We expect computers to be consistent on the other hand. A calculator will always give you the same answer unless some chip gets struck by a particle. LLMs are on computers and should be fairly consistent too.

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vidarh 2 hours ago | parent [-]

And this lies at the heart of the problem.

We expect computers to be consistent despite running programs that are not designed to be consistent.

This despite the fact that we have lots of experience of programs running on computers that produces wildly inconsistent outputs.

But for some reason some people choose to assume LLMs should act like a calculator instead of any of those programs.

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chrisjj 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> This despite the fact that we have lots of experience of programs running on computers that produces wildly inconsistent outputs.

The average user has very little. A word processor with inconsistent pagination or a spreadsheet with inconsistent totals is rightly seen as faulty.

	▲	newswasboring 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah but daily tools have lots of complexity which appears as non determinism (if we are thinking only UX, not actual determinism). For example, try moving an image in the word doc. I have been using MS word my entire life it seems, still don't know what the rules are lol.