▲ | II2II 4 days ago | |
There are two different issues here. One is tied to how authoritative we view a source, and the other is tied to the weaknesses of the person receiving advice. With respect to the former, I firmly believe that the existing LLMs should not be presented as a source for authoritative advice. Giving advice that is not authoritative is okay as long as the recipient realizes such, in the sense that it is something that people have to deal with outside of the technological realm anyhow. For example, if you ask for help for a friend you are doing so with the understanding that, as a friend, they are doing so to the best of their ability. Yet you don't automatically assume they are right. They are either right because they do the footwork for you to ensure accuracy or you check the accuracy of what they are telling you yourself. Likewise, you don't trust the advice of a stranger unless they are certified, and even that depends upon trust in the certifying body. I think the problem with technology is that we assume it is a cure-all. While we may not automatically trust the results returned by a basic Google search, a basic Google search result coupled with an authoritative sounding name automatically sounds more accurate than a Google search result that is a blog posting. (I'm not suggesting this is the only criteria people use. You are welcome to insert your own criteria in its place.) Our trust of LLMs, as they stand today, is even worse. Few people have developed criteria beyond: it is an LLM, so it must be trustworthy; or, it is an LLM so it must not be trustworthy. And, to be fair, it is bloody difficult to develop criteria for the trustworthiness of LLMs (even arbitrary criteria) because the provide so few cues. Then there's the bit about the person receiving the advice. There's not a huge amount we can do about that beyond encouraging people regard the results from LLMs as stepping stones. That is to say they should take the results and do research that will either confirm or deny it. But, of course, many people are lazy and nobody has the expertise to analyze the output of an LLM outside of their personal experience/training. |