Alex Gaynor 3/5/2025

Generality

Read Original

The article discusses the critical importance of 'generality' in machine learning models. It begins with examples of ML models that failed in production due to learning spurious correlations (like detecting rulers in scans). It then extends this concept to Large Language Models (LLMs), noting their inconsistent performance across different programming tasks (e.g., good at HTML/JS but poor at Rust). The author argues against anthropomorphic comparisons for AI capabilities and advocates for a more specific, task-oriented evaluation of what models are actually useful for.

Generality

Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts!

Browser Extension

Get instant access to AllDevBlogs from your browser

Top of the Week

1
The Beautiful Web
Jens Oliver Meiert 2 votes
2
Container queries are rad AF!
Chris Ferdinandi 2 votes
3
Wagon’s algorithm in Python
John D. Cook 1 votes
5
Top picks — 2026 January
Paweł Grzybek 1 votes
6
In Praise of –dry-run
Henrik Warne 1 votes
8
Vibe coding your first iOS app
William Denniss 1 votes