I know the reputation that AI has on Lemmy, however I’ve found that some users (like myself) have found that LLMs can be useful tools.
What are fellow AI users using these tools for? Furthermore, what models are you using that find the most useful?
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If we are talking chatbots I see them as another level of abstraction to search and is useful but I have concerns on the energy use. Other uses I have encountered is just sorta a convenience thing. Where it can do a bunch of things that individual software can do but at a one stop shop. I have not directly been involved in other aspects but im aware how they are baked into things like facial recognition and tracking and such.
Dont use AI chat as a replacement for search except on popular subjects with broad consensus. Which unfortunately is when you generally don’t need it.
its fine as long as it gives references to check out. I mean its not fine because of the energy usage but if that is solved I would use it for search. again as long as it tells me sources.
If what you want is sources, a regular Google search will do a better job if it’s a popular subject.
Chatgpt and it’s kin will be inexplicably creative in its choice of sources, and in its summary thereof. And in the sources themselves sometimes.
If it’s something you care to get right, just skip AI.
If it’s meaningless, then it’s harmless in its potential inaccuracySee just like a normal search its up to you to evaluate it. ai search wise is as I said another abstraction. Not using it is like turning off the little snipets search engines do nowadays and going back to just clicking an each and every link. The problem is people just taking the response as gospel with no critical thought.
Like a normal search, except it only provides like 4 links, it’s choice of links is even worse than Google SEO, and it provides inaccurate summaries of them rather than relevant text snippets.
So yes, people just taking the response as gospel is bad. But also it’s just worse than search if you’re using it as a search.
You go to the sites just like you would with the snippets and if they don’t pan out you can rephrase or just go back to a normal search. This is what I meant by a level of abstraction. You can skip the scroll and check what it gives you and if its good you save time (much like the snippets saved time) and if not you are no worse and you correct or go slightly older school. As much as I agree the chatbots can be wrong I don’t find them to usually be off base. They generally find pretty decent resources. Now when they are wrong they can be really wrong but its no different from someone searching and just using the first return without going through the results and evaluating each link. It reminds me when a neighbor in the dorms was explaining html to me as he was making a site and I was like. Why? Just use gopher.
But like I said, if you’re using it like a search then it’s just worse.
It’s way slower, it’s way fewer results, and the summaries can never be as accurate as verbatim quotes of the pages themselves.The only reason to use AI is to get the summary, and then you’re not using it as a search. Maybe it provides some references you can use to fact check, but that’s still not a search.
You have to remember, LLM’s are literally just auto-complete. They don’t have the goal of giving you an answer or resources, they have the goal of providing text that would complete the conversation in a way that looks similar to what they’ve seen before. If they can give you a biased answer supported by cherry picked references, that’s just as valid of a completion, because it looks like how such a conversation might be completed.
In situations where the response can be inherently assessed for correctness (eg art, but that’s a whole other ethical issue) or correctness can be automatically verified (eg programming) then there is some value in limited use.
Although I personally think the implications of putting it in the hands of business owners isn’t worth it, that another topic.The less results is a feature. Again when it works the currated list should be stuff you would have landed on by evaluating snippets. Look. If I search for something I do a search then scroll through results. I may or may not find some links to go to. I go to them and if any are promising I maybe make them a new tab but if not I modify the wording of the search and this thing can repeat a few times but usually less than three. In the end I tend to have about three websites I use. The chatbot acts like asking someone to look into it. When they get back to you they give you the “answer” but you talk with them and go over what they found to make sure. Why? Because if you were ok with them going forward then you would just give them that role. Its the same thing with the chatbot. Its like an assitant but you are responsible for the output and need to evaluate it. It can save time but does not always. I have asked someone to do something and after evaluation I have to do it myself because it was not good enough and I go send them to do something else or have them shadow me while I do the thing. The nice thing with the chatbot is you don’t need to make sure its time is being utilized efficiently so you don’t need to give it a new task and it does not have the capability of shadowing you (if it did then jobs would really be in trouble.)