this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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I just realised that especially in teaching, people are treating these LLM's the same way that I remember teachers in school used to treat computers and later the internet.
"Now class you need a 5 page essay on Hamlet by next Friday, it should be hand written and no copying from the internet!! It needs to be hand written because you can't always rely on computers to be there..."
Or, because you can't rely on computers to tell you the truth. Which is exactly the issue with LLMs as well.
You can't rely on books or people tell you the truth either.
I was mostly referring to the top comment. If you need to write an essay on Hamlet, the book can in fact not lie, because the entire exercise is to read the book and write about the contents of it.
But in general, you are right. (Which is why it is proper journalistic procedure to talk to multiple experts about a topic you write about. Also a good article does not present a forgone conclusion, but instead let's readers form their own opinion on a topic by providing the necessary context and facts without the author's judgement. LLMs as a one-stop-shop do not provide this and are less reliable than listening to a single expert would be)
Which is why bibliographies exist.