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Today's Large Language Models are Essentially BS Machines (quandyfactory.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

And also it's no replacement for actual research, either on the Internet or in real life.

People assume LLMs are like people, in that they won't simply spout bullshit if they can avoid it. But as this article properly points out, they can and do. You can't really trust anything they output. (At least not without verifying it all first.)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

People assume LLMs are like people, in that they won’t simply spout bullshit if they can avoid it.

There are plenty of people who spout bullshit every chance they get.

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

As with any tool it is how you use it that matters.

Today’s LLM’s are capable of fairly amazing stuff.

It’s a BS machine? Sure. Have you read or written stuff for higher education?

You don’t get points for being short and concise, even though you should. You get points for following the BS formula.

You know who else is good at BS?

LLM’s. If you manage to provide it enough meaningful input it can do a great lot of BS legwork for you.

I see people who overuse it, don’t edit, isn’t critical. Sure. Then you end up with just BS.

But there’s plenty of useful applications, like writing boiler plate code (see also CoPilot), structuring code, tests, etc.

Is it worth all the hype? Nope.

Some of it? Probably.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah definitely not saying it's not useful :) But it also doesn't do what people widely believe it does, so I think articles like this are helpful.