I know this is very cynical of me, but I am becoming very convinced that this is actually the biggest draw to AI for a lot of people
They don't want to use their brains
People talk about how it can summarize long text for them. This is framed as being a time saver, but I'm positive for a lot of people they just don't want to read the full text
It can generate images for people who don't want to learn how to draw, or save them money by not hiring artists
They also talk about democratizing art- are they using LLMs' probably vast corpus of art feedback to improve their own work? Well, no.
LLMs generate text, not knowledge. They are great for parsing human culture… but not good at thinking.
Yes, those can be very much the same thing and it does not mean that people don't want to use their brains. If I encounter a long article and have serious doubts as to whether it will be worth my time, reading a summary first helps a lot.
In fact, now that we're on the subject: _Proper_ journalism is _supposed_ to provide the key points at the beginning of the text (as opposed to some silly information free nonsense meant to 'set the scene' or 'hook you in'). Don't bury the lead/lede. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
Half of the value of reading things via HN is seeing the top comment be a summary of the key points of the linked content. It's very, very valuable in this day and age where good writing has taken a back seat to making money.
Still, drunk , educated uncle Steve is pretty handy sometimes.
The difference is, the hammers and screwdrivers perform a single task, and have been designed and optimised for that specific task.
LLMs are much more versatile and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Yet, at the same time, their capabilities are ill defined.
> LLMs are much more versatile and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Yet, at the same time, their capabilities are ill defined.
That’s my point, I want to skip to the part where we know what LLMs are good for, what they are bad for, and just consider them another tool at our disposal. We’re still in the phase of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, and it is exhausting more often than not.
GOOD: Language parsing.
BAD: Information retrieval.
We are now seeing the LLM is used to parse the question and retrieve information from elsewhere.
Before you would ask the LLM who the president of the US was and the LLM would autocomplete. Now the LLM constructs a query through a tool and searches the internet for an answer.
It parsed the entire internet to have enough data to learn about language, but you don't necessarily want to depend on what it learned, other than to parse the syntax of the user.
Totally agree with that.
Similarly LLMs are a thing that turned out to be useful and we end up looking foru usecases for it.
Similar to the YC analogy of the company that discovers a brick and they have to find out useful ways to use it: To put out fires, to hit people in the head, etc..
Well they’re most certainly not the right tool to fasten screws with :P
That seems problematic, too.