@gary_alderson Augmentation effect
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4
Vector Database = encodes information using more or less artificial, possibly statistical descriptions of recorded facts about the objects in the database.
Natural language = imprecise language ie cannot have formal proofs about internal consistency or ambiguity of the query or the query result.
Bloom filter = sensitive but not specific way to search vector databases. Designed to not have false negatives (i.e. not miss), but will generate false hits (akin to hallucinations).
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There are also technical issues that make LLMs dissimilar to Bloom filters, but they win on using natural language as a query language; it frees people from formulating a very complex query in a formal language, reducing the barrier of asking questions for non-experts in a field. Furthermore, the answer is also not formulated in a formal language or served in a technical manner, even further reducing the barriers in interpreting answers.
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A society of engineers would acknowledge this limitation and use LLMs as accelerants the way we use high temperature settings in simulated annealing (SA) global optimization schemes: as a quick way to generate an approximate answer, and then painstakingly (the "cooling scheme" in SA) refine the answer by making it more precise.
Unfortunately, we are not a society of engineers, but a culture of Dunning Kruger susceptibles. Enjoy your dopamine fix from the slop now.
5/5
