this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And everyone in tech who has worked on ML before collectively says “yeah that’s what we’ve been trying to tell you”.

Everybody in tech would even have a passing understanding of the technology was collectively saying that. We understand the limits of technology and can feel out the bounds easily. But, too many of these dumbasses with dollar signs in their eyes are all "to the moon!", and tripping and failing on implementing the tech in unreasonable ways.

It was never a factoid machine, like some people wanted to believe. It was always about creatively writing something, and only one with so much attention.

[–] interolivary 10 points 1 year ago

It was never a factoid machine

Funny tidbit about the word "factoid": its original meaning was "an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact", but the modern usage is "a brief or trivial item of news or information".

This means that the modern usage of "factoid" is in itself a factoid, and that in the old sense LLMs sort of are factoid machines.

Note that I'm not saying the modern use is wrong. Languages evolve, and words taking on new meanings doesn't mean the new meanings are "wrong" (and surprisingly words changing to mean the opposite of what they used to mean isn't all that uncommon either.)