Comment by aprilthird2021

2 days ago

> Of course nobody knows quite why directing more computation in this way makes them better, and nobody seems to take the reasoning trace too seriously as a record of what is happening. But it is clear that it works!

One thing it's hard to wrap my head around is that we are giving more and more trust to something we don't understand with the assumption (often unchecked) that it just works. Basically your refrain is used to justify all sorts of odd setup of AIs, agents, etc.

Trusting things to work based on practical experience and without formal verification is the norm rather than the exception. In formal contexts like software development people have the means to evaluate and use good judgment.

I am much more worried about the problem where LLMs are actively misleading low-info users into thinking they’re people, especially children and old people.