A new Coddy Developer Survey found that four in five developers, 80%, say their use of AI has felt more like a dependence than an advantage.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The important thing to remember is that it actually has zero access to information, because that’s not how LLMs work.

    At their core, they’re vector databases, and they’re trying to probabilistically come up with the next most likely token in a stream of tokens found in the DB. You can manipulate the stream by injecting text such as the content of existing files (which becomes more tokens) into the stream, but it never actually understands any of it.

    That’s why hallucinations are inherently unavoidable. It’s really all just hallucinations. It’s just that you can sometimes get useful text from their hallucinations if they happen to comport with reality.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Well, vector fields are information. But they have no understanding. The number 1 might be followed by 2 in 99.999% of cases, but it has no function to explain why, or to contextualize a scenario where that might be wrong.

      • MangoCats@feddit.it
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        19 hours ago

        or to contextualize a scenario where that might be wrong.

        Actually, the many dimensions of the vector field are exactly where and how they do this.

        Google Gemini prompt: “List common situatuions where 2 would not be expected to folow 1”

        Here are common situations where the number 2 would not be expected to follow the number 1:

        🔢 Alternative Number Systems

        • Binary code: Counts 0, 1, 10, 11 (2 does not exist).
        • Odd numbers: Sequential listing skips even numbers (1, 3, 5, 7).
        • Prime numbers: Starting a list of odd primes skips 2 (3, 5, 7).
        • Fibonacci sequence: The sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2 (1 follows 1).

        🏷️ Identifiers and Classifications

        • Software versioning: A patch update moves from version 1.1 to 1.1.1 or 1.2.
        • Sports jersey numbers: Roster listings sort by position or last name, not sequence.
        • Product models: iPhone models skipped from 8 to X (10), and later from 11 to 12.
        • Street addresses: Odd and even numbers sit on opposite sides of the road.

        🕒 Time and Measurements

        • Military time: The hour 01:00 moves to 02:00, but minutes go from 01 to 02 up to 59.
        • Calendar dates: January 1st is followed by January 2nd, but February 1st follows January 31st.

        🃏 Games and Sports

        • Playing cards: An Ace (1) can be followed by a King in a high-low wrap sequence.
        • Leaderboards: Tie scores result in two players holding 1st place, skipping 2nd place entirely.
        • Dice rolls: Independent probability means a roll of 1 has no bearing on the next number.

        🗣️ Linguistics and Formats

        • Alphabetical order: When sorting numbers as text, 1 is followed by 10, 100, and 11.
        • Roman numerals: The value I is followed by II, but formatting rules change at IV (4).

        To help me narrow down what you are looking for, could you tell me if you need this for a mathematical logic puzzle, a programming algorithm, or a creative writing project?


        Those context questions it asked at the end are a prompt to you to feed it dimensional guidance into its vector fields for more specifically applicable responses to your vague and open ended example.

      • chilicheeselies@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        You are both right. An LLM inherently has access to stuff the same way a brain in a jar has access to stuff. It’s information comes from fine-tuning the models to return syntax that agent code can interpret as a request to invoke a tool. That tool returns information to the context of the conversation. It doesn’t learn and it can’t truly remember things. Every time you start a session it is brand new. It sees your codebase for the first time every time.

        The information access they have is whatever the agent allows it to access via tool exposure. Be it built in tools, or MCP servers

        • MangoCats@feddit.it
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          19 hours ago

          It doesn’t learn and it can’t truly remember things. Every time you start a session it is brand new.

          Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind… it has its advantages.

          I have mine develop and maintain a set of documentation to introduce fresh agents to the project efficiently and correctly.

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, not if by “information” you mean semantic content that a mind can process. What they have are vector fields (essentially just numbers) with statistically more or less likely relationships.

        If I say, “take me out to the ballgame” to an LLM, the tokens representing the words in the next verse of the song are statistically “close” in the vector database, so it’s likely to generate them. But that doesn’t mean it actually knows the lyrics… or even has those lyrics recorded in a regular database anywhere.

        That’s why they hallucinate. The model determines that the next token is something nonsensical, but it has no way of understanding that it has made a mistake. In a sense, it actually hasn’t made a mistake. It’s done exactly what it’s designed to do. It’s just that in the case of hallucinations, its output isn’t useful.

        • MangoCats@feddit.it
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          19 hours ago

          even has those lyrics recorded in a regular database anywhere.

          Is that required?

          Do you have those lyrics recorded in a regular database in your head?

          Of course, LLMs are more “human” if they occasionally mis-remember the lyrics…

    • Zexks@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Ypu have no idea what youre talking about. They absolutely have access to “information”

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        No, they really don’t. That’s not how they work. At least, not if the “information” you’re talking about is real semantic content that real minds can process.

        Every piece of information you think an LLM has access to is actually just converted into a stream of additional tokens that are fed into the model to (hopefully usefully) modify the next tokens it predicts. That’s not the same thing as having actual access to information. Tokens are just numbers with statistically more (or less) likely relationships to each other.

        I’m not trying to downplay LLMs. They’re architecturally interesting and have genuine uses. I’m just trying to head off a bit of technical inaccuracy.

        • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net
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          1 day ago

          Absolutely correct and well said. Until you give it a tool to call a websearch (in my case SearxNG), I occasionally break it out (local 27B model) when a search is pulling lots of AI slop, Spy vs Spy style. I make it give me references and it usually indicates a bad search (XY problem)

      • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz
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        1 day ago

        LLMs don’t. There are tools that can fetch new information and then gets fed into the model as more tokens, but that’s just a special case of what kescusay is saying about injecting text.