Bonum Certa Men Certa

'Stochastic Parrots' is a Good Description of a Passing Fad

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 03, 2024,
updated Jun 03, 2024

Lorikeet Portrait

LLMs suck. The media finally admits this on a regular basis Alex Oliva called them "Stochastic Parrots". We did several series explaining what they are and why they won't (or can't) work as advertised. Yesterday we showed that they didn't help Bing. It's just billions of dollars down the drain.

My belief, or rather my gut feeling, tells me that 5 years from now LLMs will be like whatever blockchains became in 2024. Some people remember them, a few people still talk about them, but almost nobody takes these seriously. The same goes for metaverse and Apple's Vision Pro. Tech "fashions" come and go. They get advertised in crooked media that's paid to shift focus (or create superficial hype).

"Stochastic Parrots" have some functionality, but they will never replace what they claim to be capable of replacing. The media is now mis-framing everything with a computer as "AI", but that's not "Stochastic Parrots" or LLMs. In eBay, my wife told me last night, they now have "AI" for listings. But what they actually mean by "AI" is auto-complete, based on existing listings. That's not "AI" at all, it's more about automation.

"Stochastic Parrots" are mostly bullshit. If you fancy talking to a computer, deluding yourselves into thinking they have a true grasp and understanding of what you say, then go ahead... have fun. The adults in the room will be busy doing proper things with their time, not promoting language models. As an aside, a large language model is very expensive to build and prompt, so the economics of that fall flat on their face.

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