Eugen RochkoMachine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs. It's worth pointing out two things: Machine translations existed decades before LLMs, and yes, machine translations are useful. However: I would never in my life read a machine translated book. Understanding what a social media post is talking about in rough terms? Sure. Literature? Absolutely not. Hell, have you ever seen machine translated subtitles? It's absolute garbage.
I have the impression that primarily anglophone people don't read as much translated literature, because so much good literature already exists in their language, so this issue may not be as familiar within that demographic. As someone who did not grow up anglophone, I can tell you there is a world of difference between a good and a bad translation even when done by humans. Machine translations are not even on the scale.
From what I've observed, people who claim that LLMs can replace artists don't understand art, people who claim that they can replace musicians don't understand music, people who claim that they can replace writers don't understand literature, and people who claim they can replace translators don't rely on translations. If I had a button that would erase LLMs from the world but it would take machine translations away (which is a false dichotomy anyway), I would absolutely still press it.
Technology is not inevitable. We've decided not to have asbestos in our walls, lead in our pipes, or carginogenic chemicals in our food. (If you're going to argue that it's not everywhere, where would you rather live?) We could just not do LLMs. It's allowed.
Tekchip@Gargron would you know if you've seen a good outcome of an LLM? You'd somehow be able to identify when the LLM got it right?
I assure you you've experienced good LLM output and don't even know it. Because that's what good LLM output looks like. Indistinguishable from human output.
Your examples are perhaps false equivalencies. Take asbestos. We didn't abolish insulation. We developed better, safer insulation. We didn't stop dying food colors, we just developed safer dyes etc.
Ben AvelingOh LLM output always looks good, as long you don't understand what it's talking, then it looks great.
Very beautiful, very plausible.
But if you actually understand whatever it is that the LLM is talking about, then it rapidly becomes obvious that it's just spewing all the right words in a random order.
@Tekchip @Gargron
Very beautiful, very plausible.
But if you actually understand whatever it is that the LLM is talking about, then it rapidly becomes obvious that it's just spewing all the right words in a random order.
@Tekchip @Gargron