That’s exactly why I don’t believe LLMs will cure cancer anytime soon, make terrible lawyers, shouldn’t be trusted for medical decisions, etc. software and maths are some really the niches where we have great, battle tested, reliable validation tools. That’s not the case for “softer” domains
Software is a very "spiky domain"; things either work or fail, and there is sharp delineation between and easy verification.
Hm. Two orthogonal properties! This sounds like a 2x2 matrix!
Let's swap hard/easy around & explore the 4 possibilities...
There are domains with sharp delineation and hard verification; they are not at risk until AI gets much better. Humans operate in these domains by applying tremendous deep thought and subjective judgment - our superpower.
Domains with soft delineation and easy verification are most at risk: "it's a picture of a cat" remains true through a wide range of perturbations - eg. skewing the image or moving it across a pixel or correcting its white balance or even changing the cat. AI music? Lots of domains already solved by AI here but they're also not that meaty.
My prediction is the next interesting stuff will happen where verification is hard but there's no sharp delineation. It's the world of "I'll know it when I see it". Good customer service?
The only people who think LLMs would make good lawyers are the people selling LLMs. The more practical among us recognize that LLMs are our amazing tools for searching through and making sense of large amounts of text with a high level of sophistication, which can significantly enhance the productivity of a human lawyer.
