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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#171

Post by bradly »

skybrian wrote: post #153
bradly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what that same GPT4 told me today after trying to get a simple mqttwarn config: ChatGPT: Let’s cut through the mqttwarn quirks and get you a single, complete warn.ini that I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32 Me: that "I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32:" How did you perform this test? ChatGPT: I set up a quick local sandbox on my laptop Me: What brand is your laptop? What store did you buy it at? Cha…

Yes, arguing with an LLM in this way is a waste of time. It’s not a person. If it does anything weird, start a new conversation.

> arguing with an LLM in this way is a waste of time

I wasn't arguing. I was asking it what it thought it was doing because I was assumed. The waste of time was from before this up to this point. I could have given up at 30 minutes, or an hour, but these darn llms are always so close and maybe just one more prompt...

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#172

Post by sircastor »

The hardest part about inevitablism here is that the people who are making the argument this is inevitable are the same people who are the people who are shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars into it. Into the development, the use, the advertisement. The foxes are building doors into the hen houses and saying there’s nothing to be done, foxes are going to get in so we might as well make it something that works for everyone.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#173

Post by com2kid »

baxuz wrote: post #151
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

The thing is that the data from actual research doesn't support your anecdotal proof of quality: - https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o... - https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/29/ai_agents_fail_a_lot/ But more importantly, it makes you stupid: - https://www.404media.co/microsoft-study-finds-ai-makes-human... - https://archive.is/M3lCG And it's an unsustainable bubble and wishful thinking, muc…

All of those studies have been torn apart in detail, often right here on HN.

> So while it may be a fun toy for senior devs that know what to look for, it actually makes them slower and stupider, making them progressively less capable to do their job and apply critical thinking skills.

I've been able to tackle problems that I literally would not have been able to undertake w/o LLMs. LLMs are great at wading through SO posts and GH issue threads and figuring out what magic set of incantations makes some stupid library actually function. They are really good at writing mock classes way faster than I ever have been able to. There is a cost/benefit analysis for undertaking new projects, and if "minor win" involves days of wading through garbage, odds are the work isn't going to happen. But with LLMs I can outsource the drudgery part of the job (throwing crap tons of different parameters at a poorly documented function and seeing what happens), and actually do the part that is valuable (designing software).

You still have to guide the design! Anyone letting LLMs design software is going to fail hard, LLMs still write some wacky stuff. And they are going to destroy juniors, I don't know what the future of the field is going to be like (not pretty that is for sure...)

But I just had an LLM write me a script in ~2 minutes (me describing the problem) that would've taken me 30-60 minutes to write and debug. There would have been no "learning" going on writing a DOS batch script (something I have to do once very 2 or 3 years, so I forget everything I know each time).

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#174

Post by Nevermark »

ankit219 wrote: post #157
oblio wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is: what is the steady state? We kind of knew it for the internet and we basically figured it out early (even if we knew it was going to take a long time to happen due to generational inertia - see the death of newspapers). For LLMs it looks a lot like deindustrialization. Aka pain and suffering for a lot of people.

i would disagree we kind of figured it out early. Early visions for internet were about things like information superhighway (with a centralized approach). What came to pass was the opposite. Its a good thing. There are lessons here in that we are not always accurate at predicting what the future would look like. But we can always identify trends that may shape the future.

The Internet was specifically designed to be maximally decentralized to be robust even to war.

The first web browser was designed to be completely peer to peer.

But you are right about getting it wrong. The peer to peer capabilities still exist, but a remarkable amount of what we now consider basic infrastructure is owned by very large centralized corporations. Despite long tails of hopeful or niche alternatives.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#175

Post by ludicrousdispla »

delichon wrote: post #2

If in 2009 you claimed that the dominance of the smartphone was inevitable, it would have been because you were using one and understood its power, not because you were reframing away our free choice for some agenda. In 2025 I don't think you can really be taking advantage of AI to do real work and still see its mass adaptation as evitable. It's coming faster and harder than any tech in history. As scary as that is w…

Except there is a perverse dynamic in that the more AI/LLM is used, the less it will be used.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#176

Post by alternatex »

gbalduzzi wrote: post #114
rafaelmn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you claimed that AI was inevitable in the 80s and invested, or claimed people would be inevitably moving to VR 10 years ago - you would be shit out of luck. Zuck is still burning billions on it with nothing to show for it and a bad outlook. Even Apple tried it and hilariously missed the demand estimate. The only potential bailout for this tech is AR, but thats still years away from consumer market and widespread a…

None of the "failed" innovations you cited were even near the adoption rate of current LLMs. As much as I don't like it, this is the actual difference. LLMs are already good enough to be a very useful and widely spread technology. They can become even better, but even if they don't there are plenty of use cases for them. VR/AR, AI in the 80s and Tesla at the beginning were technology that someone believe could become…

The other inventions would have quite the adoption rate if they were similarly subsidized as current AI offerings. It's hard to compare a business attempting to be financially stable and a business attempting hyper-growth through freebies.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#177

Post by wilson090 »

baxuz wrote: post #151
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

The thing is that the data from actual research doesn't support your anecdotal proof of quality: - https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o... - https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/29/ai_agents_fail_a_lot/ But more importantly, it makes you stupid: - https://www.404media.co/microsoft-study-finds-ai-makes-human... - https://archive.is/M3lCG And it's an unsustainable bubble and wishful thinking, muc…

These studies profoundly miss the mark and were clearly written for engagement/to push a certain view. It's abundantly clear to any developer who has used LLMs that they are a useful tool and have turned the corner in terms of the value they're able to provide vs their limitations.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#178

Post by bgwalter »

gonzric1 wrote: post #141
bgwalter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones are different. People really wanted them since the relatively primitive Nokia Communicator. "AI" was introduced as an impressive parlor trick. People like to play around, so it quickly got popular. Then companies started force-feeding it by integrating it into every existing product, including the gamification and bureaucratization of programming. Most people except for the gamers and plagiarists don't wa…

Chatgpt Has 800 million weekly active users. That's roughly 10% of the planet. I get that it's not the panacea some people want us to believe it is, but you don't have to deny reality just because you don't like it.

There are all sorts of numbers floating around:

https://www.theverge.com/openai/640894/chatgpt-has-hit-20-mi...

This one claims 20m paying subscribers, which is not a lot. Mr. Beast has 60m views on a single video.

A lot of weekly active users will use it once a week, and a large part of that may be "hate users" who want to see how bad/boring it is, similar to "hatewatching" on YouTube.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#179

Post by com2kid »

laserlight wrote: post #164
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

Now that we are sharing anecdotes, here's mine. I asked Cursor to implement a very basic thing in Pydantic, in which I lacked any experience. Cursor spitted out what seemed like a mess to me. After many back-and-forths and cross-checking with documentation, I couldn't make it do it the way I thought it should be. I went ahead and studied Pydantic's well-written documentation. Done. Hours of time saved.

Here is mine: I had never used pydantic before, but I know TS very well. "Here is a Typescript type, explain how it would be expressed in Pydantic and the differences in what each type system is able to express."

Boom, instant education on Pydantic through the lens of a language I understand very well.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#180

Post by jstummbillig »

I don't think that LLMs are inevitable, but what this piece lacks (and that's fine, I like the point and writing anyway) is a plausible alternative. LLMs might not be inevitable, but until something better comes along, why would they go away? Even if we assume that people are just completely delusional about the models adding anything of value, why would that change at any point in the future?
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