| ▲ | moralestapia 5 days ago |
| The same way you double check with any other method you prefer? Duh. LLMs are vastly superior to compile and spread knowledge than any other thing preceding them. |
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| ▲ | contagiousflow 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| You double check every university lecture you've been apart of? |
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| ▲ | wat10000 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Did you just sit there in class and then never do anything with what you learned afterwards? That certainly isn't how I approached university. | | |
| ▲ | contagiousflow 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Doing something with the knowledge given in a lecture is very distinct from fact checking it | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I'd say it's a subset of fact checking it. You can check facts without doing anything else, but doing something with the knowledge is inherently checking it. If the lecture presents some programming technique, and I implement it, I'll find out pretty quickly if it's wrong. |
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| ▲ | nkmnz 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's what is called "studying" or "reading a textbook", isn't it? | | |
| ▲ | IshKebab 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Uhm no? Reading a textbook is obviously not the same as fact checking a textbook. | | |
| ▲ | nkmnz 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Parent was writing about a university LECTURE which is different from a TEXTBOOK (which is different from primary sources), so yeah, consulting other sources is checking the facts. | | |
| ▲ | IshKebab 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Oh I see what you're saying. It was slightly ambiguous. But in any case, I didn't read a single textbook at uni; it was all lecture notes provided by the lecturers (fill-in-the-gaps actually which worked waaaay better than you'd think). So the answer is still no - I didn't fact check them and I didn't need to because they didn't wildly hallucinate like AI does. |
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| ▲ | 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | moralestapia 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The real answer is: You should have a mental model about how the world works and the fundamental rules of the context where you're operating. Even though you might not know something, you eventually develop an intuition of what makes sense and what doesn't. And yes, that applies even to "university lectures" since a lot of professors make mistakes/are wrong plenty of times. Taking an LLM's output at face value would be dumb, yes. But it would be equally dumb to take only what's written on a book at face value, or a YouTube video, or anyone you listen to. You have to dig in, you have to do the homework. LLMs make it much easier for you to do this homework. Sure, they still make mistakes, but they get you 90% of the way in minutes(!) and almost for free. | | |
| ▲ | tjr 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't think it's (necessarily) equally dumb. Maybe if comparing LLM output to a book chosen at random. But I would feel much safer taking a passage from Knuth at face value than a comparable LLM passage on algorithms. |
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| ▲ | bpt3 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They are faster, but I don't see how they are vastly superior to a course designed and offered by a subject matter expert in the field. |
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| ▲ | moralestapia 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You can't beat a Caltech-tier lecture, for sure. But you know many people have access to that? You do know. Thousands, and I'm being generous. LLMs level the playing field for the other 8 billion people. Reminds of this article[1] that was featured yesterday and which I think was great! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46254794 | | | |
| ▲ | bdangubic 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | they have been trained on material not just by single subject matter expert but all of them :) | | |
| ▲ | bpt3 5 days ago | parent [-] | | They have not, because a large portion of the knowledge obtained by subject matter experts in any given field has never been published. Also, hallucinations are still a thing, and there's a reason why LLMs do not outperform subject matter experts in nearly every field. | | |
| ▲ | bdangubic 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I was being facetious but am now extremely curious about large portion of the knowledge obtained by subject matter experts in any given field has never been published - this is not only strange to me in the small but you are claiming that this is large portion so I am wondering if you have any example(s) to share? | | |
| ▲ | bpt3 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Ah, sorry I missed that. Academics, whose entire careers are based on publishing knowledge, only publish a fraction of their total knowledge obtained over their career. Estimates are that only 10-20% of all knowledge is explicit. |
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| ▲ | croes 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Professionals who know there subject are still the best way |
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| ▲ | amitav1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That's true, but they are also a) a lot more expensive and b) unlike LLMs, the vast majority of professionals have family and friends and need sleep and food, and as such are not available 24/7/365 |
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