Which LLMs and which versions?
All. Of. Them. It's quite literally what they do because they are optimistic text generators. Not correct or accurate text generators.
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by e3bc54b2 on Thursday May 29, 2025 @11:12PM
(#44132479)
This really grinds my gears. The technology is inherently faulty, but the relentless optimism of its future subtly hiding that by making it the user's mistake instead.
Oh you got a wrong answer? Did you try the new OpenAI v999? Did you prompt it correctly? Its definitely not the model, because it worked for me once last night..
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by traceroute66 on Friday May 30, 2025 @06:13AM
(#44134635)
> it worked for me once last night..
This !
Yeah, it probably "worked for me" because they spent a gazillion hours engaging in what the LLM fanbois call "prompt engineering", but you and I would call "engaging in endless iterative hacky work-arounds until you find a prompt that works".
Unless its something extremely simple, the chances of an LLM giving you a workable answer on the first attempt is microscopic.
Most optimistic text generators do not consider repeating the stuff that was already rejected a desireable path forward. It might be the only path forward they’re aware of though.
In some contexts I got ChatGPT to answer "I don't know" when I crafted a very specific prompt about not knowing being and acceptable and preferable answer to bullshitting. But it's hit and miss, and doesn't always work; it seems LLMs simply aren't trained to model admittance of ignorance, they almost always want to give a positive and confident answer.
It's my experience that once you are in this territory, the LLM is not going to be helpful and you should abandon the effort to get what you want out of it. I can smell blood now when it's wrong; it'll just keep being wrong, cheerfully, confidently.
Yes, to be honest I've also learned to notice when it's stuck in an infinite loop.
It's just frustrating, but when I'm asking it something within my domain of expertise, of course I can notice, and either call it quits or start a new session with a radically different prompt.
A typical interaction with an LLM:
"Hey, how do I do X in Y?"
"That's a great question! A good way to do X in Y is Z!"
"No, Z doesn't work in Y. I get this error: 'Unsupported operation Z'."
"I apologize for making this mistake. You're right to point out Z doesn't work in Y. Let's use W instead!"
"Unfortunately, I cannot use W for company policy reasons. Any other option?"
"Understood: you cannot use W due to company policy. Why not try to do Z?"
"I just told you Z isn't available in Y."
"In that case, I suggest you do W."
"Like I told you, W is unacceptable due to company policy. Neither W nor Z work."
...
"Let's do this. First, use Z [...]"