@70512795 @99b9ed46 @58587491 LLMs are a solution looking for a problem. You can usually tell by the way it's marketed as being useful for anything and everything while not actually being better than anything that already exists.
Other types of generative AI aren't as bad, though that isn't saying much since LLMs are the literal worst. There are, at least, a handful of cases where they have advantages over existing solutions, but they still need a lot of handholding.
@3bda71f9 @70512795 @58587491 explain to someone who's not a techie what LLMs are, without resorting to LMGTFY or similar things
@99b9ed46 @3bda71f9 @58587491 ok.
LLMs are computer programs that have stored reams of (often stolen) text. When you supply it with a question or prompt, it runs calculations to return a sentence that that mathematically is possibly what you want
@70512795 @3bda71f9 @58587491 oh my fucking god that's the generative text stuff ChatGPT runs on
I know everyone is using it but it hurts my linguist heart to see one of the core activities of human functioning be outsourced to garbage protocols
@99b9ed46 @3bda71f9 @58587491 I'm genuinely curious, did you not know what LLMs are before that toot?
I thought you were being smug or sarcastic
@70512795 @3bda71f9 @58587491 no I genuinely did not know
@99b9ed46 @3bda71f9 @58587491 ok. My apologies if I came across at condescending or anything there, then
@70512795 @3bda71f9 @58587491 no worries, I know the OG mastopeeps are 99% programmers and such. I studied historical linguistics and my interest revolve around that, painting plastic dolls with punch daggers and humans in general. Plus I'll ask if I need to know.
@70512795 @99b9ed46 @58587491 An example is ChatGPT.
To expand on that, it stands for large language model. It creates an internal model of a language using the aforementioned stolen text and uses it to predict what word comes next. It's basically autocorrect with extra hallucinations.
@3bda71f9 @70512795 @58587491 Ahhh Large Language Model
Madafakas gonna use AI to give names to things now, I see
@99b9ed46 @70512795 @58587491 Yeah, not to be confused with MLMs which are a *whole* other problem. I dread the day that someone creates an MLM selling LLMs. FML.
@70512795 @99b9ed46 @3bda71f9 @58587491 correction: they return the sentence that is statistically the most plausible looking. It's not necessarily what you want, nor is it necessarily truthful, it's just the one that looks most like a human response.
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