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Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#91

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

edanm wrote: post #86
jcgrillo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive numbers, but have you ever tried to use one of these things to get actual work done? They're terrible at it! Until these companies start demonstrating some actual value this is merely a hype bubble. Nvidia is slightly different categorically because they're selling the picks and shovels in this hype gold rush--but they were also in the last one (web3/crypto/nfts). At some point if these folks don't actuall…

> Impressive numbers, but have you ever tried to use one of these things to get actual work done? They're terrible at it! If you mean "have you tried using an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude for doing development work", then you're wrong. I'm very confident in saying this, both because I personally use AI for programming and get a lot of value from it, and also because almost everyone else I know in real life also uses AI…

you should probably disclose what you work on as this makes you not exactly impartial, it would be quite bad for you to criticize value of what you sell:

> I'm the CEO of Hipposys Ltd, a boutique Data & AI Engineering shop (www.hipposys.com). We specialize in building RAG systems, Data Warehouses, and anything else related to the intersection between Data & AI. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at edan@hipposys.com, and we can see if we are a good fit!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#92

Post by bdangubic »

jcgrillo wrote: post #38
oidar wrote: post #14

OpenAI is valued at ~150 billion. Anthropic is valued at ~60 billion. nvidia was valued at $15/share in 2023 and is now valued at $150/share. It might seem that LLMs have sucked all the air out of the room, this is why. If you find LLMs boring, you are in for a very boring couple of decades - because it's not going away.

Impressive numbers, but have you ever tried to use one of these things to get actual work done? They're terrible at it! Until these companies start demonstrating some actual value this is merely a hype bubble. Nvidia is slightly different categorically because they're selling the picks and shovels in this hype gold rush--but they were also in the last one (web3/crypto/nfts). At some point if these folks don't actuall…

there are MANY of us who have not only tried it but using it daily to do amazeballs shit. you can read numerous other posts here of people saying how indispensible they have become in their day-to-day work. just like with any other tool, some will learn its strengths and limitations and take them to the limit while others will say “this is no good…”

if I was in the first cohort I would think long and hard how to move to the second…

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#93

Post by edanm »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #91
edanm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Impressive numbers, but have you ever tried to use one of these things to get actual work done? They're terrible at it! If you mean "have you tried using an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude for doing development work", then you're wrong. I'm very confident in saying this, both because I personally use AI for programming and get a lot of value from it, and also because almost everyone else I know in real life also uses AI…

you should probably disclose what you work on as this makes you not exactly impartial, it would be quite bad for you to criticize value of what you sell: > I'm the CEO of Hipposys Ltd, a boutique Data & AI Engineering shop (www.hipposys.com). We specialize in building RAG systems, Data Warehouses, and anything else related to the intersection between Data & AI. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out…

First of all, I'm not sure what you mean by "disclose" - you took that from my HN profile which is a click away. Do you think I should mention this in every comment I make about LLMs?

Secondly, you're confusing cause and effect. I've been in the industry for more than twenty years working on many different things, and my company has done mostly data engineering work for most of its existence, the AI engineering is a relatively-new (past year or so) shift.

I don't think highly of AI because I work in AI - I work in AI because I think highly of it!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#95

Post by snookeredpoot »

sensanaty wrote: post #80
jcgrillo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive numbers, but have you ever tried to use one of these things to get actual work done? They're terrible at it! Until these companies start demonstrating some actual value this is merely a hype bubble. Nvidia is slightly different categorically because they're selling the picks and shovels in this hype gold rush--but they were also in the last one (web3/crypto/nfts). At some point if these folks don't actuall…

The thing is, it's mostly managers and the like getting wow'd by how cool it seems initially, and they're the ones driving the hype. I can ask it in plain English and it answers with flowery language that reads like a professional wrote it, wow! Of course, once you actually try to use it for any real work that isn't a toy project with a trillion examples online, you very quickly run into the myriad of flaws. But they…

Your opinion, like many others, is wildly misinformed.

It’s not “just managers”. People are legit using copilot and it is saving time and helping develop better code. There are 100+ engineers in my company using it. And it’s not just copiloting, it is better than Wikipedia for explaining RFCs or academic papers. That is very important for ramping people when they can interactively ask hundreds of questions to learn about something without bothering top engineers.

You really need to actually get some real world experience as not just pop off.

Anyone who refers to LLMs as “stochastic parrots” has made their choice and is not interested in understand what areas can benefit and what areas cannot. They’re just scared and ignorant.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#97

Post by relaxing »

throwaway519 wrote: post #94

Why do you feel compelled to omit the subject from each sentence? > Loved this site for a long time >> I loved this site for a long time

It’s a quick way to get out your thoughts without making it sound like you’re telling a story as a first person narrative.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#98

Post by mattmanser »

snookeredpoot wrote: post #95
sensanaty wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it's mostly managers and the like getting wow'd by how cool it seems initially, and they're the ones driving the hype. I can ask it in plain English and it answers with flowery language that reads like a professional wrote it, wow! Of course, once you actually try to use it for any real work that isn't a toy project with a trillion examples online, you very quickly run into the myriad of flaws. But they…

Your opinion, like many others, is wildly misinformed. It’s not “just managers”. People are legit using copilot and it is saving time and helping develop better code. There are 100+ engineers in my company using it. And it’s not just copiloting, it is better than Wikipedia for explaining RFCs or academic papers. That is very important for ramping people when they can interactively ask hundreds of questions to learn a…

Copilot? I personally found Copilot pretty useless. And very distracting trying to constantly incorrectly guess what I was doing.

I do use chatgpt/claude for quickly creating first draftw of frontend pages as I find it quicker, but I have to do extensive edits to get it right. But anything non-boiler plate I am faster writing it myself.

I have also quickly found it is a stochastic parrot but that's ok for boilerplate stuff. It is useless at anything complicated and quickly starts hallucinating methods, parameters and functions when you point out problems with the code.

I am beginning to believe that anything niche, where it can't steal from its training data, and it will always be utterly useless.

I am curious how you feel it's so important to 100+ engineers, how do you use it that makes it effective for you?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#99

Post by sensanaty »

snookeredpoot wrote: post #95
sensanaty wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it's mostly managers and the like getting wow'd by how cool it seems initially, and they're the ones driving the hype. I can ask it in plain English and it answers with flowery language that reads like a professional wrote it, wow! Of course, once you actually try to use it for any real work that isn't a toy project with a trillion examples online, you very quickly run into the myriad of flaws. But they…

Your opinion, like many others, is wildly misinformed. It’s not “just managers”. People are legit using copilot and it is saving time and helping develop better code. There are 100+ engineers in my company using it. And it’s not just copiloting, it is better than Wikipedia for explaining RFCs or academic papers. That is very important for ramping people when they can interactively ask hundreds of questions to learn a…

Yeah yeah, I've heard all of this a million times. Yet, I open up Claude and it keeps forgetting to not give me React code after I remind it multiple times to not give me React code. It still randomly drops all context of the conversation at some point and enters a loop where it regurgitates the same answers it already gave me. It still gets basic facts wrong, even when the reference/factsheet is provided to it a sentence ago. The code the juniors and mediors are shitting out with the help of LLMs is all dogwater that doesn't pass the sniff test, and the worst part is they themselves can't explain half the lines they're shoveling.

I suspect the next refrain is gonna be along the lines of me using it wrong, or using the wrong model, or the wrong prompt, or this or that. At the end of the day, if even after arduously trying to use it pretty much daily I still find all the models so far useless for real work, then no amount of fanboyism is going to convince me to disregard the reality of it as I experience it.

I can write the most insanely in-depth prompt on the planet (wasting 10 minutes of my time in the process), and 9 times out of 10 the reply I get is barely any more coherent than a single sentence along the lines of "Give me X" would've given me back.

> it is better than Wikipedia for explaining RFCs or academic papers.

I dread the future we're creating where people are relying on LLMs to parse RFCs or papers.

> Anyone who refers to LLMs as “stochastic parrots” has made their choice and is not interested in understand what areas can benefit and what areas cannot.

You're arguing with a strawman as I haven't used the word stochastic or parrot anywhere in the comment you're replying to or have implied anything of the sort about LLMs, and I'm even saying that I don't think it's completely useless, just not nearly as useful as the hype would lead one to imagine. Did you perhaps put my comment through an LLM and thus were arguing against imaginary points that I never made?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

#100

Post by medvezhenok »

plsbenice34 wrote: post #54
thallavajhula wrote: post #8

It's the current hotness in tech. HN has always included trending tech topics. Ever since HN started, I've seen - * Explosion of social media * JavaScript libraries and the frontend revolution to modernizing the web and browsers * Mobile apps * Crypto * Machine Learning and now, AI & LLMs. The only difference LLMs have with the others is the learning curve. The others, one could easily hop on the trend. With LLMs, be…

>With LLMs, before being able to understand what everyone's talking about, there's a lot to know. There can be a sense of being left out. I think that can be demotivating. I find it to be the exact opposite. The idea of "Artificial Intelligence" as a thinking machine is fascinating. However, now that i learned a certain amount about this current neural network paradigm, the marketing magic of it as an intelligent sys…

The human brain is also dry big data statistical machinery.

The frontier models (of which R1 is an example) « think » in much the same way a human would - look at their chain of thought output). I think if you shut down LLMs in your head because you think you « understand » them and there’s nothing interesting there, then you’re blinded by hubris.

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