So, it's basically useless or even harmful.

Yes, if you try to use it as if it was an actual lossless encyclopedia.

One of the reasons I like this analogy is that it hints at the fact that you need to use them in a different way - you shouldn't be looking up specific facts in an unassisted LLM outside of things that even lossy compression would capture (like the capital cities of countries).

▲

skydhash 3 days ago | parent [-]

The only usages I found so far that are somewhat useful is to generate plots with python and how to use the various libraries for machine learning. Also massage some hastily written text. Both involved haste as I needed some result fast.

Everything else is mostly playing around and harmful to learning.

	▲	cmcaleer 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		This sounds pretty helpful. If I'm trying a new lib that I want to do something specific with, I paste all the documentation in and interrogate the LLM about it, then cross-reference with the docs. Usually much faster to do what I want than just CTRL+F or writing a SO question that gets immediately marked as duplicate because some other question is vaguely related. For language learning, it's terrible and will try to teach me wrong things if it's unguided. But pasting e.g. a lesson transcript that I just finished, then asking for exercises based on it helps solidify what I learned if the material doesn't come with drills. I think writing is one of the things it's kind of terrible at. It's often way too verbose and has a particular 'voice' that I think leaves a bad taste in peoples' mouths. At least this issue has given me the confidence to finally just send single sentence emails so people know I don't use LLMs for this. My frustrations with LLMs from years ago has largely chilled out as I've gotten better at using them and understanding that they aren't people who I can trust to give solid advice. If you're careful about what you put in and careful about what you take out you can get decent value.

▲

baq 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Just like a hammer if you're trying to cook with it.