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.
Totally agree with that.
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.
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