this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

From Re-evaluating GPT-4’s bar exam performance (linked in the article):

First, although GPT-4’s UBE score nears the 90th percentile when examining approximate conversions from February administrations of the Illinois Bar Exam, these estimates are heavily skewed towards repeat test-takers who failed the July administration and score significantly lower than the general test-taking population.

Ohhh, that is sneaky!

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

What I find delightful about this is that I already wasn't impressed! Because, as the paper goes on to say

Moreover, although the UBE is a closed-book exam for humans, GPT-4’s huge training corpus largely distilled in its parameters means that it can effectively take the UBE “open-book”

And here I was thinking it not getting a perfect score on multiple-choice questions was already damning. But apparently it doesn't even get a particularly good score!

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Why is that a criticism? This is how it works for humans too: we study, we learn the stuff, and then try to recall it during tests. We've been trained on the data too, for neither a human nor an ai would be able to do well on the test without learning it first.

This is part of what makes ai so "scary" that it can basically know so much.

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

LLMs know nothing. literally. they cannot.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but neither did Socrates

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago

but he at least was smug about it

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I guess it comes down to a philosophical question as to what "know" actually means.

But from my perspective is that it certainly knows some things. It knows how to determine what I'm asking, and it clearly knows how to formulate a response by stitching together information. Is it perfect? No. But neither are humans, we mistakenly believe we know things all the time, and miscommunications are quite common.

But this is why I asked the follow up question...what's the effective difference? Don't get me wrong, they clearly have a lot of flaws right now. But my 8 year old had a lot of flaws too, and I assume both will get better with age.

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

i guess it comes down to a philosophical question

no, it doesn't, and it's not a philosophical question (and neither is this a question of philosophy).

the software simply has no cognitive capabilities.

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I agree, but then it goes to my second question:

What's the effective difference?

[–] braxy29@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

don't know why you got downvoted, an LLM is essentially a chinese room, and whether such a room "knows" is still the question.

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

no, it fucking isn't. (see the postscript in linked article.)

[–] Turun@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the link, that's a fascinating article.

The thought experiment (I really liked it) has convinced me that an LLM cannot learn meaning the same way a human does.

But two counter arguments arise: first - does it matter? If the only interaction is through thai text, how could the difference between understanding the meaning of Thai text and simple text completion through infinite studying of Thai books be asserted? And second - how is this changed by multimodal models? The author explicitly states that all images are removed from the library and, when asking others on their opinions of the thought experiment, "I'd look for an encyclopedia with images" is considered cheating. That means the author considers images as a weak point of the thought experiment. If the presence of other media did not change the outcome they would not have to be excluded. And if multi modal models change your opinion is that not simply because you underestimated how much you can do with infinite time in a Thai library? What is the fundamental difference between text and an image?

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

don't compare your child to a chatbot wtf

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago

The dehumanization that happens just because people think LLMs are impressive (they are, just not that impressive) is insane.

[–] exanime@lemmy.today 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Because a machine that "forgets" stuff it reads seems rather useless... considering it was a multiple choice style exam and, as a machine, Chat GPT had the book entirely memorized, it should have scored perfect almost all the time.

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago

Chat GPT had the book entirely memorized

I feel like this exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of how LLMs are trained.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Dont anthropomorphise. There is quite the difference between a human and an advanced lookuptable.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well... I do agree with you but human brains are basically big prediction engines that use lookup tables, experience, to navigate around life. Obviously a super simplification, and LLMs are nowhere near humans, but it is quite a step in the direction.

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 1 points 6 months ago

@phoenixz @Soyweiser "Let's redefine what it means to be human, so we can say the LLM is human" have you bumped your head?

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I absolutely agree. However, if you think the LLMs are just fancy LUTs, then I strongly disagree. Unless, of course, we are also just fancy LUTs.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You ever meet an ai researcher with a background in biology? I’ve discussed this stuff with one. She disagrees with Turing about machines thinking including when ai is in the picture. They process information very differently from how biology does

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is a vague non answer, although I agree it's done very differently because our process is biological and ai is not.

But as I asked elsewhere, what's the effective difference?

[–] self@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

so to summarize, your only contributions to this thread are to go “well uh you just don’t know how LLMs work” while providing absolutely no detail of your own, and reporting our regulars for “Civility” when they rightly called you out for being a fucking idiot who’s way out of their depth

how fucking embarrassing for you

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

ah, a civility connoisseur.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago

on the topic of which, this crossed my feed earlier

[–] ebu@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

[...W]hen examining only those who passed the exam (i.e. licensed or license-pending attorneys), GPT-4’s performance is estimated to drop to 48th percentile overall, and 15th percentile on essays.

officially Not The Worst™, so clearly AI is going to take over law and governments any day now

also. what the hell is going on in that other reply thread. just a parade of people incorrecting each other going "LLM's don't work like [bad analogy], they work like [even worse analogy]". did we hit too many buzzwords?

[–] Tja@programming.dev 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not the worst? 48th percentile is basically "average lawyer". I don't need a Supreme Court lawyer to argue my parking ticket. And if you train the LLM with specific case law and use RAG can get much better.

In a worst case scenario if my local lawyer can use AI to generate a letter and just quickly go through it to make sure it didn't hallucinate, they can process more clients, offer faster service and cheaper prices. Maybe not a revolution but still a win.

[–] ebu@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

48th percentile is basically "average lawyer".

good thing all of law is just answering multiple-choice tests

I don't need a Supreme Court lawyer to argue my parking ticket.

because judges looooove reading AI garbage and will definitely be willing to work with someone who is just repeatedly stuffing legal-sounding keywords into google docs and mashing "generate"

And if you train the LLM with specific case law and use RAG can get much better.

"guys our keyword-stuffing techniques aren't working, we need a system to stuff EVEN MORE KEYWORDS into the keyword reassembler"

In a worst case scenario if my local lawyer can use AI to generate a letter

oh i would love to read those court documents

and just quickly go through it to make sure it didn't hallucinate

wow, negative time saved! okay so your lawyer has to read and parse several paragraphs of statistical word salad, scrap 80+% of it because it's legalese-flavored gobbledygook, and then try to write around and reformat the remaining 20% into something that's syntactically and legally coherent -- you know, the thing their profession is literally on the line for. good idea

what promptfondlers continuously seem to fail to understand is that verification is the hard step. literally anyone on the planet can write a legal letter if they don't care about its quality or the ramifications of sending it to a judge in their criminal defense trial. part of being a lawyer is being able to tell actual legal arguments from bullshit, and when you hire an attorney, that is the skill you are paying for. not how many paragraphs of bullshit they can spit out per minute

they can process more clients, offer faster service and cheaper prices. Maybe not a revolution but still a win.

"but the line is going up!! see?! sure we're constantly losing cases and/or getting them thrown out because we're spamming documents full of nonsense at the court clerk, but we're doing it so quickly!!"

[–] Tja@programming.dev 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Spoken like someone who hasn't gotten beyond ChatGPT on default settings.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago

what the fuck kind of reply is this

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

the perils of hitting /all

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

416 updoots, what on earth

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

dj khaleb suffering from success dot jpeg