How an artificial intelligence (as in large language model based generative AI) could be better for information access and retrieval than an encyclopedia with a clean classification model and a search engine?
If we add a step of processing – where a genAI “digests” perfectly structured data and tries, as bad as it can, to regurgitate things it doesn’t understand – aren’t we just adding noise?
I’m talking about the specific use-case of “draw me a picture explaining how a pressure regulator works”, or “can you explain to me how to code a recursive pattern matching algorithm, please”.
I also understand how it can help people who do not want or cannot make the effort to learn an encyclopedia’s classification plan, or how a search engine’s syntax work.
But on a fundamental level, aren’t we just adding an incontrolable step of noise injection in a decent time-tested information flow?
SolOrion@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Well, the primary thing is that you can ask extremely specific questions and get tailored responses.
That’s the best use case for LLMs, imo. It’s less of a replacement for a traditional encyclopedia- though people use it like that also- and more of a replacement for googling your question and getting a Reddit thread where someone explains.
The issue comes when people take everything it spits out as gospel, and do zero fact checking on it- basically the way that they hallucinate is the primary issue I have with it.
If there’s a chance it’s going to just flatly make things up, invent statistics, or just be entirely wrong… I’d rather just use a normal forum and ask a real person that probably has a clue whatever question I have. Or try to find where someone has already asked that question and got an answer.