←back to thread

The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks

(steerlabs.substack.com)
323 points steerlabs | 1 comments | 04 Dec 25 20:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
jqpabc123 ◴[04 Dec 25 21:38 UTC] No.46153440[source]▶
We are trying to fix probability with more probability. That is a losing game.

Thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room with LLMs.

The basic design is non-deterministic. Trying to extract "facts" or "truth" or "accuracy" is an exercise in futility.

replies(17): >>46155764 #>>46191721 #>>46191867 #>>46191871 #>>46191893 #>>46191910 #>>46191973 #>>46191987 #>>46192152 #>>46192471 #>>46192526 #>>46192557 #>>46192939 #>>46193456 #>>46194206 #>>46194503 #>>46194518 #
sweezyjeezy ◴[08 Dec 25 13:27 UTC] No.46191973[source]▶
You could make an LLM deterministic if you really wanted to without a big loss in performance (fix random seeds, make MoE batching deterministic). That would not fix hallucinations.

I don't think using deterministic / stochastic as a diagnostic is accurate here - I think that what we're really talking is about some sort of fundamental 'instability' of LLMs a la chaos theory.

replies(3): >>46192124 #>>46192177 #>>46199061 #
1. ajuc ◴[08 Dec 25 13:48 UTC] No.46192177[source]▶
Yeah deterministic LLMs just hallucinate the same way every time.