logoalt Hacker News

PaulStateznyyesterday at 10:32 PM4 repliesview on HN

Yes!

I have a personal theory: LLMs are *fundamentally* handicapped at perceiving what's going on in the mind of the human (this can't be "innovated away") and that's at the root of what makes them suck at conversation.

Next time you're chatting with someone, notice how much understanding is shared without anything being said. E.g. the other person might share something deeply disappointing, and they can tell without you even saying anything whether you get what they're going through. This unspoken-yet-communicated information guides the conversation. Or as another example: humans can read the room -- you walk into a room and immediately adjust your demeanor based on what you see and sense.

LLMs are totally blind to things like this, and this adds an inescapable awkwardness to interacting with them. I don't believe they'll ever grow out of this. Which thankfully implies more long term demand for humans instead of robots. :)


Replies

cromkayesterday at 11:35 PM

Very well observed. I found one more thing: they fail to consider what a 3rd person might understand from your conversation, so when you ask it to dump stuff into a Documentation, they keep making references to facts you had previously discussed or to the train of thought, completely irrelevant to bystander.

show 1 reply
wannabe44today at 3:11 AM

No, they're just trained to impress the C-suite motherfuggers with dense vocab.

cheesecompilertoday at 12:43 AM

Tech guy discovers conversations with humans.

knollimartoday at 1:13 AM

Even over phone calls you get a sense so unless it's in timing it isnt demeanor either