But natural language in service of what? If they can’t produce answers that are correct, what’s the point of using them? I can get wrong answers anywhere.
Is cruise control useless because it doesn’t drive you to the grocery store? No. It’s not supposed to. It’s designed to maintain a steady speed - not to steer.
Large Language Models, as the name suggests, are designed to generate natural-sounding language - not to reason. They’re not useless - we’re just using them off-label and then complaining when they fail at something they were never built to do.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Threeme2189@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
As OP said, LLMs are really good at generating text that is fluid and looks natural to us. So if you want that kind of output, LLMs are the way to go.
Not all LLM prompts ask factual questions and not all of the generated answers need to be correct.
Are poems, songs, stories or movie scripts ‘correct’?I’m totally against shoving LLMs everywhere, but they do have their uses. They are really good at this one thing.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Are poems, songs, stories or movie scripts ‘correct’?
It’s a valid point that they can produce natural language. The Turing Test has been a thing for awhile after all. But while the language sounds natural, can they create anything of value? Are the poems or stories they make worth anything? It’s not like humans don’t create shitty art, so I guess generating random soulless crap is similar to that.
The value of language produced by something that can’t understand the reason for language is an interesting question I suppose.
Threeme2189@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I’m with you on that. I’ve come to realize that I value a shitty stick figure that was drawn by a human much more than an AI generated ‘Mona Lisa’.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There are people out there whose job is to format promotional emails for companies. AIs can replace this kind of soulless work completely. We should applaud that.
Iconoclast@feddit.uk 3 days ago
I’m not here defending the practical value of these models. I’m just explaining what they are and what they’re not.
XLE@piefed.social 2 days ago
You’re definitely running around Lemmy defending AI, Iconoclast… Might as well be honest about it
Iconoclast@feddit.uk 2 days ago
I’m not really interested in engaging in discussions about what you or anyone else thinks my underlying motives are. You’re free to point out any factual inaccuracies in my responses, but there’s no need to make it personal and start accusing me of being dishonest.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Some of them can produce the correct answer. Of we do the test next year and they do better than humans then, isn’t it progress?
Urist@leminal.space 3 days ago
Language without meaning is garbage. Like, literal garbage, useful for nothing. Language is a tool used to express ideas, if there are no ideas being expressed then it’s just a combination of letters.
Which is exactly why LLMs are useless.
Iconoclast@feddit.uk 3 days ago
800 million weekly ChatGPT users disagree with that.
RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
And there are 1.3 billion smokers in the world according to the WHO.
Does that make cigarettes useful?
Iconoclast@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Something being useful doesn’t imply it’s good or beneficial. Those terms are not synonymous. It describes whether a thing achieves a particular goal or serves a specific purpose effectively.
A torture device is useful for extracting information. A landmine is useful for denying an area to enemy troops.
Urist@leminal.space 3 days ago
Those users are being harmed by it, not benefited. That isn’t useful, it’s a social disease.