this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Searching

Literally the worst possible usage. They're syntax generators, not search engines, and not knowledge fonts.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I don't know how to say this in a less direct way. If this is your take then you probably should look to get slightly more informed about what LLMs can do. Specifically, what they can do if you combine them with with some code to fill the gaps.

Things LLMs can do quite well:

  • Generate useful search queries.
  • Dig through provided text to determine what it contains.
  • Summarize text.

These are all the building blocks for searching on the internet. If you are talking about local documents and such retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can be pretty damn useful.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That's not entirely fair either though... They can incorrectly summarize, omit important information, or just make stuff up.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

True, though that isn't all that different from people doing knee jerk responses on the internet...

I am not claiming they are perfect, but for the steps I described a human aware of the limitations is perfectly able to validate the outcome. While still having saved a bunch of time and effort on doing an initial search pass.

All I am saying is that it is fine to be critical of LLM and AI claims in general as there is a lot of hype going on. But some people seem to lean towards the "they just suck, period" extreme end of the spectrum. Which is no longer being critical but just being a reverse fanboy/girl/person.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

All I am saying is that it is fine to be critical of LLM and AI claims in general as there is a lot of hype going on. But some people seem to lean towards the "they just suck, period" extreme end of the spectrum. Which is no longer being critical but just being a reverse fanboy/girl/person.

Fair, nuance is an endangered species.

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