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I'd like to see the before and after questions because it seems possible that the layman's version was less exact and therefore interpreted differently, even if the intention was the same. Which, can happen with humans too.


Given the topic I'm unfortunately not comfortable sharing the details in a public space like this, but the answer that it gave was not just a misinterpretation of the question, it was actually entirely wrong on the merits of its own interpretation.

And even if it were a misinterpretation the result is still largely the same: if you don't know how to ask good questions you won't get good answers, which makes it dangerous to rely on the tools for things that you're not already an expert in. This is in contrast to all to people who claim to be using them for learning about important concepts (including lots of people who claim to be using them as financial advisors!).


If you don't know how to ask a human doctor a good question you can't expect to get a good answer either.

The difference is that a human doctor probably has a lot of context about you and the situation you're in, so that they probably guess what your intention behind the question is, and adjust their answer appropriately. When you talk to an LLM, it has none of that context. So the comparison isn't really fair.

Has your mom ever asked you a computer question? Half of the time the question makes no sense and explaining to her why would take hours, and then she still wouldn't get it. So the best you can do is guess what she wants based on the context you have.


Doesn’t matter. The LLM’s job should be to deliver results in the way that is intended, regardless of the skill of the prompter. If it can’t do that then it’s really no better than a Google search.


That is a pretty high bar. Humans aren't any better than a Google search based on this criteria.


An expert human can give you the answer you need with the same layman prompt, without errors.


You would first have to find the expert however, which might not be trivial. Anyway, I think there is value in the space between a basic google search and a human expert. If you don't think so that is fine.




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