D. OlifantI like how we took something computers were masters at doing, and somehow fucked it up.
Jesus Margar@oli I get the right answer when I try. Same inputs.
Kevin Riggle@jesusmargar @oli and this is one of the problems with LLMs—they’re inherently stochastic
@jesusmargar @oli the inability to create reproducible test cases for these systems is an enormous problem for our ability to integrate them into other systems
64 Islands Aroha Cooperative@kevinriggle @jesusmargar @oli we’ve been told we should create ‘plausibility tests’ that use a (different?) llm to determine whether the test result is fit for purpose. also, fuck that.
@airshipper @kevinriggle @oli perhaps the problem is to expect deterministic behaviour rather than some degree of inexactness. I mean, I wouldn't use it to make final decisions on cancer treatment, for instance, but maybe it's ok to polish a text that isn't too important.
Alys"maybe it's ok to polish a text that isn't too important" - My feeling is that if the text isn't too important, it doesn't need much polishing, and a human should do any polishing necessary anyway. Then later when the human has to polish text that is absolutely critical to get right, the human has had practice at polishing and does it well.
@lady_alys @airshipper @kevinriggle @oli I guess you don't need to write in a foreign language for work. For those of us without that privilege LLMs can help us level up!
@jesusmargar this is the use of generative ai that i have the most sympathy for, because ‘knowledge work’ in a second language is hard.
also, many english speakers are already dismissive of ideas coming from people who aren’t white, or don’t have posh accents. being able to write well is a good counter that.
@airshipper absolutely, and often it's all prejudice. When I lived in US people were friendly with me and thought of me as French in the street because of my accent (which is Spanish). However I was once was criticised in student evaluations for my 'South American accent'. My accent isn't close to South American at all. The difference is that the student knew my name, which is Spanish, and assumed that made me South American. Suddenly, that piece of information made my accent less desirable
@airshipper if I had had darker skin I'm sure I'd have encountered more such comments.
There are problems with GenAI but there are also very legitimate uses. I'd like if it could offer alt text here, for instance. It often gets it right and it would make alt-less images unlikely to happen. I sometimes think people in this site are a bit too luddite to my taste, refusing any use of the technology due to some bad consequences of very specific uses.