People make these mistakes too. Several times in my high school shop class kids shorted out 9V batteries trying to build circuits because they didn't understand how electronics work. At no point did our teacher stop them from doing so - on at least one occasion I unplugged one from a breadboard before it got too toasty to handle (and I was/am an electronics nublet). Similarly there was also a lot of hand-wringing about the Gemini pizza glue in a world where people do wacky stuff like cook fish in a dishwasher or defrost chicken overnight on the counter or put cooked steak on the same plate it was on when raw just a few minutes prior.

LLMs are just surfacing the fact that assessing and managing risk is an acquired, difficult-to-learn skill. Most people don't know what they don't know and fail to think about what might happen if they do something (correctly or otherwise) before they do it, let alone what they'd do if it goes wrong.

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nozzlegear an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Well said, but I'd add that LLMs are also surfacing the fact that there's a swathe of people out there who will treat the machines as more trustworthy than humans by default, and don't believe they need to do any assessment or risk management in the first place.

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godelski an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's your point?

The AI is being sold as an expert, not a student. These are categorically different things.

The mistake in the post is one that can be avoided by taking a single class at a community college. No PhD required, not even a B.S., not even an electricians certificate.

So I don't get your point. You're comparing a person in a learning environment to the equivalent of a person claiming to have a PhD in electrical engineering. A student letting the magic smoke escape from a basic circuit is a learnable experience (a memorable one that has high impact), especially when done in a learning environment where an expert can ensure more dangerous mistakes are less likely or non existent. But the same action from a PhD educated engineer would make you reasonably question their qualifications. Yes, humans make mistakes but if you follow the AI's instructions and light things on fire you get sued. If you follow the engineer's instructions and set things on fire then that engineer gets fired likely loses their license.

So what is your point?

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bethekidyouwant 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

No one thinks their breadboard wont catch on fire because an AI agent told them it wouldn’t. Its never been easier to learn because of these agents.

	▲	godelski 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's a very strong claim. I don't think people expect their circuits to ignite, LLM instruction or not. But I'd expect learning from a book or dedicated website would be less likely for that to occur. (Even accounting for bad manufacturing) You're biased because you're not considering that by definition the student is inexperienced. Unknown unknowns. Tons of people don't know very basic things (why would they?) like circuits with capacitors bring dangerous when the power is off. Why are you defending there LLM? Would you be as nice to a person? I'd expect not because these threads tend to point out a person's idiocy. I'm not sure why we give greater leeway to the machine. I'm not sure why we forgive them as if they are a student learning but someone posting similar instructions on a blog gets (rightfully) thrashed. That blog writer is almost never claiming PhD expertise

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azan_ an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What’s wrong with dishwasher salmon?