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Even the best models will confidently spout absolute falsehoods every once in a while without any warning.
Buddy, have you seen humans?
As a math nerd I seriously despise this line of argument as it ultimately reduces to a fully generalized argument against "true", "false", and "accuracy" as meaningful concepts.
I invite further clarification.
Imagine a a trick abacus where the beads move on thier own their own via some pseudorandom process, or a pocket calculator where digits are guaranteed to a +/- 1 range. IE you plug in "243 + 67 =" and more often then not you get the answer "320" but you might just as well get the answer "310", "321" or "420". After all, the difference between all of those numbers is very small. Only one digit, and that digit is only off by one.
Now imagine you work in a field where numbers are important, you lives depend on getting this math right. Or maybe you're just doing your taxes, and the Government is going to ruin you if the accounts don't add up.
Are you going to use the trick calculator? If not, why not?
That is not an explanation for:
You're arguing that since LLMs are not perfectly reliable, therefore they're unreliable. There are different degrees of reliability necessary to do useful things with them. It is a false dichotomy to divide them so. I contend that they've crossed the threshold for many important, once well-paying lines of cognitive labor.
Besides, your thought experiment is obviously flawed. If you're sampling from a noisy distribution, what's stopping you from doing so multiple times, to reduce the error bars involved? I'd expect a "math nerd" to be aware of such techniques, or did your interest end before statistics?
If I had to rely on an LLM for truly high-stakes work, I'd be working double time to personally verify the information provided, while also using techniques like running multiple instances of the same prompt, self-critique or debate between multiple models.
Fortunately, that's a largely academic exercise, since very few issues of such consequences should be decided by even modern LLMs. I give it a generation or two before you can fire and forget.
I have no objections to my own doctor using an LLM, and I use them personally. All I ask is that they have the courtesy and common sense to use o3 instead of 4o.
Besides, the contraption you describe is quite similar to how quantum computing works. You get an answer which is sampled from a probability distribution. You are not guaranteed to get a single correct answer. Yet quantum computers are at least theoretically useful.
Hell, as a maths nerd, you should be aware that the overwhelming majority of numbers cannot be physically represented. If you also happen to be a CS nerd on the side, you might also be aware of the vagaries of floating point arithmetic. Digital computers are not perfect, but they're close enough for government work. LLMs are probably close enough for government work too, given the quality of the average bureaucrat.
Humans are fallible. LLMs are fallible, but they're becoming less so. The level of reliability needed for a commercially viable self-driving vehicle is far higher than that for a useful Roomba. And yet, Waymos are now safer than humans.
I rest my case.
You did not say "no", as such i find it disingenuous of you to suddenly back-pedal and claim to care about reliability after the the fact.
Buddy, have you seen humans?
Humans are unreliable. You are a human are you not? You have not given any indication that you care about accuracy or reliability and instead (by chosing to use the trick calculator over doing the math yourself) have strongly implied that you do not care about such things.
Now if you feel that I've been unfairly dismissive, antagonistic, or uncharitable in my response towards you then perhapse then you might begin to grasp why i hate the whole "bUt HuMaNs ArE FaLaBlE ToO UwU" argument with such a passion. Im not claiming that LLMs are unreliable because they are "less than perfect" i am claiming that they are unreliable because they are not only unreliable, but unreliable by design. I know its long but seriously watch the video essay on Badness = 0 I posted up thread. It is highly relevant to this conversation.
I don't understand why anyone would hate that argument. Humans are also unreliable... not by design, perhaps, but intrinsically due to the realities of biology. The point of the argument is that, even though humans are intrinsically and inescapably unreliable, we still manage to make reliable systems based around relying on them, and as such, the intrinsic, inescapable unreliability of LLMs doesn't make them incapable of being used as the basis of unreliable systems.
There are good arguments to be made against this. It's possible that we can't get LLMs' unreliability to be lower than humans at the same cost. It's possible that even if that were possible, the nature of the unreliability of LLMs will always remain less predictable than that of humans, in such a way as to make making reliable systems based on them impossible. The fact that LLMs can't be shamed or punished based on failing in their reliability could be a fatal flaw for creating reliable systems based on them. And there are probably a myriad of other better reasons I haven't even thought of.
But I'd like to actually see those arguments actually being made. Maybe that video you say you linked makes them, but I'm one of the users of a text-based forum like this who don't have either interest or ability to view long-form videos during normal usage of this forum.
I hate it because it is rhetorically equivalent to the old "...and you are still lynching niggers". It's not an explanation or excuse, nor does it adress the issue being raised, it is a deflection and a put-down.
I find the appeal to hypocrisy not only uncomplelling but actively off-putting as the hypocrite at least acknowledges that they are in wrong.
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