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Comment by tanseydavid | Hacker News Reader

I ask this question without a hint of tone or sarcasm. You said: "*it’s a junior dev faking competence. Trust it at your own risk.*" My question is simply: "wouldn't you expect to personally be able to tell that a human junior dev was faking competence?" Why should it be different with the LLM?

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Obviously, it depends on context. When talking to someone live you can pick up on subtle hints such as tone of voice, or where they look, or how they gesticulate, or a myriad other signals which give you a hint to their knowledge gaps. If you're communicating via text, the signals change. Furthermore, as you interact with people more often you understand them better and refine your understanding of them. LLMs always forget and “reset” and are in flux. They aren’t as consistent. Plus, they don’t grow with you and pick up on your signals and wants.

It’s incredibly worrying that it needs to be explained again and again that LLMs are different from people, do not behave like people, and should not be compared to people or interacted like people, because they are not people.

Interestingly your description of social cues you expect to pick up on are the exact sort of social cues I struggle with. If someone says something, generally speaking I expect it to be true unless there is an issue with it that suggests otherwise.

I suppose the wide range of negative and positive experiences people seem to have working with LLMs is related to the wide range of expectations people have for their interactions in general.

Not instantly. You’d give the human junior dev the benefit of the doubt at first. But when it becomes clear that the junior dev is faking competence all the time (that might take longer than the four days in TFA — yes I know it’s not exactly comparable, just saying) and won’t stop with that and start being honest instead, you’d eventually let them go, because that’s no way to work with someone.

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