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Comment by re-thc | Hacker News Reader

> Out of the last 100 years how many inventions have been made that could make any human awe like llms do right now?

Lots e.g. vacuum cleaners.

> But at no point in history could you talk to your phone

You could always "talk" to your phone just like you could "talk" to a parrot or a dog. What does that even mean?

If we're talking about LLMs, I still haven't been able to have a real conversation with 1. There's too much of a lag to feel like a conversation and often doesn't reply with anything related.

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Right on the money. Plus vacuum cleaners are actually useful and predictable in their inputs and outputs :)

Sure, a vacuum cleaner is the same.

> If we're talking about LLMs, I still haven't been able to have a real conversation with 1. There's too much of a lag to feel like a conversation and often doesn't reply with anything related.

I don't believe this one bit. But keep on trucking.

> Sure, a vacuum cleaner is the same.

> I don't believe this one bit. But keep on trucking.

You sure? Isn't that contradictory? It can't be the same if you don't believe it...

Did you need an /s to understand sarcasm?

Of course they aren't "real" conversations but I can dialog with LLMs as a means of clarifying my prompts. The comment about parrots and dogs is made in bad faith.

> The comment about parrots and dogs is made in bad faith

Not necessarily. (Some aphonic, adactyl downvoters seem to have possibly tried to nudge you into noticing that your idea above is against some entailed spirit the guidelines.)

The poster may have meant that for the use natural to him, he feels in the results the same utility of discussing with a good animal. "Clarifying one's prompts" may be effective in some cases, but it's probably not what others seek. It is possible that many want the good old combination of "informative" and "insightful": in practice there may be issues with both.

> "Clarifying one's prompts" may be effective in some cases but it's probably not what others seek

It's not even that. Can the LLM run away, stop the conversation or even say no? It's as much as your boss "talking" to you about the task and not giving you a chance to respond. Is that a talk? It's 1-way.

E.g. ask the LLM who invented Wikipedia. It will respond with "facts". If I ask a friend, the reply might be "look it up yourself". This a real conversation. Until then.

Even parrots and dogs can respond differently than a forced reply exactly how you need it.

True - but LLMs can do this.

A German Onion-like magazine has a wrapper around ChatGPT that behaves like that called „DeppGPT“ (IdiotGPT), likely implemented with a decent prompt.

If you have something to say, just say it directly and clearly.

And the poster clearly did not mean what you say he "may have meant".

By your own admission, those are not dialogues, but merely query optimisations in an advanced query language. Like how you would tune an SQL query until your get the data you are expecting to see. That's what it is for the LLMs.

Point and context completely missed ... and this is a radical misrepresentation of the process.

> If we're talking about LLMs, I still haven't been able to have a real conversation with 1. There's too much of a lag to feel like a conversation

Imagine the LLM is halfway through its journey to the Moon, and mentally correct for ~1.5 seconds of light lag.

> and often doesn't reply with anything related.

Use better microphone, or stop mumbling.

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