this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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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, these are problems that can be solved with traditional search engines, but at the cost of time and frustration sifting though every potential result.
You can spit out a hundred more examples of what an LLM can't do, but as I already said, they're not magic, just tools.
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.
I'm not advocating for openai, their business model, or the environmental and financial cost benefit of current LLM technology.
They suck, it's dogshit, and it's not worth cooking the planet for.
I also don't disagree about the very real possibility that the average user may actually get dumber and more misinformed by relying on LLMs.
But we're on Lemmy, and I'm just tired of all these comments incessantly complaining about about how LLM's can't do x,y, or z.
Imagine being on a carpentry forum, and every day people complained about how their new belt sander was dogshit at cutting 2x4's or screwing in fasteners, so clearly the problem was with the concept of belt sander technology.
In your example, the thing missing is that the belt sander companies are selling their belt sanders as screw fastening, band saw multitools.
I always say about AI that it's not the tool but who's making it and why, and this is especially true for the average person. Your average person isn't seeing the LLMs that are trained to identify anomalies in MRIs or iterate on chemical formulas to improve drugs in a simulation that takes milliseconds compared to the months of research it would take technicians to replicate the same experiments. So all they can talk about is the AI that is in their face all day, every day, as every company in the world tries to shoehorn it into their product somehow. And so they complain about the belt sanders that the company told them would fasten their screws and cut their 2x4's.
The only way the complaining is going to stop is when the bubble bursts and these companies have to find a new way to chase the infinite profit pipedream.
Replace belt sander with CBD. A compound with very real and tangible benefits for specific use cases, but is marketed as a modern day snake oil cure all.
Imagine seeing people regularly complaining on bluelight, erowid, or whatever forums educated drug users frequent these days, bitching that CBD didn't cure their asthma, or STDs, so therefore it has no medical value.
They know it's a tool, yet they keep complaining about how the gas station CBD isn't magic and failed to cure their gonorrhea, even though they already knew it was never going to be able to, no matter what the packaging said.
But my analogy wasn't meant to be critically analyzed and dissected, it was a throwaway example to highlight the problem of people on Lemmy, who actually know better, but keep whinging about LLM's providing bogus URLs for citations, etc.
I mean, Lemmy definitely runs more techy than most other places, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say the average user here knows any better than any Reddit idiot or something lol
And my point wasn't to peer review your example or anything, just to say that people keep complaining about it because these snake oil salesmen keep getting richer while using the same tired lines about how AI will do everything and anything, and do a handstand while it's at it.
It's like all the complaints historians keep finding about that one guy selling shitty copper bars or whatever. Nobody is gonna shut up about it until the bubble finally bursts and these AI companies can't unload their shitty copper on anyone anymore.
Oh, certainly LLMs are here to stay. Hopefully, they become conmoditised very quickly. But also, hopefully, the bubble bursts quickly too. Shoehorning AI into everything is dogshit. Actually using it for select reasons, where it is successful, should be great.
Already we have things like customer support phone trees that try to get rid of user interaction with scripts. AI here could be great to improve them. What's more likely is as the tech improves, more companies use AI rather than peioke for customer support, lol. Its dystopian.
The difference, of course, is the belt sander is not purporting to be able to screw fasten. Nor will it with a future update or subscription.