WHEN AI DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IT DOESN’T KNOW
- 4 days ago
- 1 min read
Sometimes the most useful thing an expert can say is ‘I don’t know’.
‘I don’t know because we haven’t measured that yet.’
‘I don’t know because the evidence doesn’t extend this far.’
‘I don’t know because two explanations still fit.’
Being able to identify exactly what you don’t know – and what would settle it – is a crucial part of expertise.
So can a general language model become an expert in your work?
Whilst language models are fluent, they're much less reliable at knowing where their knowledge runs out.
Our latest essay, 'Unskilled and Over-Fluent' by Philip Black, is about that gap – and why closing it takes more than a bigger model.
