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Comment by nuancebydefault | Hacker News Reader

My experience is that it tries to look at your situation in an objective way, and tries to help you to analyse your thoughts and actions. It comes across as very empathetic though, so there can lie a danger if you are easily persuaded into seeing it as a friend.

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>in an objective way

One of the great myths of models in countless fields/industries. LLM’s are absolutely in no way objective.

Now if you want to say it’s an “outside opinion“ that’s valid. But do not kid yourself into thinking it is somehow empirical or objective

It doesn't try to do anything. It doesn't work like that. It regurgitates the most likely tokens found in the training set.

Hmmmm i didn't know that... so a machine is not human is your point? Look, i know it doesn't try, just like a sorting algo does not try to sort, or an article does not try to convey an opinion and a law does not try to make society more organized.

That is so reductive of an analysis that it is almost worthless. Technically true, but very unhelpful in terms of using an LLM.

It is a first principle though so it helps to “stir the context windows pot” by having it pull in research and other shit on the web that will help ground it and not just tell you exactly what you prompt it to say.

They are amazing tools, but when people try to give them agency someone has to explain it in simple terms.

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