alt Hacker NewsA "robot that does things" is the overpromise that doesn't deliver.
I actually agree with the article that non-determinism is why generative AI is the wrong tool in most cases.
In the past, the non-determinism came from the user's inconsistent grammar and the game's poor documentation of its rigid rules. Now the non-determinism comes 100% from the AI no matter what the user does. This is objectively worse!
The different flavors of non-determinism are interesting.
There’s chat-vs-api; same model answers differently depending on input channel.
There’s also statistical. Once in a rare while, a response will be gibberish. Same prompt, same model, same input mode. 70% of the time, sane and similar answers. 0.01% of the time, gibberish. In-between, a sliding-scale — with a ‘cursed middle’ of answers that are mostly viable except for one poisoned thing that’s hard to auto-detect…