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Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?" (opper.ai)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Screenshot of this question was making the rounds last week. But this article covers testing against all the well-known models out there.

Also includes outtakes on the 'reasoning' models.

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[+] -8 points 8 months ago (21 children)

Is cruise control useless because it doesn't drive you to the grocery store? No. It's not supposed to. It's designed to maintain a steady speed - not to steer.

Large Language Models, as the name suggests, are designed to generate natural-sounding language - not to reason. They're not useless - we're just using them off-label and then complaining when they fail at something they were never built to do.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    Language without meaning is garbage. Like, literal garbage, useful for nothing. Language is a tool used to express ideas, if there are no ideas being expressed then it's just a combination of letters.

    Which is exactly why LLMs are useless.

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  • [+] -7 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    Which is exactly why LLMs are useless.

    800 million weekly ChatGPT users disagree with that.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    And there are 1.3 billion smokers in the world according to the WHO.

    Does that make cigarettes useful?

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  • [–] -3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

    Something being useful doesn't imply it's good or beneficial. Those terms are not synonymous. Usefulness describes whether a thing achieves a particular goal or serves a specific purpose effectively.

    A torture device is useful for extracting information. A landmine is useful for denying an area to enemy troops.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    A torture device is useful for extracting information.

    No it fucking isn't! This is a great analogy, actually, thank you for bringing it up. A person being tortured will tell you literally anything that they believe will stop you from torturing them. They will confess to crimes that never happened, tell you about all their accomplices who don't exist, and all their daily schedules that were made up on the spot. Torture is useless but morons think it is useful. Just like AI.

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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Torture can be a useful way of extracting information if you have a way to instantly verify it, which actually makes it a good analogy to LLMs. If I want to know the password to your laptop and torture you until you give me the correct password and I log in then that works.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    If you can instantly verify it then you don't need the torture.

    Getting the person to volunteer the information is proven to be far, far more successful and being able to instantly verofy means you know when you have the answers.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    In fact it cannot ever be a useful way of extracting information. Even just randomly guessing is a better way to get the information you want than torture.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    I'm not saying its anything other than morally repugnant, obviously, but in the example of a password with billions or trillions of combinations and where you can check the answers given torture pretty obviously is better than guessing.

    That's not a scenario that is ever likely to come up, and wouldn't be justifiable even if it did, but pretending it wouldnt be effective is ridiculous.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    But natural language in service of what? If they can't produce answers that are correct, what's the point of using them? I can get wrong answers anywhere.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    As OP said, LLMs are really good at generating text that is fluid and looks natural to us. So if you want that kind of output, LLMs are the way to go.
    Not all LLM prompts ask factual questions and not all of the generated answers need to be correct.
    Are poems, songs, stories or movie scripts 'correct'?

    I'm totally against shoving LLMs everywhere, but they do have their uses. They are really good at this one thing.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Are poems, songs, stories or movie scripts ‘correct’?

    It's a valid point that they can produce natural language. The Turing Test has been a thing for awhile after all. But while the language sounds natural, can they create anything meaningful? Are the poems or stories they make worth anything? It's not like humans don't create shitty art, so I guess generating random soulless crap is similar to that.

    The value of language produced by something that can't understand the reason for language is an interesting question I suppose.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I'm not here defending the practical value of these models. I'm just explaining what they are and what they're not.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    You're definitely running around Lemmy defending AI, Iconoclast... Might as well be honest about it

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  • [–] -3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I'm not really interested in engaging in discussions about what you or anyone else thinks my underlying motives are. You're free to point out any factual inaccuracies in my responses, but there's no need to make it personal and start accusing me of being dishonest.

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