I'll respond to this bait in the hopes that it clicks for someone how to _not_ use an LLM..
Asking "them"... your perspective is already warped. It's not your fault, all the text we've previously ever seen is associated with a human being.
Language models are mathematical, statistical beasts. The beast generally doesn't do well with open ended questions (known as "zero-shot"). It shines when you give it something to work off of ("one-shot").
Some may complain of the preciseness of my use of zero and one shot here, but I use it merely to contrast between open ended questions versus providing some context and work to be done.
Some examples...
- summarize the following
- given this code, break down each part
- give alternatives of this code and trade-offs
- given this error, how to fix or begin troubleshooting
I mainly use them for technical things I can then verify myself.
While extremely useful, I consider them extremely dangerous. They provide a false sense of "knowing things"/"learning"/"productivity". It's too easy to begin to rely on them as a crutch.
When learning new programming languages, I go back to writing by hand and compiling in my head. I need that mechanical muscle memory, same as trying to learn calculus or physics, chemistry, etc.
> Language models are mathematical, statistical beasts. The beast generally doesn't do well with open ended questions (known as "zero-shot"). It shines when you give it something to work off of ("one-shot").
That is the usage that is advertised to the general public, so I think it's fair to critique it by way of this usage.
You either give them the option to search the web for facts or you ask them things where the utility/validity of the answer is defined by you (e.g. 'summarize the following text...') instead of the external world.
4b11b4|3 months ago
Asking "them"... your perspective is already warped. It's not your fault, all the text we've previously ever seen is associated with a human being.
Language models are mathematical, statistical beasts. The beast generally doesn't do well with open ended questions (known as "zero-shot"). It shines when you give it something to work off of ("one-shot").
Some may complain of the preciseness of my use of zero and one shot here, but I use it merely to contrast between open ended questions versus providing some context and work to be done.
Some examples...
- summarize the following
- given this code, break down each part
- give alternatives of this code and trade-offs
- given this error, how to fix or begin troubleshooting
I mainly use them for technical things I can then verify myself.
While extremely useful, I consider them extremely dangerous. They provide a false sense of "knowing things"/"learning"/"productivity". It's too easy to begin to rely on them as a crutch.
When learning new programming languages, I go back to writing by hand and compiling in my head. I need that mechanical muscle memory, same as trying to learn calculus or physics, chemistry, etc.
nkrisc|3 months ago
That is the usage that is advertised to the general public, so I think it's fair to critique it by way of this usage.
hamburgererror|3 months ago
bgilroy26|3 months ago
I play once or twice a week and it's definitely worth $20/mo to me
mckirk|3 months ago