• sc_griffith@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    that’s a misleading and meaningless way of putting it. if I rip a page out of my textbook and bring it into an exam room, I do not have with me all the data in my textbook. and yet

    • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      6 months ago

      It doesn’t do that, either. LLMs retain the linguistic patterns found in textbooks, nothing more. It’s remarkable that they can do so much with this information alone, but it’s still a far cry from genuine intelligence.

      • zogwarg@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        And yet they can spit out copyrighted material verbatim, or near-verbatim, how strange and peculiar.

      • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Yeah, even setting aside the intelligence claims, I know I’d be feeling a lot more positive about LLMs as a fun theoretical tool if they weren’t being sold as personal assistants or search engine replacements etc, which even the apologists here admit they’re really really bad at.

        (Also I’d argue “linguistic patterns” is pushing it. “Textual patterns” more like, it’s not supposed to have any idea about grammar or even about what “text” is.) (I say “supposed to” because who knows what sort of hacks they’re running under the hood.)