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Comment by ijk

1 year ago

The problem with "provide LLM output as a service," which is more or less the best case scenario for the ChatGPT listicles that clutter my feed, is that if I wanted an LLM result...I could have just asked the LLM. There's maybe a tiny proposition if I didn't have access to a good model, but a static page that takes ten paragraphs to badly answer one question isn't really the form factor anyone prefers; the actual chatbot interface can present the information in the way that works best for me, versus the least common denominator listicle slop that tries to appeal to the widest possible audience.

The other half of the problem is that rephrasing information doesn't actually introduce new information. If I'm looking for the kind of oil to use in my car or the recipe for blueberry muffins, I'm looking for something backed by actual data, to verify that the manufacturer said to use a particular grade of oil or for a recipe that someone has actually baked to verify that the results are as promised. I'm looking for more information than I can get from just reading the sources myself.

Regurgitating text from other data sources mostly doesn't add anything to my life.

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ijk

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tayo42  1 year ago

Rephrasing can be beneficial. It can make things clearer to understand and learn from. Like in math something like khan academy or the 3blue 1 brown YouTube channel isn't presenting anything new, just rephrasing math in a different way that makes it easier for some to understand.

If llms could take the giant overwhelming manual in my car and get out the answer to what oil to use, that woukd be useful and not new information

  • chowells  1 year ago

    I have to protest. A lot of 3b1b is new. Not the math itself, but the animated graphical presentation is. That's where the value from his channel comes in. He provides a lot of tools to visualize problems in ways that haven't been done before.

    • tayo42  1 year ago

      I guess the way I think of the visualizations and video as a whole as a type of rephrasing. He's not the first person to try to visualize math concepts

  • krapp  1 year ago

    >If llms could take the giant overwhelming manual in my car and get out the answer to what oil to use, that woukd be useful and not new information

    You can literally just google that or use the appendix that's probably at the back of the manual. It's also probably stamped on the engine oil cap. It also probably doesn't matter and you can just use 10w40.