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False! My mother bought us an encyclopedia set, and I read that shit cover to cover, A-Z! We also had these things called schools, and these big buildings called libraries.
Encyclopedias exited, and if you wanted to know the population of Greece they were perfect. But, they were terrible for answering random questions like "Why is the sky blue?" The answer was almost certainly in the encyclopedia, but you'd have to know to look up "Raleigh Scattering", and how would you know that?
What makes modern web searching so good is that it's amazing at surfacing answers to just about any question. Whether the answer it brings up is true is another matter...
The section about the sky would mention it, so then you go to the index in the R book, find the entry for that phenomenon, and read about Raleigh Scattering. The internet is definitely easier for finding random information though, although it's harder now than it was like 10 years ago. ChatGPT is amazing for finding random information, but you have to verify what it tells you, since it will just randomly lie for no reason.
It doesn't "lie" though, it just generates a plausible sequence of words. The sort-of fortunate thing is that facts are often plausible, and it's going to be trained on a lot of facts. But, facts aren't the only word-sequences that are plausible, and LLMs are trained to be creative, and that means sometimes choosing a next-word that isn't the best fit, which might end up meaning the generated sentence isn't factual.
Calling it a "lie" suggests that it knows the truth, or that it is being deceptive. But, that's giving "spicy autocomplete" too much credit. It simply generates word salads that may or may not contain truths.
The industry word for it is "hallucination", but I'm not sure that fits either.
It's better than lying, but it still implies consciousness. It also implies that it's doing something different than what it normally does.
In reality, it's always just generating plausible words.
It's bullshitting... Faking it till it makes it, if you will.
No, that implies a goal. It's just spicy autocomplete.
It is certainly more complex than a predictive text machine. It does seem to understand the concept of objective truth, and facts, vs interpretation and inaccurate information. It never intentionally provides false information, but sometimes it thinks it is giving factual information when really it is using an abundance of inaccurate information that it was trained with. I'm honestly surprised at how accurate it usually is, considering it was trained with public data from places like Reddit, where common inaccuracies have reached the level of folklore.
It is certainly more complex than a predictive text machine
No, it literally isn't. That's literally all it is.
It does seem to understand
Because people are easily fooled, but what it seems like isn't what's actually happening.
but sometimes it thinks it is giving factual information
It's incapable of thinking. All it does is generate a plausible sequence of words.
I see you have spent time researching the old fashioned way
The internet wasn't allowed for school reports until after I was through with college the first time around. The World Wide Web didn't even exist for the first half of my life.
Edit: it's kind of crazy that my career revolves around something that didn't even exist when people were still asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Although, "engineer" was a frequent answer to that question, and that's certainly in my title now, but it's an entirely different kind of engineering than I meant back then.
But, they were terrible for answering random questions like "Why is the sky blue?" The answer was almost certainly in the encyclopedia, but you'd have to know to look up "Raleigh Scattering", and how would you know that?
Then you would ask the librarian!!! They would be able to help you find the answer or where to start! And will help you with your research a bit too, in my experience. If you have questions or something. Librarians are super cool and an awesome resource we shouldn't let fade away.
But yeah I fucking love being able to look up any random question that pops in my head. The image post is like, my actual nightmare I can't stand being misinformed, but ignorance is fine.
Yeah, the real difference is the lag factor. Librarians, teachers, parents, etc. were great at answering random questions. But, often you'd wonder something and there wouldn't be someone around who you could ask. If it was important you could write it down or try to remember to ask later. But, these days you can satisfy any idle question in seconds without disturbing anybody.
I also think misinformation is awful, and in some ways the modern Internet plus AI is making the problem worse. What I hope they do is transition schools from places where kids memorize facts to places where kids learn critical thinking. Some of the key things I learned at some point in school were how to properly estimate something, and how various units work so you can cross check your answer. So, for example, a Joule is a kg m^2 / s^2 . If the units you're using don't match up, you must have screwed up somewhere. I also took a course in argument analysis once, that helped spot common fallacies.
I have the impression that as time goes on, being able to remember facts is going to be less and less important. And, learning technical skills (like how to search the web, use a spreadsheet, create a database, etc.) is going to be so easy that it's not something worth teaching. But, what will be important is knowing how to spot bullshit.
But, often you’d wonder something and there wouldn’t be someone around who you could ask.
More importantly, some people had questions they were too scared or embarrassed to ask and can now ask the internet, like "why do I like boys when I'm a boy?"
I am from a pre-internet era and I would say that for that reason alone, I'm glad we have the internet to answer questions for kids.
Hmm yeah interesting you say that, not to be like toot my own horn or anything but I am DEFINITELY someone who struggles to remember facts and details. I only remember the concept or message whatever that I gathered from the information at the time I learned it. I often feel ignorant and outright stupid if I were to try to discuss many topics with people in person.
The internet is so nice because I can find my sources and double check myself before spouting off lol.
That said I grew up as an older mileneal/gen x? And I do have the benefit of being taught the critical thinking of how to do research which really has do much in common, and then growing up with the internet wild west and all the crazy real and fake shit that happened.. idk it feels almost intuitive in ways, like having a bad feeling about someone.
(Sorry that was a long ramble, I am high and got a little excited to talk to someone about this who sounded like they could be my age)
Yeah, the older you are, the more you've seen things change over time. In some ways I wouldn't want to be young today. But, in other ways I'm jealous of the way kids today can grow up with the Internet available at all times.
I dunno every time I spoke to a librarian they were either super unhelpful or just plain dismissive.
'hello, I'm trying to find information on the Inventor of the Volt, Alessandro Volta' 'look in the autobiography section' 'i couldn't find anything there' 'ok fine I'll look, here you clearly didn't look properly go find this book - the life of Voltaire' 'that's a different person though ..' 'it's just a different spelling' 'no they're different people' 'well that's all we've got so read it and see' 'but...' 'we're closing soon sorry I don't have time for more questions'
Not everyone had access to libraries in the first place and at least half the librarians were awfull at their job or awfull people, and they'd never help you with anything even slightly complex anyway even the good ones. I found more information about Volta while writing this comment to check the spelling of his name than my local and city library had buried in all their many volumes.
Yes libraries were fantastic and important before the internet, but the reason they're merging into social places and community centres is because we still have use for those (previously forbidden) uses but for research they're basically pointless now.
You have a valid point but your conclusion is weak. Libraries aren't pointless for research just because you have anecdotal evidence of bad experiences where they could have been just a shitty person, dumb person, having a really bad day, in a rush to get home to relieve a babysitter... etc, like that's just human nature shit.
Edit: sorry my tone came off WAY too strong and aggressive. I didn't mean it like that.
I just think milage will vary a lot more with libraries than the internet, affluent areas tend to have better libraries and better staff which I think can cause a bias in how we think about things. The internet has been an absolute game changer for impoverished areas, especially being available on a fifty dollar tablet or second hand smart phone.
And that's before you even consider how huge it's been for under-developed areas, I spoke to a guy from Ghana whos school has about a dozen old textbooks when he went there and now his son plays Minecraft and studies with the same resources and tools we use in the UK.
Yup. Now we (probably often myself included) rather "learn" from some low effort shitpost than getting distracted by that highly researched encyclopedia set.
Wikipedia can still give you some of that though.
We were much better at retaining information too. It wasn't available at the tip of your fingers, so we put effort into remembering it. Nowadays I don't remember anything except for old movie quotes, and stuff pertinent to work. I think the constant influx of information we experience now is interpreted by the mind as noise, and it goes in one eyeball and out the other.