I’m currently pulling together a bunch of sources – that are mostly recent – on the topic of LLMs and their use in software development. Some are peer-reviewed studies. Some are i…

studies show a clear trend – output is up (more code, more commits, bigger diffs), but outcomes don’t reflect that trend. If anything, the average team is taking longer to ship worse software

  • ArseAssassin@sopuli.xyz
    832·
    3 days ago

    One study found a significant correlation between confidence in AI output and belief in the paranormal.

    💀 💀 💀

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
      4·
      2 days ago

      Lol that’s funny. My belief in having a divinely created soul is exactly why I think humans can’t be replaced by these supercharged drunken parrots. :O

      …But yeah this is probably referring to the ones who, under the right conditions, will start to sense “ghosts in the machine” and go down the rabbit hole to chatbot psychosis…

      • Senal@programming.devEnglish
        8·
        2 days ago

        I am 100% genuinely not trying to start a fight, this a legitimate question to which I really would like to know the answer.

        What is the difference between a divine creation and the "ghost in the machine "?

        I will give context , faith is genuinely confusing to me.

        I have no issue with personal faiths unless you are trying to force everyone to have the same faith as you.

        I consider anything above small scale organisation of religion to be the worst thing that can happen to faith, because people are people and power corrupts.

        I suppose my real question is , for a concept that prohibits proof as part of it’s definition, how do you determine that one faith (or system) is better than another?

        • arendjr@programming.dev
          7·
          2 days ago

          I’m not the person you responded to, but I can try to take a stab at that…

          for a concept that prohibits proof as part of it’s definition, how do you determine that one faith (or system) is better than another?

          Objectively, you don’t. But people’s experiences go beyond the objective, and we all have our subjective experiences too. Faith is how we make sense of those.

          The question then isn’t, which one is better, but whose other experiences and faiths do we relate to? We build friendships and alliances based on those. Not because they’re better, per se, but because we feel comfortable or safe with them.

          From that perspective it makes a lot of sense that we value other humans, because they can make us feel understood and appreciated, and we can exchange ideas with them which in turn refines our faith. Now, some people get tricked into thinking you can do the same with machines, but well, I think you can guess where I too stand on that idea.

          • Senal@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            That is a well thought out and helpful answer, that’s useful to me in understanding come aspects of faith in general, thank you.

            Before i continue i want to highlight the differences i see between:

            - LLM (Large Language Models)
	- The trending technology that is a smaller part of a general field.
        - it's what you are interacting with using ChatGPT, Claude etc
- AI (Artifical Intelligence)
	- The general field, which includes LLM's but also Neural Networks, certain kinds of algorithms and more.
- AGI (Artificial **General** Intelligence)
	- The common scientific term for what most people think of when they hear "AI". 
        - roughly and borderline inaccurately:
              - "a machine intellect of the same type as a human, matching or exceeding common human capability"

            I get that faith, mysticism etc are how some of us deal with subjective ( from our point of view ) phenomena . I’d imagine this is why gods for things like storms or seasons etc come about.

            As i said , I have no issue with any of that unless it starts being forced on people, i even vaguely understand how people could come to that conclusion and i’m not pretending to have any better answers.

            My original question was more about this part:

            Now, some people get tricked into thinking you can do the same with machines, but well, I think you can guess where I too stand on that idea.

            Are you saying that the subjective experiences with the LLM’s are the trick or the feeling of understanding and appreciation with the machine ?

            Some peoples experiences with LLM’s (perhaps what they consider to be an AGI?) sounds like they’d fall exactly in to the type of subjective phenomena that would bring about faith as a means of processing.

            That some people seem to think that that kind of faith is any less valid than a guardian deity or a wind god is where I’m struggling.

            I don’t understand how people are making that kind of distinction, unless it’s not something based in reasoning?

            I want to make clear i don’t think LLM’s are sapient or sentient at this point, though i can’t personally disprove it and am not against being convinced otherwise should sufficient rationale be provided.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
            4·
            2 days ago

            That was a very insightful answer. Well said! Thank you very much for replying. :)

            I will have to contemplate a little bit, and respond to the question myself as well.

            • Senal@programming.devEnglish
              1·
              4 hours ago

              i have posted a response to the above comment that might contain relevant information.

              Thank you for taking the time to respond.