It's a new technology barely out of infancy. Of course it's unreliable and niche. You could say the same thing about any technological advance in history.

You could say that. But you could also say that none of these other technological advances got pushed through this badly while being obviously not ready for widespread use.

And also, can you really say that though? Most other technological advances had a pretty clear distinction from the older way of doing things.

It's a new technology barely out of infancy. Of course it's unreliable and niche. You could say the same thing about any technological advance in history.

The very nature of how it functions is unreliable. It's a statistical probabilistic model. It's great for what it was designed to do but imagining that it has any way of rationalising data is purely that, just imagination. Even if let's say we accept that it makes an error rate at the same rate as humans do (if it can even identify an error reliably), there's no accountability in place that ensures that it would check the correctness like a human would.

I understand perfectly how LLMs work, and I made no claims about what they can do. Taking them on their own capabilities (text generation, inspiration, etc), not what some lying-through-their-teeth marketer said, is there a reason to say they 'shouldn't exist'?

Creators of AI don't quite have the technology to puppeteer their AI like this.
They can selects the input, they can bias the training, but if the model isn't going to be lobotomized coming out
then they can't really bend it toward any particular one opinion

I'm sure in the future they'll be able to adjust advertising manipulation in real time but not yet.
What is really sketchy is states and leaders relying on commercial models instead of public ones
I think states should train public models and release them for the public good
if only to undermine big tech bros and their nefarious influence

OP didn't phrase it as "should they exist" but as "do we need them to exist".

And personally i think not, we don't need them.
In text generation they are good... inspiration? They are more of an inspiration killer imo.

Let's be honest though the majority of politicians are so terrible at their job, that this might actually be one of the rare occurrences where AI actually improves the work. But it is very susceptible to unknown influences.

Let's be honest though the majority of politicians are so terrible at their job, that this might actually be one of the rare occurrences where AI actually improves the work. But it is very susceptible to unknown influences.

I really don't get it. These things are brand new. How can anyone get so into these things so quickly. I don't take advice from people I barely know, much less ones that can be so easily and quickly reprogrammed.

That's the big issue. If it was only about competence, I think throwing dice might yield better results than what many politicians are doing. But AI isn't throwing dice but instead reproduces what the creators of the AI want to say.

You don't have to modify the model to parrot your opinion. You just have to put your stuff into the system prompt.

You can even modify the system prompt on the fly depending on e.g. the user account or the specific user input. That way you can modify the responses for a far bigger subject range: whenever a keyword of a specific subject is detected, the fitting system prompt is loaded, so you don't have to trash your system prompt full of off-topic information.

This is so trivially simple to do that even a junior dev should be able to wrap something like that around an existing LLM.

Edit: In fact, that's exactly how all these customized ChatGPT versions work.

yet you need these masses of input for the technology to exist. the business models that base on the technology aren't sustainable even without payment of the input data.

Fuck no. Rather an incompetent politician than a hallucinating sycophant just telling you what you want to hear.

We don't NEED any particular technology to exist. That's a weird distinction to make.

inspiration? They are more of an inspiration killer imo.

Different minds work differently.

Maybe it shouldn't be a business model then.

Of common, you justifying stealing by this bullshit?

No, mankind certainly needs a lot of techonologies (maybe just out of built dependency) either to mantain our living standards or just plainly to ensure that we produce and distribute enough resources for everyone to survive.

We need LLMs as much as we needed 3D movies or augmented reality.

Are you MAGA or something? Do you not understand how attorneys bill their clients?

One thing I struggle with AI is the answers it gives always seem plausable, but any time I quiz it on things I understand well, it seems to constantly get things slightly wrong. Which tells me it is getting everything slightly wrong, I just don't know enough to know it.

I see the same issue with TV. Anyone who works in a compicated field has felt the sting of watching a TV show fail to accurate represent it while most people watching just assume that's how your job works.