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> They’re nondeterministic at a fine level, but can be “deterministic” at a more general level: e.g. you might know that one model will always return properly f
by packetlost 8d ago
> They’re nondeterministic at a fine level, but can be “deterministic” at a more general level: e.g. you might know that one model will always return properly formatted json when asked. That might not be true of the replacement, even if it is in general “better” and cheaper.
This isn't true. Even Sol messes up JSON formatting for me on occasion.
Do not delude yourself into thinking these things are reliable. They are not.
- kamranjon 8d agoIs nobody using structured outputs? They use constrained decoding at the generation stage to ensure the probability of tokens that would break the format are set to 0. I kinda figured everyone was doing this at this point.
- gcanyon 8d agoWe use structured output and To my knowledge it has never failed (millions of data points). There seem to be two classes of people: those doing productive work with LLMs, and those who only get replies insulting their mothers…
- nolok 8d agoIf you use a large enough volume, you will know this isn't fully reliable. You might get json, and it might not match what the model actually sent because the last layer cut it up to match what you want. At the end, not json, or json but not really matching what the model wanted, it's sort of the same issue: when you use them you HAVE to assume they can have a brain fart. That's fine, just code around it.
- wongarsu 8d agoMost serious providers are now supporting structured outputs in a reasonable way for all model configs. But for example on ollama structured outputs are still incompatible with tool calling and with reasoning
- Zopieux 8d agoFriends Don't Let Friends Use Ollama. https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/ https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/