alt Hacker NewsSaxophone, being a wind instrument was a bad choice. I can definitely tell which student was blowing when hearing a note.
But your analogy remains solid if you substitute e.g. a piano and a reasonably proficient player. A single note would be nearly indistinguishable between players... But a full piece most certainly will sound different.
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A poor B is still a B fingering and the sax is supposed to play a B every time. Missing it is human error, not tool error. I can pick up an alto sax, a clarinet, etc. any time, anywhere, and expect the same fingerings to work every time. My individual skill or mistakes or peculiarities of each build are not what is relevant here.
LLM’s do not operate consistently and make their own errors while we argue about which incantation makes it less inconsistent, knowing it will never actually perform as expected.
I played woodwinds regularly for 15 years so I feel fine with my example.
While I agree with you, I think it's diverging from the initial point.
The original take was "LLMs are very much like playing an instrument". I think they are very much NOT like playing an instrument.
While different musicians will produce different results, one musician won't get drastically different results on different days or when trying a different "copy" of the same instrument. If you can play the violin on your violin and I lend you my violin, you will still be able to play very consistently. You may argue that the sound will differ and you will have to adapt slightly, but that's not remotely similar to the randomness coming from LLMs.