Re:People are just as bad as my LLMs
by Terr_ on Monday March 10, 2025 @07:12PM
(#43327232)
I'd say it's closer to emulating human documents.
The LLM itself is still an egoless clockwork Document-Maker-Bigger. The "AI assistant" is a fictional characters seeded into a hidden theater-play script document. The human unwittingly provides lines for a "user" character, and fresh lines attached to the assistant are "acted out" by conventional code.
That character is a "helpful computer" to the same depth that another character named Dracula would "desire blood" and try to convince you to formally invite it to your house.
The difference may seem subtle, but I believe it's important: We are not training LLMs to be people we like, we are training them to emit text describing characters and lines that we like. It also helps in understanding prompt injection and "hallucinations", which are much closer to core features than bugs.
The LLM itself is still an egoless clockwork Document-Maker-Bigger. The "AI assistant" is a fictional characters seeded into a hidden theater-play script document. The human unwittingly provides lines for a "user" character, and fresh lines attached to the assistant are "acted out" by conventional code.
That character is a "helpful computer" to the same depth that another character named Dracula would "desire blood" and try to convince you to formally invite it to your house.
The difference may seem subtle, but I believe it's important: We are not training LLMs to be people we like, we are training them to emit text describing characters and lines that we like. It also helps in understanding prompt injection and "hallucinations", which are much closer to core features than bugs.