Earlier quoted context omitted.
People denied that bicycles could possibly balance even as others happily pedaled by. This is the same thing.
Bicycles don't balance, the human on the bicycle is the one doing the balancing.
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2025: The Year in LLMs
31–40 of 643 posts
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
People denied that bicycles could possibly balance even as others happily pedaled by. This is the same thing.
Bicycles don't balance, the human on the bicycle is the one doing the balancing.
Yes, that is the analogy I am making. People argued that bicycles (a tool for humans to use) could not possibly work - even as people were successfully using them.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also essential self-fulfilment. But that one doesn't make headlines ;)
Sure -- but that's fair game in engineering. I work on cars. If we kill people with safety faults I expect it to make more headlines than all the fun roadtrips. What I find interesting with chat bots is that they're "web apps" so to speak, but with safety engineering aspects that type of developer is typically not exposed to or familiar with.
One of the tough problems here is privacy. AI labs really don't want to be in the habit of actively monitoring people's conversations with their bots, but they also need to prevent bad situations from arising and getting worse.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people assume negative critique is ignorance?
People denied that bicycles could possibly balance even as others happily pedaled by. This is the same thing.
Please tell me which one of the headings is not about increased usage o LLMs and derived tools and is about some improvement in the axes of reliability or or any kind of usefulness.
Here is the changelog for OpenBSD 7.8:
https://www.openbsd.org/78.html
There's nothing here that says: We make it easier to use it more of it. It's about using it better and fixing underlying problems.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#35I'm curious how all of the progress will be seen if it does indeed result in mass unemployment (but not eradication) of professional software engineers.
My prediction: If we can successfully get rid of most software engineers, we can get rid of most knowledge work. Given the state of robotics, manual labor is likely to outlive intellectual labor.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
People denied that bicycles could possibly balance even as others happily pedaled by. This is the same thing.
Please tell me which one of the headings is not about increased usage o LLMs and derived tools and is about some improvement in the axes of reliability or or any kind of usefulness. Here is the changelog for OpenBSD 7.8: https://www.openbsd.org/78.html There's nothing here that says: We make it easier to use it more of it. It's about using it better and fixing underlying problems.
The coding agent heading. Claude Code and tools like it represent a huge improvement in what you can usefully get done with LLMs.
Mistakes and hallucinations matter a whole lot less if a reasoning LLM can try the code, see that it doesn't work and fix the problem.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#37Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bicycles don't balance, the human on the bicycle is the one doing the balancing.
Yes, that is the analogy I am making. People argued that bicycles (a tool for humans to use) could not possibly work - even as people were successfully using them.
People use drugs as well but I'm not sure I'd call that successful use of chemical compounds without further context. There are many analogies one can apply here that would be equally valid.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#39These are excellent every year, thank you for all the wonderful work you do.
Same here. Simon is one of the main reasons I’ve been able to (sort of) keep up with developments in AI.
I look forward to learning from his blog posts and HN comments in the year ahead, too.
Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs
#40You’re absolutely right! You astutely observed that 2025 was a year with many LLMs and this was a selection of waypoints, summarized in a helpful timeline.
That’s what most non-tech-person’s year in LLMs looked like.
Hopefully 2026 will be the year where companies realize that implementing intrusive chatbots can’t make better ::waving hands:: ya know… UX or whatever.
For some reason, they think its helpful to distractingly pop up chat windows on their site because their customers need textual kindergarten handholding to … I don’t know… find the ideal pocket comb for their unique pocket/hair situation, or had an unlikely question about that aerosol pan release spray that a chatbot could actually answer. Well, my dog also thinks she’s helping me by attacking the vacuum when I’m trying to clean. Both ideas are equally valid.
And spending a bazillion dollars implementing it doesn’t mean your customers won’t hate it. And forcing your customers into pathways they hate because of your sunk costs mindset means it will never stop costing you more money than it makes.
I just hope companies start being honest with themselves about whether or not these things are good, bad, or absolutely abysmal for the customer experience and cut their losses when it makes sense.