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Marha01today at 1:15 PM5 repliesview on HN

> until we stop mixing up instructions with data

Is such a thing even possible with a generally intelligent system processing content with unlimited diversity?


Replies

Diogenesiantoday at 1:46 PM

Philosophically no, but that shouldn't be a distraction from the issue with LLMs. This really is closer to "Outlook runs an untrusted VBA macro" than "intelligent entity gets confused by inherent ambiguity in human language."

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noloktoday at 1:19 PM

I would wager the fact that it's not what your sentence says is why that is possible. The moment it gets actual "intelligence", it can figure out what's the question and what's the context; right now it's all just a magic jumbo mess.

If any of this thing were "a generally intelligent system", the whole concept of "it has no idea what any of this is" would not be there.

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econtoday at 6:00 PM

Look how we've solved (attempted to) it in real life.

Instructions usually have a source.

If your boss says you should go home and rest we treat it differently from a random stranger on the street. If they shout: look behind you! It might be worth while to listen to the random stranger.

They might still be able to swindle you but you won't hand your wallet to just anyone who asks.

TeMPOraLtoday at 1:18 PM

It's neither possible nor desired, and until that fact clicks for majority of computer people, we'll be running in circles and making a mess through futile attempts at solving the problem at the wrong end.

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ben_wtoday at 1:29 PM

I think it is possible, but in the form of instructions always lead to an LLM creating computer program which is allowed to then process data, never directly running on that data.

I'm (tentatively) with TeMPOraL's sibling comment here that this (probably) isn't desirable, as "no data allowed" makes it harder for humans to debug code, so I'd assume also for LLMs.