that even LLM’s boosters would describe it the same way I did, right? I hate the damn thing, they adore it, but we all agree on the facts: it’s not a data retrieval system, it’s a statistical pattern generator.
Cool story, bro. Ignorance is a bliss.
do read up a little on how the large language models work before coming here to mansplain, would you kindly?
Fuck off with your sexism.
wrong answer.
yeah this isn’t gonna work out, sorry
this is an unwise comment, especially here, especially to them
I love coming in and seeing I don’t even need to reply, all y’all are already at it.
every now and then I’m left to wonder what all these drivebys think we do/know/practice (and, I suppose, whether they consider it at all?)
not enough to try find out (in lieu of other datapoints). but the thought occasionally haunts me.
I’m not sure they have theory of mind, TBH.
christ. where do you people get this confidence