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cover of episode From NLP to LLMs: The Quest for a Reliable Chatbot

From NLP to LLMs: The Quest for a Reliable Chatbot

2025/1/10
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AI + a16z

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Alan Nichol
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Martin Casado
总合伙人,专注于人工智能投资和推动行业发展。
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Martin Casado: 我认为构建可靠的聊天机器人应该采取循序渐进的方式,从使用模板回复开始,逐步过渡到使用大型语言模型生成文本。这样可以降低风险,例如避免模型产生幻觉或被恶意利用。 我们应该从小处着手,避免一开始就完全依赖大型语言模型,例如GPT-4。应该先构建一个熟悉的、可靠的系统,然后再逐步扩展其功能。 Alan Nichol: 我最初的创业想法是构建一个搜索引擎,后来发展到将自然语言转化为SQL查询。在这个过程中,我发现营销团队的语言表达方式与正式的SQL语句差异很大,这促使我开始研究多轮对话系统。 我们创建了Rasa,一个开源的自然语言理解库。最初我们使用简单的Word2Vec模型,其效果出奇的好。但基于分类的自然语言理解方法难以处理自然语言的歧义性和隐含意义,因此我们开始探索不依赖于分类问题的对话引擎。 大型语言模型的出现为解决自然语言处理与严格规则难以结合的问题提供了新的思路。我们现在的方法是将复杂的对话处理交给大型语言模型,而将任务逻辑用确定性引擎处理,从而提高系统的效率和可靠性。 完全依赖大型语言模型处理所有逻辑会带来难以调试和维护的问题。在涉及状态变化和事务处理的场景中,应该使用传统的确定性系统来处理,而大型语言模型只负责处理自然语言交互。 在生产环境中部署大型语言模型需要循序渐进,从使用模板回复开始,逐步增加LLM生成文本的比例。简单的输出过滤并不能解决大型语言模型的可靠性问题,需要更全面的方法来确保系统的可靠性。构建大型应用时,应区分哪些部分需要动态处理,哪些部分可以使用确定性方法处理,并根据实际情况选择合适的技术。

Deep Dive

Key Insights

Why is it important to start with templated responses when integrating LLMs into chatbots?

Starting with templated responses ensures that no generated text is sent to users, minimizing risks like hallucinations or prompt injections. This approach builds confidence in the system before gradually introducing more dynamic elements.

What is the role of Word2Vec in the evolution of chatbots?

Word2Vec provided a numerical representation of words, enabling mathematical operations like similarity comparisons. It revolutionized NLP by allowing systems to handle natural language more effectively, serving as a foundational tool for early chatbot development.

How does Rasa approach the integration of LLMs with traditional business logic?

Rasa combines the natural language understanding of LLMs with deterministic business logic. The LLM handles the complexity of conversations, while a simple, rule-based system manages tasks and state, ensuring reliability and scalability.

What are the challenges of using LLMs for multi-step, transactional tasks like booking a ticket?

LLMs struggle with maintaining consistent state in transactional tasks, such as reserving and unreserving seats. These tasks require deterministic systems to handle edge cases and ensure state consistency, which LLMs alone cannot reliably manage.

Why is the 'prompt and pray' approach problematic for integrating LLMs into enterprise systems?

The 'prompt and pray' approach lacks control over LLM outputs and requires trial and error to adjust prompts. It is inefficient and unreliable for enterprise systems, where predictable and accurate responses are critical.

What is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and how does it improve LLM integration?

RAG dynamically retrieves relevant information from external sources to augment LLM prompts, improving accuracy and relevance. It addresses the limitations of static prompts by incorporating up-to-date and context-specific data.

How does Rasa ensure LLMs do not hallucinate or produce incorrect outputs in regulated industries?

Rasa uses templated responses by default, eliminating opportunities for LLMs to generate incorrect outputs. This approach ensures compliance and reliability, especially in regulated industries like banking.

What is the significance of maintaining state in conversational AI systems?

Maintaining state allows conversational AI systems to track user interactions, retrieve relevant information, and handle multi-turn conversations effectively. It ensures continuity and context-awareness in dialogues.

How do enterprises typically adopt LLMs for customer service?

Enterprises start with LLMs for understanding user inputs while using templated responses to minimize risks. As confidence grows, they introduce dynamic elements like paraphrasing and RAG to enhance personalization and naturalness.

What is the difference between dynamic and deterministic systems in LLM integration?

Dynamic systems, like LLMs, handle unpredictable and fuzzy aspects of conversations, while deterministic systems manage structured, rule-based tasks. Combining both ensures flexibility for natural language interactions and reliability for business logic execution.

Chapters
Alan Nichol's background in physics and machine learning led him to create a search engine and then explore natural language processing (NLP) for more complex tasks. He discusses early challenges in mapping natural language to formal languages like SQL and the limitations of early NLP approaches like using a separate model for each database schema.
  • Alan Nichol's background in physics and machine learning.
  • Early challenges in mapping natural language to formal languages.
  • Limitations of early NLP approaches.

Shownotes Transcript

In this episode of AI + a16z, a16z General Partner Martin Casado and Rasa) cofounder and CEO Alan Nichol discuss the past, present, and future of AI agents and chatbots. Alan shares his history working to solve this problem with traditional natural language processing (NLP), expounds on how large language models (LLMs) are helping to dull the many sharp corners of natural-language interactions, and explains how pairing them with inflexible business logic is a great combination.

Learn more:

Task-Oriented Dialogue with In-Context Learning)

GoEX: Perspectives and Designs Towards a Runtime for Autonomous LLM Application)

CALM Summit)

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