Comment by pessimizer

Comment by pessimizer a day ago

13 replies

I'm having flashbacks to every time I've tried to convince these things that they're screwing up, watching the tokens burn.

When these models screw up, and you notice immediately and point out exactly how they screwed up in simple, direct language, they will 1) explain to you at length how you are actually wrong by pretending that they originally said what you just said and that you just said something else, and 2) tell you how your misunderstanding and confusion could have made their answer seem and feel wrong to you at length.

Then you quote their answer, and repeat that it was wrong (maybe two or three times), and you get effusive praise and self-criticism at length about how the answer that you already told them was wrong was wrong, as if you needed to know that, and another explanation of the mistake or problem that you just explained to it.

At this point, the entire context is wrecked and filled with nonsense. You want to dump it and start over, but you're afraid that if you start over the same way you'll end up here again (and you do, unless you figure out the magic words.)

Why aren't they getting better at this? Are some of them getting better at this?

andsoitis a day ago

> I'm having flashbacks to every time I've tried to convince these things that they're screwing up, watching the tokens burn.

that makes me think you should get credits when you are having to correct the system.

> Why aren't they getting better at this? Are some of them getting better at this?

they lack critical thinking, reasoning, logic, skepticism, self-reflection, common sense, amongst other things. They also don't learn. They get trained, but they don't learn once they're out there.

  • jagged-chisel 20 hours ago

    I like when I ultimately have to fix a problem in code on my own, I tell the LLM that I did so, and it responds “nice! What was the fix?”

    You want me to pay you for wrong answers, and then provide you with the correct answer FOR FREE? Nah. Keeping it to myself.

sjsdaiuasgdia a day ago

Why are you asking a token generator to explain its prior output?

You are proceeding from a false premise. You are not getting an explanation of its prior output. You are getting a series of tokens that forms a response to your query, same as it did for the initial answer. Now you've asked it why it's wrong, so the text conforms to that request, but that doesn't change the fundamental nature of the software you're interacting with.

  • vizzier 19 hours ago

    > Me: What is your knowledge cut off date?

    > ChatGPT: My knowledge cutoff is *June 2024*. I can also use live browsing to fetch more recent information when needed.

    It is unsurprising that it thinks next year would be 2025, given that this token generator lives in June 2024.

    • lproven 16 hours ago

      > it thinks

      This is your mistake right here. It doesn't think. It's a text generator. It can no more think about what year it is than Swiftkey on your phone "thinks" what year it is when you type

      NEXT YEAR WILL BE

      and press the middle button.

      • mtts 6 hours ago

        I'm as bearish as anyone on the current AI hype, but this particular ship has sailed. Research is revealing these humongous neural networks of weights for next token prediction to exhibit underlying structures that seem to map in some way to a form of knowledge about the world that is, however imperfectly, extracted from all the text they're trained on.

        Arguing that this is meaningfully different from what happens in our own brains is not something I would personally be comfortable with.

        • lproven 5 hours ago

          > Research is revealing these humongous neural networks of weights for next token prediction to exhibit underlying structures that seem to map in some way to a form of knowledge about the world that is

          [[citation needed]]

          I am sorry but I need exceptionally strong proof of that statement. I think it is totally untrue.

  • pessimizer 19 hours ago

    > Why are you asking a token generator to explain its prior output?

    I swear I'm not. I'm trying to get it to fix the bug. I know it's a stateless slop generator, but I need it to be an obedient stateless slop generator.

    The "magic words" I'm trying to come up with are whatever will prompt it to see the bug at all. I've tried standing instructions demanding that it simply not ever question me about whether a bug I've mentioned exists, because I'd rather it "fix" a bug that doesn't exist (so it can fail fast and I can realize I'm the dumb one) than fall into this loop of trying to argue it into doing what I say.

    edit: that tactic does not work, even with much repetition, all caps, and many exclamation points. Eventually the instructions read like I'm having a mental breakdown.

    • sjsdaiuasgdia 18 hours ago

      You still seem to be expecting some degree of thought and understanding from these tools.

      They generate tokens. The output has a probabilistic relationship to the established context and prompts, plus whatever prompting is happening as you interact with the model.

      There is no understanding of "don't do [thing]". Sometimes, you can get something closer to what you wanted by putting stuff like that in the prompt. But it's still probabilistic token generation. It's not interpreting that as a literal command to not do the thing. It has that command in its context now, and maybe that changes the output. Maybe it changes in a useful direction, maybe it doesn't. But it's not going to be treated as a literal command because the model does not have the capability to do so. Phrasing it differently doesn't change the fundamentals.

bryanlarsen a day ago

You're describing what I'm going through at this moment. I'm on HN for a stress break for this reason.

  • edoceo a day ago

    I do 15 minute walk. Fresh air, movement. Feels good.

    • bryanlarsen a day ago

      That'd be a much better idea. HN for a stress break is masochistic.

      • edoceo 20 hours ago

        Can read HN while on the walk. Maybe even comment;)