When I search this topic online, I always find either wrong information or advertising lies. So what is actually something that LLMs can do very well, as in being actually useful and not just outputing a nonsensical word salad that sounds coherent.

Results

So basically from what I’ve read, most people use it for natural language processing problems.

Example: turn this infodump into a bullet point list, or turn this bullet point list into a coherent text, help me with rephrasing this text, word association, etc.

Other people use it for simple questions that it can answer with a database of verified sources.

Also, a few people use it as struggle duck, basically helping alleviate writers block.

Thanks guys.

  • andallthat@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I am not using it for this purpose, but churning out large amounts of text that doesn’t need to be accurate is proving to be a good fit for:

    • scammers, who can now write more personalize emails and also have conversations

    • personality tests

    • horoscopes or predictions (there are several examples even on serious outlets of “AI predicts how the world will end” or similar)

    Due to how good LLMs are at predicting an expected pattern of response, they are a spectacularly bad idea (but are obviously used anyway) for:

    • substitute for therapy

    • virtual friends/girlfriend/boyfriend

    The reason they are such a bad idea for these use cases is that fragile people with self-destructive patterns do NOT need those patterns to be predicted and validated by a LMM.

    • Theo@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Have they given you anything creative that was good. I also, used it to make a meal plan and make a work schedule as an Excel doc, then it just needed a few edits.

      • andallthat@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Would you say you are good at creating a meal plan or a work schedule by yourself, with no AI? I suspect if you know what a good meal plan looks to you and you are able to visualize the end result you want, then genAI can speed up the process for you.

        I am not good at creative tasks. My attempts to use genAI to create an image for a PowerPoint were not great. I am wondering if the two things are related and I’m not getting good results because I don’t have a clear mental picture of what the end result should be so my descriptions of it are bad

        In my case, I wanted an office worker who was juggling a specific set of objects that were related to my deck. After a couple of attempts at refining my prompt, Dall-E produced a good result, except that it had decided that the office worker had to have a clown face, with the make-up and the red nose.

        From there it went downhill. I tried “yes, like this, but remove the clown makeup” or “please lose the clown face” or “for the love of Cthulhu, I beg you, no more clowns” but nothing worked.

        • Theo@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I once asked ChatGPT how it (AI) works. It gave me the tools needed to get the right results. There were books on prompt engineering free online. But I decided after reading them that it was easier to have AI teach me to use AI…better. that’s the LLMs. On the other hand for image generation, it takes persistence and priority. If the prompt is too complicated, it will do its own thing. If it is too simple, it will do its own thing. After a lot of practice getting to know how it outputs images you will find the right, or close results. Emphasis on close. Leonardo.ai is my favorite.

          Edit: if you don’t believe you are creative enough, prone the LLM for ideas. Ask it to make the prompt. They are finnicky