I have never used Claude or GPT, being a total cheapskate, but even with some of the open sourced models that are newer I do find it easy to fall into the trap of thinking about the LLM as something that thinks. I have lately been trying to avoid that trap by referring to the LLMs as PSEs (probabilistic selection engines) or other funny names. They are not capable of thinking and the design and implementations make it certain that you will get wrong answers and unintended results. I think they will get better and better over time, but in their current form you just can’t trust the results without verification. It’s sort of like playing a game of charades. What gesturing do I need to perform in order to get the answer I want. It’s a fascinating piece of technology.
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