(I keep delivering this as a quip, here's a bit more) First order of business - is 'tool' going to have an interesting, distinguishing and thus illuminative meaning or be a mere platitudinous stand-in for "anything useful"? We'll save tool as "anyone/thing that can be exploited" for the AI titans, f
Yeah, but that is the point i’m trying to make. You can trust the output of your tool, but you can’t trust the output of an llm.
I can trust that my 3D printer will print exactly what I wanted it to print.
I cannot trust an llm to produce me exactly what i wanted from it.
If I trust my own skills I can trust the output of a tool.
It doesn’t matter how good I am at prompting, there is always a chance that an llm will just do something I didn’t tell it to do.
You are not the creator with an llm you simply delegating the work to someone else and then having to check what that person has done.
But this will most likely be because i configured something wrongor a part inside the printer has failed.
This would be like a service being down that the llm uses.
If a llm were 3d printer there would be a chance that the part it is printing for you suddenly had a different width or the endings were flat instead of rounded. And if you ask it why it did that it just responds “You are absolutely right for calling me out. I just thought it was easier to print this way.”. This is not something a tool should ever do.
If you cut of your arm with a chainsaw then you have taken the actions to cut off your arm with the chainsaw.
An llm chainsaw could bend its blade 180° and cut off your arm without you even wanting it or taking any step in that direction.
If you hold the chainsaw and the llm chainsaw the exact same way, the normal chainsaw would not cut off your arm, no mather what (exept for a catastrophic failure wich can happen to both chainsaws). With the llm chainsaw you roll the dice every time and sometimes it just says “nah, tree too big. I’ll cut your arm instead because it is easier”.
That is the difference for me. One thing is completely dependant on your actions and if you do everything correctly than it should produce the outcome you expect.
With an llm you could do everything right and it does something you didn’t want without.
A tool should always do what you want and not have a built in randomness to the output.
So now I have a bag of dice. I use them to predict something and roll each of them 1000 times. I don’t want randomness in that case, I want statistics.
Yeah, but that is the point i’m trying to make. You can trust the output of your tool, but you can’t trust the output of an llm. I can trust that my 3D printer will print exactly what I wanted it to print. I cannot trust an llm to produce me exactly what i wanted from it.
If I trust my own skills I can trust the output of a tool.
It doesn’t matter how good I am at prompting, there is always a chance that an llm will just do something I didn’t tell it to do.
You are not the creator with an llm you simply delegating the work to someone else and then having to check what that person has done.
But even if you configure a 3D printer properly there’s still a chance the output will be flawed.
Just because you can’t trust the output doesn’t mean it’s not a tool. If you expect it to do exactly what you want you’re using the tool wrong.
You use the LLM to help you build the system that does exactly what you want every time. LLMs are just a tool to help you get there.
But this will most likely be because i configured something wrongor a part inside the printer has failed.
This would be like a service being down that the llm uses.
If a llm were 3d printer there would be a chance that the part it is printing for you suddenly had a different width or the endings were flat instead of rounded. And if you ask it why it did that it just responds “You are absolutely right for calling me out. I just thought it was easier to print this way.”. This is not something a tool should ever do.
Why not? To me that’s just what the tool does.
You can chop off your arm with a chainsaw.
Tools don’t have to be safe. They don’t have to protect you from mistakes.
Why is an LLM not a tool?
Its not that a tool has to be safe.
If you cut of your arm with a chainsaw then you have taken the actions to cut off your arm with the chainsaw.
An llm chainsaw could bend its blade 180° and cut off your arm without you even wanting it or taking any step in that direction.
If you hold the chainsaw and the llm chainsaw the exact same way, the normal chainsaw would not cut off your arm, no mather what (exept for a catastrophic failure wich can happen to both chainsaws). With the llm chainsaw you roll the dice every time and sometimes it just says “nah, tree too big. I’ll cut your arm instead because it is easier”.
That is the difference for me. One thing is completely dependant on your actions and if you do everything correctly than it should produce the outcome you expect. With an llm you could do everything right and it does something you didn’t want without.
A tool should always do what you want and not have a built in randomness to the output.
When you roll dice, you use a tool (the dice), and they’re random.
But with the dice you explicitly want the randomnes. With an llms you usually want something else.
You could technically use them for randomnes, but they are retty terrible at randomnes.
So now I have a bag of dice. I use them to predict something and roll each of them 1000 times. I don’t want randomness in that case, I want statistics.
One dice is a tool, but a bag of dice isn’t?