But it's not "direct access to every PhD in the world." You don't really believe that do you?
Or an alternate timeline where a different version of LLMs were invented.
The funny thing is, it's somewhat less useful for certain business stuff, because so much of that is private within corporations. But the stuff you learn in a PhD program is all published. And it's pretty phenomenal at distilling that information to answer any specific question.
Multiple times a week I run into an obscure term or concept in a paper that isn't defined well or doesn't seem to make sense. I ask AI and it explains it to me in a minute. Yes, it's basically exactly like asking a PhD.
This is not a guarantee that the text it produces is a correct explanation of the thing you are asking about. It’s a mental trick like a psychic reading tea leaves.
It's generally pretty obvious if the explanation makes sense. And you can locate the original paper(s) as well to verify.
And you know what? My PhD friends get things wrong all the time too. I need to verify what they say as well.
"This is not a guarantee"? You're right. Nothing is a guarantee, but a lot of things are awfully helpful.
And yes, reducing everything in the world - nothing matters. Everything is relative. What even is truth, amirite?
If that’s our slogan for the future then it is hella depressing.
And they do. They stand on the fact that they save time, raise productivity, and assist in learning. That's the merit.
Demanding absolute perfection as the only measure of merit is bonkers. And if that's the standard you hold everything in your life too, you must be pretty disappointed with the world...
LLMs have not improved my productivity. When I have tried to use them, they have been a net negative. There are many other people who report a similar experience.
> This is not a guarantee that the text it produces is a correct explanation
A guarantee of correctness is perfection. I don't know else to take it.
Not all jobs or tasks are helped by LLM's. That's fine. But many are, and hugely.
You dismissed it for everyone as "a mental trick like a psychic reading tea leaves". Implying it has no value for anyone.
Your words.
That's just wrong.
Now you say it doesn't have value for you and for some other people. That's fine. But that's not what you were saying above. That's not what I was responding to.
And last sentences conflate a PhD with a google search or even dictionary lookup. I mean, c'mon!
And the things I'm looking up just can't be found in Google or a dictionary. It's something defined in some random paper from 1987, further developed by someone else in 1998, that the author didn't cite.
I've also seen AI just completely make up nonsense out of nowhere as recently as last week.
And I've got enough of the social side of scholarship already. Professors don't need me emailing them with questions, and I don't need to wait days for replies that may or may not come.
I mean, it's all just kind of common sense how to use an LLM.
I've mainly seen it used for getting answers without needing to or even being able to access the original source.