Comment on OpenAI Is A Bad Business

deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Then as you ask “provide sources.”, it says simply “Source: Tech Review Websites”. If this came from an actual person I would genuinely ask it “do you take me for gullible trash?”.

  It’s still somewhat useful, due to Google Search crumbling away into nothingness, if you ask “link me five sites with info about [topic]”.

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• circuscritic@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Your experience is highlight what current iterations of LLMs are not well suited for, so I understand if that’s what you were hoping to achieve, why you were left wanting, or disillusioned.

  There’s a lot of things that LLMs are really good at, or incredibly useful for, such as ingesting large bodies of text, and then analyzing them based on your ability to create well thought out prompts.

  This can save you hours and hours, of reading time, and it’s something that you can verify the answer on relatively quickly, to double check it’s.

  They’re also good at doing something Google used to be good at, but sucks at now. Which is describing process, simple or complicated, short or long, that you either can’t recall the name of, or aren’t even sure where it’s called.

  There’s plenty of other things too, but just remember that they are tools, not magic, or sentient intelligence.

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  • hitmyspot@aussie.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But if any research source cannot be used without verification, is it really useful? I agree, we should verfiy crucial information but when its wrong often, but confidently so, using natural language is a barrier not a benefit.

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    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s not a peer-reviewed journal or academic level source, and shouldn’t be used as that.

      But if I need to find some technical or scientific writings on a subject, but I don’t know the correct nomenclature or need a more narrow set of keywords, that is something I can describe to the LLM and get back.

      The keywords in their response can help me then hunt down the journal article or papers that I need using traditional search engines. I’m not just brainstorming here, this is something I do often enough to find real utility in it.

      Again, is it all problems that can be solved with traditional search engines, but at the cost of time and frustration sifting though every potential result.

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      • hitmyspot@aussie.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yes, but for the average user, if it confidently gives misinformation, then its worse than a search engine. It is removing the verification step of reading the source, seospam aside. The whole business model is on using it more, not selectively.

        One thing the article leaves out is the costs of processing should go down over time. Hopefully, as power transitions,.it also becomes more sustainable. However, it starts to become a bit like uber and self driving cars. How long can they burn through other peoples money to undercut competitions until the actual plan becomes profitable.

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  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And full self driving is also still coming! promise!

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    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I mean, it probably will, but that has nothing to do with LLMs, nor is it a technology that I want to exist.

      I can definitely see a world where lobbyists for automakers and insurance companies create such a regulatory burden, where only the wealthy can afford to drive their own cars, if they choose to. Where as everyone else must rent or lease their self driving car as is if it’s a IaaS or SaaS subscription.

      But none of that has anything to do with using LLMs for the tasks they can accomplish, or telling people to bitching about them not being able to complete the tasks they aren’t good at, or even capable of.

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      • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I was saying that this is investment money wasted on an empty promise. Like the full self driving feature

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      • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Let me translate for you:

        “[insert empty promise here]” will come! Please sent me more investment money.

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  • Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There’s a lot of things that LLMs are really good at, or incredibly useful for, such as ingesting large bodies of text, and then analyzing them based on your ability to create well thought out prompts.

    That’s the story people tell at least. The weasel phrase at the end is fun, I guess. Leaves a massive backdoor excuse when it doesn’t actually work.

    But in practice, LLMs are falling down even at this job. They seem to have some yse in academic qualitaruve coding, but for summarizing novel or extended bodies of text, they struggle to actually tell people what they want to know.

    Most people do not give a shit if text contains a reference to X. And if they do, they can generally just CTRL+F “X”.

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    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Weasel phrase? You mean the fact that I don’t treat them like their actual Ai, but just a tool that needs to be monitored and verified?

      There’s a reason why I never call them AI, because they’re not. They’re just advanced machine learning tools, and just like I keep a steady hand when using a table saw, I only use LLMs for tasks that they can help me do something faster, but are easy to verify they did it right.

      And as someone who has been using them very regularly, I feel confident in saying that. It’s not a weasel phrase, I’m not trying to sell anyone snake well about what they can actually do, and I think they’re in oversold and overhyped means of cooking the planet faster, so it’s not like I would be mad if they were banned tomorrow, but until then, I will keep using them in ways that are actually fruitful.

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  • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Have you tried Llama? If so, is it useful according to your criteria?

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    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Llama is the model I use most often, followed by ChatGPT and Claude.

      Others as well, but yes, it is incredible useful for what I use it for.

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      • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Self-hosted?

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• shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Scolded me for swearing at it.

  “You’ll fucking know when I’m swearing at you,” was my reply to that shit the last time I gave it a spin (after it regurgitated nonsense after many prompts specifically asking for not nonsense).

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• Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Garbage in garbage out. You give a shit prompt, you generally get a shit answer.

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  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If it doesn’t know how to answer a shitty question, it shouldn’t try to BS the answer.

    No answer is better than a wrong answer delivered confidently.

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    • Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      GIGO.

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      • deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        No, this is a problem of bad error handling for queries it cannot answer.

        A search engine would give empty results instead of hallucinating.

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• BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I hope sonething better comes along because google ruined their search engine a decade ago. stract.com is probabky the closest to what google used to be.

  As for chatgpt, it is not an index. It cannot refer you back to infornation it was trained on because it doesn’t build a massive indexed internet database.

  It has some method of probable relations and conglomerarion of input. It is why it “hallucinates” information output, because it doesn’t “know” what is wrong or right info, it just fetches data based on probabilities of connections.

  It is good at suggesting new music or movies based on your list of media you like, but it is terrible with actual factual info

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