(I keep delivering this as a quip, here's a bit more) First order of business - is 'tool' going to have an interesting, distinguishing and thus illuminative meaning or be a mere platitudinous stand-in for "anything useful"? We'll save tool as "anyone/thing that can be exploited" for the AI titans, f
Disagree. What would you call a 3D printer? I’d still call it a tool. Even though I don’t wield it or hold it in my hand. You tell it what you want to do and it builds something physical for you.
There is skill involved in 3D printing. Incorrect instructions lead to poor results. There are many variables to consider and you learn how to manage them the more practice you get.
What would you call a test framework? Something that can run your software tests and present information in a coherent way? I’d call it a tool. I use the testing tools available to me to speed up and improve my code.
LLMs are the same. You give it instructions and do something with the output. The difference is that the LLM can also use you as a tool. It will give you instructions and ask for results. But LLMs are not perfect. They will give you incorrect information. They will lead you down dead ends if you don’t know what you’re doing.
This makes LLMs quite difficult to use. You need knowledge in the subject you’re asking it about and you need to be skilled at using the LLM to acheive good results. A lot of people don’t have either.
You need to be strong enough to wield a chainsaw, you need to be smart enough to wield an LLM. They are both tools.
I din’t think you can compare it to a 3d printer. When you have no idea what you are doing you will get no output or you may even damage your machine.
With an LLM you could just go “Oi shitass make botoshpop” and it will create you something at least resembling your request. You will get better results if you describe in detail what you want, but in the end what exactly it outputs is not in your hand.
There is not a knob you can turn to make the output perfect. You just give it more info on what exactly you want and it will output something.
With every tool you are in full control of what it is doing. Ai is just som guy that does things for you. You don’t need to know how it works or why it works. It just does it for you.
Yeah i agree with most of that but you are in control of what you do with the output. If the output is full of mistakes you don’t notice, that’s on you and you have used the tool poorly.
Blindly trusting the output of an LLM is not using the tool properly.
Yeah, but that is the point i’m trying to make. You can trust the output of your tool, but you can’t trust the output of an llm.
I can trust that my 3D printer will print exactly what I wanted it to print.
I cannot trust an llm to produce me exactly what i wanted from it.
If I trust my own skills I can trust the output of a tool.
It doesn’t matter how good I am at prompting, there is always a chance that an llm will just do something I didn’t tell it to do.
You are not the creator with an llm you simply delegating the work to someone else and then having to check what that person has done.
But this will most likely be because i configured something wrongor a part inside the printer has failed.
This would be like a service being down that the llm uses.
If a llm were 3d printer there would be a chance that the part it is printing for you suddenly had a different width or the endings were flat instead of rounded. And if you ask it why it did that it just responds “You are absolutely right for calling me out. I just thought it was easier to print this way.”. This is not something a tool should ever do.
If you cut of your arm with a chainsaw then you have taken the actions to cut off your arm with the chainsaw.
An llm chainsaw could bend its blade 180° and cut off your arm without you even wanting it or taking any step in that direction.
If you hold the chainsaw and the llm chainsaw the exact same way, the normal chainsaw would not cut off your arm, no mather what (exept for a catastrophic failure wich can happen to both chainsaws). With the llm chainsaw you roll the dice every time and sometimes it just says “nah, tree too big. I’ll cut your arm instead because it is easier”.
That is the difference for me. One thing is completely dependant on your actions and if you do everything correctly than it should produce the outcome you expect.
With an llm you could do everything right and it does something you didn’t want without.
A tool should always do what you want and not have a built in randomness to the output.
Dude, what you give LLM is not instructions. It doesn’t follow your instructions. It brings you back what might look like you want.
A CPU, on the other hand, carries out the instructions exactly like you’ve said.
There is no way to avoid incorrect answers from LLM. It’s probablistic; there is always a chance of getting a wrong answer no matter how you improve it. With a CPU, you can reduce errors by improving the design. It’s based on physics; it’s logical.
I advice you to stop treating LLMs as blackboxes and only observe it from the outside. You’ll never notice the difference if the error rate is low enough.
Disagree. What would you call a 3D printer? I’d still call it a tool. Even though I don’t wield it or hold it in my hand. You tell it what you want to do and it builds something physical for you.
There is skill involved in 3D printing. Incorrect instructions lead to poor results. There are many variables to consider and you learn how to manage them the more practice you get.
What would you call a test framework? Something that can run your software tests and present information in a coherent way? I’d call it a tool. I use the testing tools available to me to speed up and improve my code.
LLMs are the same. You give it instructions and do something with the output. The difference is that the LLM can also use you as a tool. It will give you instructions and ask for results. But LLMs are not perfect. They will give you incorrect information. They will lead you down dead ends if you don’t know what you’re doing.
This makes LLMs quite difficult to use. You need knowledge in the subject you’re asking it about and you need to be skilled at using the LLM to acheive good results. A lot of people don’t have either.
You need to be strong enough to wield a chainsaw, you need to be smart enough to wield an LLM. They are both tools.
I din’t think you can compare it to a 3d printer. When you have no idea what you are doing you will get no output or you may even damage your machine.
With an LLM you could just go “Oi shitass make botoshpop” and it will create you something at least resembling your request. You will get better results if you describe in detail what you want, but in the end what exactly it outputs is not in your hand.
There is not a knob you can turn to make the output perfect. You just give it more info on what exactly you want and it will output something.
With every tool you are in full control of what it is doing. Ai is just som guy that does things for you. You don’t need to know how it works or why it works. It just does it for you.
Yeah i agree with most of that but you are in control of what you do with the output. If the output is full of mistakes you don’t notice, that’s on you and you have used the tool poorly.
Blindly trusting the output of an LLM is not using the tool properly.
Yeah, but that is the point i’m trying to make. You can trust the output of your tool, but you can’t trust the output of an llm. I can trust that my 3D printer will print exactly what I wanted it to print. I cannot trust an llm to produce me exactly what i wanted from it.
If I trust my own skills I can trust the output of a tool.
It doesn’t matter how good I am at prompting, there is always a chance that an llm will just do something I didn’t tell it to do.
You are not the creator with an llm you simply delegating the work to someone else and then having to check what that person has done.
But even if you configure a 3D printer properly there’s still a chance the output will be flawed.
Just because you can’t trust the output doesn’t mean it’s not a tool. If you expect it to do exactly what you want you’re using the tool wrong.
You use the LLM to help you build the system that does exactly what you want every time. LLMs are just a tool to help you get there.
But this will most likely be because i configured something wrongor a part inside the printer has failed.
This would be like a service being down that the llm uses.
If a llm were 3d printer there would be a chance that the part it is printing for you suddenly had a different width or the endings were flat instead of rounded. And if you ask it why it did that it just responds “You are absolutely right for calling me out. I just thought it was easier to print this way.”. This is not something a tool should ever do.
Why not? To me that’s just what the tool does.
You can chop off your arm with a chainsaw.
Tools don’t have to be safe. They don’t have to protect you from mistakes.
Why is an LLM not a tool?
Its not that a tool has to be safe.
If you cut of your arm with a chainsaw then you have taken the actions to cut off your arm with the chainsaw.
An llm chainsaw could bend its blade 180° and cut off your arm without you even wanting it or taking any step in that direction.
If you hold the chainsaw and the llm chainsaw the exact same way, the normal chainsaw would not cut off your arm, no mather what (exept for a catastrophic failure wich can happen to both chainsaws). With the llm chainsaw you roll the dice every time and sometimes it just says “nah, tree too big. I’ll cut your arm instead because it is easier”.
That is the difference for me. One thing is completely dependant on your actions and if you do everything correctly than it should produce the outcome you expect. With an llm you could do everything right and it does something you didn’t want without.
A tool should always do what you want and not have a built in randomness to the output.
I can see where you’re coming from. But for me, randomness in the output doesn’t affect whether i call something a tool or not.
From the Cambridge Dictionary:
Tool - something that helps you to do a particular activity.
I use LLMs to help me code at work. Maybe you can use an LLM in a different way where it’s not longer a tool but it definitely can be called a tool!
When you roll dice, you use a tool (the dice), and they’re random.
Dude, what you give LLM is not instructions. It doesn’t follow your instructions. It brings you back what might look like you want.
A CPU, on the other hand, carries out the instructions exactly like you’ve said.
There is no way to avoid incorrect answers from LLM. It’s probablistic; there is always a chance of getting a wrong answer no matter how you improve it. With a CPU, you can reduce errors by improving the design. It’s based on physics; it’s logical.
I advice you to stop treating LLMs as blackboxes and only observe it from the outside. You’ll never notice the difference if the error rate is low enough.
Of course, an LLM is a probability machine which outputs the most likely next token based on the tokens you give it.
I’m not sure why that doesn’t make it a tool though. The output of this probability machine can be useful if you know what you’re doing.