DEV Community

Javier Alvarado
Javier Alvarado

Posted on

1

How do you get around an LLM's knowledge cutoff?

  • ChatGPT's knowledge cutoff is October 2023
  • Claude 3.5 Sonnet's knowledge cutoff is April 2024
  • Gemini 2.0 Flash's knowledge cutoff is August 2024

This means that, by default, the LLMs don't know about updates to languages/libraries/frameworks after these dates. What's your preferred method for working around this? Feel free to include answers for LLMs and/or other AI tools like Cursor, Windsurf, etc.

Top comments (5)

Collapse
 
quantadev profile image
Clay Ferguson

I think I've had limited success mentioning what versions of things I'm using, in my AI prompts, so that it gives me better results. When it comes to software development this is a big issue for everyone (i.e. when the AI generates code that mixes incompatible versions of things etc), so it does need some kind of solution. Perhaps better annotation of training data (code) that includes timestamps and/or version numbers, might address this some day, so you can ask questions to LLMs and then perhaps give date-ranges for what you want it consider, etc.

Collapse
 
jhonkaman profile image
Javier Alvarado

Thanks for responding! Mentioning the version numbers is a good tip. And I agree that it's a big issue. I might write an article based on what I've found so far in my research.

Collapse
 
quantadev profile image
Clay Ferguson

Cool. I followed you, and will be interested in what you find out!

Thread Thread
 
jhonkaman profile image
Javier Alvarado

Hi Clay. I just published my article here: dev.to/jhonkaman/the-knowledge-cut...

Thread Thread
 
quantadev profile image
Clay Ferguson

Cool. thanks!

The Most Contextual AI Development Assistant

Pieces.app image

Our centralized storage agent works on-device, unifying various developer tools to proactively capture and enrich useful materials, streamline collaboration, and solve complex problems through a contextual understanding of your unique workflow.

👥 Ideal for solo developers, teams, and cross-company projects

Learn more

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay