alt Hacker NewsFar fewer than an LLM but then I “know” far less than an LLM. Sam Altman talked about a PhD level expert on any topic; if we expect a SOTA model to answer any question on any topic in a library, presumably that requires a library worth of books go into it?
Say I ask it who are the most beloved Indian cricketers and why, it might not be correct but it will have the right vocabulary - cricket terms and gameplay I’ve not heard of, player names and styles I don’t recognise, things critics and commentators like and dislike about game strategies. And it is like that for almost any topic.
If they hallucinate a Python function, it will look like a plausible function e.g. “hn.create_user_account()”. They don’t hallucinate like
# create HN user account
# requires eye of newt and frog leg
“Oh great spirit of the internet I request and command you make a new account…”
Replies
We need to up the ante, we all know it's the Mumbai Indians. ;)
One can train a decent model at home, for a specific task but you are absolutely correct that in order to have a model that's an expert in any topic it requires training and data on all topics.
I nearly spit out coffee reading this. Amazing use of vocabulary; especially "... oh great spirit of the internet".
I sometimes jokingly explain to certain people not immersed in tech that sometimes saying the "magic words" (commands) from the "codex" (script) in the right sequence with a lot of hand waving allow "magic" (applications/web apps/etc.) to happen.
It generally brightens a patients day and makes things relatable to those non-technical, children, the elderly, or the like.
TLDR: thanks for the chuckle.
We don't need LLMs that can "answer any question on any topic in a library"!
We don't even need machines that can answer any question in a specific topic area. But we could use machines that can answer "I don't know." when they cannot compute the answer.
Consider the possibility of much-smaller LLMs that answer questions only in limited domains (physics, chemistry, math, medicine, etc.)?
Could not such LLMs exist? If not, why not? Would they not likely be more useful and far, far easier and cheaper to create and run (possibly even with far less hardware) than the current "know-all" LLMs? Also might they possibly avoid certain problems ( e.g., hallucinations, deceit, apparently undesirable behavior, etc.) associated with the "know-all" LLMs we now have?