Should AI models be like Swiss Army knives, versatile and handy in a variety of scenarios? Or do we prefer them as precision tools, finely tuned for specific tasks? In the world of artificial intelligence, and natural language processing specifically, this is an ongoing debate. The question boils down to whether models trained for specific tasks are more effective at these tasks than general models. Task-specific models: specialization and customization In my last blog post , we looked at the rise of personalized LLMs, customized for specific users. Personalized LLMs can be seen as an extreme form of task-specific model. Fans of task-specific models stress that these kinds of models are better suited for tasks involving confidential or proprietary data. This is obviously true. But some people also believe that specialized models necessarily perform better in their specific domains. It may sound logical, but the ans...
It’s a common lament: “I asked ChatGPT for scientific references, and it returned the names of non-existent papers.” How and why does this happen? Why would large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT create fake information rather than admitting they don’t know the answer? And why is this such a complex problem to solve? LLMs are an increasingly common presence in our digital lives. (Less sophisticated chatbots do exist, but for simplification, I’ll refer to LLMs as “chatbots” in the rest of the post.) These AI-driven entities rely on complex algorithms to generate responses based on their training data. In this blog post, we will explore the world of chatbot responses and their constraints. Hopefully, this will shed some light on why they sometimes "hallucinate." How do chatbots work? Chatbots such as ChatGPT are designed to engage in conversational interactions with users. They are trained on large ...