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I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

111–120 of 221 posts

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#111
post #99
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets a sense of accoplishment from prompting an LLM? Do you get a sense of accomplishment when AI draws a picture or writes a poem for you? I guess there are some minds I'll never be able to comprehend

What sense of pride an accomplishment do you get from using a library, or a high level language? You didn't write that code, you didn't hand translate into processor opcodes, etc. There are a million man hours of other people's work involved in making a simple python script run. Given that any coding effort relies heavily on a much greater amount of work as a prior than the code you yourself are writing... Why do you…

I think most people feel pride when they put effort into doing something challenging and in return achieve a good result. You can use high level languages and libraries and still put effort into something that is challenging, thus feeling a sense of pride. Of course, they may feel more pride if they achieve the same result without libraries, or in a more challenging language.

Prompting an LLM neither requires comparative effort nor is comparatively challenging, thus it's would be odd to feel a sense of pride from any associated outcomes.

I cannot believe this even requires an explanation.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#112
post #39
post #3

The thing is I totally, 100% get this. The other thing I can't help but see though is how excited my non-programmer friends are to finally be able to make software. The sense of pride and accomplishment from non-coders who are finally able to make something work the way they wanted to. We almost need like ... noncanonical software? Not so much forks, but like ... Maybe software as like a cluster? an ecosystem? On-dem…

Who gets a sense of accoplishment from prompting an LLM? Do you get a sense of accomplishment when AI draws a picture or writes a poem for you? I guess there are some minds I'll never be able to comprehend

Back when image-gen was made widely available (2023ish, feels like eons ago), there were people who took genuine satisfaction with their art prompting skills. It did come off as a bit cringe though: https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/s/KxwhqJ5hrU

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#113
post #50
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy makes no sense to me and honestly skews pretty elitist in vibe. iPhone is regularly used in professional videography now. Like, 28 Years Later was shot on iPhone. Indie filmmakers have been using iPhone to break into the industry for years.

"You are not a photographer just because you have a camera" has been a standard saying since forever, and has nothing to do with elitism. Those professionals are professionals not because they own an iPhone and use it to shoot something.

Professionals are professional because someone pays them, that is all.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could, you know, let people feel proud of whatever they want?

Sure, you can feel proud of whatever you wish. But don't share that shit with others and expect them to feel similarly proud of what you did.

lol, you’re literally talking about non-coders that GGGP said they know. No one is sharing their AI stuff here asking you to be impressed.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could, you know, let people feel proud of whatever they want?

Call me old fashioned but I take pride in things I work hard to achieve. I think it's embarrassing to be proud of AI output of any kind, be it software or art or writing.

Hope all your programs are written in machine code. Wouldn’t want to be proud of compiler output.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#116
A reverse centaur is just a person with a horse head right? I don’t get the analogy. I understand he’s talking about getting pushed around by an LLM, but would a normal centaur push an LLM around? It doesn’t even have any hands right? Seems like a reverse centaur is more capable of typing.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could, you know, let people feel proud of whatever they want?

Call me old fashioned but I take pride in things I work hard to achieve. I think it's embarrassing to be proud of AI output of any kind, be it software or art or writing.

And I’m sure ctoth’s non-coder friends will be just devastated to hear that some random online account is embarrassed because they’re proud of a little app they created for fun.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#118
post #39
post #3

The thing is I totally, 100% get this. The other thing I can't help but see though is how excited my non-programmer friends are to finally be able to make software. The sense of pride and accomplishment from non-coders who are finally able to make something work the way they wanted to. We almost need like ... noncanonical software? Not so much forks, but like ... Maybe software as like a cluster? an ecosystem? On-dem…

Who gets a sense of accoplishment from prompting an LLM? Do you get a sense of accomplishment when AI draws a picture or writes a poem for you? I guess there are some minds I'll never be able to comprehend

Who gets a sense of accomplishment from cheering for their home team?

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#119
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sense of pride an accomplishment do you get from using a library, or a high level language? You didn't write that code, you didn't hand translate into processor opcodes, etc. There are a million man hours of other people's work involved in making a simple python script run. Given that any coding effort relies heavily on a much greater amount of work as a prior than the code you yourself are writing... Why do you…

I think most people feel pride when they put effort into doing something challenging and in return achieve a good result. You can use high level languages and libraries and still put effort into something that is challenging, thus feeling a sense of pride. Of course, they may feel more pride if they achieve the same result without libraries, or in a more challenging language. Prompting an LLM neither requires compara…

Developing a functional app that meets your needs with an LLM takes it's own kind of skill, and is substantially more difficult if you can't recognize when the machine is steering your architecture in the wrong direction. It takes actual, real work. It's certainly a completely different kind of work than writing most of the code yourself, but so is using Java when compared to hand writing x86 opcodes.

Prompting an LLM to produce good code isn't a lot of work for you. Writing hex without an assembler or compiler would be a lot of work for you.

People have ideas, and now they have better tools to turn those ideas into reality. They aren't doing it like you would do it, but they're getting it done all the same, getting their needs met, and enjoying the ride.

Maybe just let people have fun, and when they report that they are in fact having fun... believe them.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#120
post #50
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy makes no sense to me and honestly skews pretty elitist in vibe. iPhone is regularly used in professional videography now. Like, 28 Years Later was shot on iPhone. Indie filmmakers have been using iPhone to break into the industry for years.

"You are not a photographer just because you have a camera" has been a standard saying since forever, and has nothing to do with elitism. Those professionals are professionals not because they own an iPhone and use it to shoot something.

Exactly - it's just a tool. So, trying to make the argument that someone's work is less-than because they used a cheaper/more amateur tool versus the tool the well-funded professionals are using _is_ elitist. You recognize that, but the comment I replied to centered on the tool, not the finer points of professionalism.

But on that- whether folks have knowledge and taste, demonstrate responsibility for their impact, pay attention to their work quality, show up to the work environment with respect, etc. are all elements at the domain of human relations. This discussion is conflating how people use tools with how people work with each other. The tools don't matter here. I think we're sayin' the same thing.

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