this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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I mean, pretty obvious if they advertise the technology instead of the capabilities it could provide.
Still waiting for that first good use case for LLMs.
It is legitimately useful for getting started with using a new programming library or tool. Documentation is not always easy to understand or easy to search, so having an LLM generate a baseline (even if it's got mistakes) or answer a few questions can save a lot of time.
So I used to think that, but I gave it a try as I’m a software dev. I personally didn’t find it that useful, as in I wouldn’t pay for it.
Usually when I want to get started, I just look up a basic guide and just copy their entire example to get started. You could do that with chatGPT too but what if it gave you wrong answers?
I also asked it more specific questions about how to do X in tool Y. Something I couldn’t quickly google. Well it didn’t give me a correct answer. Mostly because that question was rather niche.
So my conclusion was that, it may help people that don’t know how to google or are learning a very well know tool/language with lots of good docs, but for those who already know how to use the industry tools, it basically was an expensive hint machine.
In all fairness, I’ll probably use it here and there, but I wouldn’t pay for it. Also, note my example was chatGPT specific. I’ve heard some companies might use it to make their docs more searchable which imo might be the first good use case (once it happens lol).
I'm actually working on a vector DB RAG system for my own documentation. Even in its rudimentary stages, it's been very helpful for finding functions in my own code that I don't remember exactly what project I implemented it in, but have a vague idea what it did.
E.g