Fitts' List

Have you ever heard of the Fitts’ List? And how could it relate to LLMs?

In 1951, Paul Fitts published a list of 11 statements that allocated tasks to humans depending on their strengths and weaknesses. Despite criticisms, it has stood the test of time remarkably well.

Neural nets encroached on the functions of detection and to some extent, long term memory. LLMs seem to further erode the functions which had been allocated to humans so far. In particular, LLMs seem able to improvise. They also generate text with confident tones of judgement, induction and perception.

Is the output of LLMs robust, as it relates to these functions? Or is there a significant shortfall, hidden behind the veneer of formalised language output, ie. a stochastic parrot?

This post was originally authored as a post on LinkedIn.