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I think I have LLM burnout

alecscollon.com

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Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#341

Post by lesostep »

nswango wrote: post #318
lesostep wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they will fix it and send again. Unless you can write a good-sounding reason why it's on them to review a LLM output before sending it to you, they will outsources this reviewing to you, and it's a lot of reviewing.

It's not a lot of reviewing if you simply find the first thing that makes the document unusable and call them out on it. If it's genuinely hard to find that single bug .. perhaps the document has reached the quality required for corporate communication?

Original comment stated that it was 10 documents, all LLM-generated.

In my experience, it does take a lot time and effort to find contradictions between 10 documents. Even with good documentation, it's hard to build a mental map for that amount of information.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#342

Post by [deleted] »

ssl-3 wrote: post #271
zahlman wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My expectation is that you'd hear a lot more about "gated communities", "gatekeeping" etc. than any of the uses of gates that give warm fuzzies. (As a suffix, it's also associated with scandals; but that probably isn't relevant here.)

I was thinking about gated communities earlier today, in fact. We don't have many of them around here. But where we do have them: At a given time, the gate might be open or closed; passable, or impassable. The presence of a gate is implicit, but the status of that gate is not known without advance knowledge or direct observation. And even when it is closed (even if it defaults to always being closed), there's general…

[deleted]

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#343

Post by win311fwg »

ssl-3 wrote: post #271
zahlman wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My expectation is that you'd hear a lot more about "gated communities", "gatekeeping" etc. than any of the uses of gates that give warm fuzzies. (As a suffix, it's also associated with scandals; but that probably isn't relevant here.)

I was thinking about gated communities earlier today, in fact. We don't have many of them around here. But where we do have them: At a given time, the gate might be open or closed; passable, or impassable. The presence of a gate is implicit, but the status of that gate is not known without advance knowledge or direct observation. And even when it is closed (even if it defaults to always being closed), there's general…

In the context of an LLM using "gate" within code: obviously one can always modify the code to bypass the gate, so there is a built-in implicit assumption that the gate isn't "impossible lava". Most readers are able to read between the lines, but you cannot serve everyone.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#344

Post by jaggederest »

rafterydj wrote: post #297
jaggederest wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that you don't actually need tests for your tests, because the code provides a baseline truth for the tests. You do, at some point, have to be epistemically sound enough to actually look for correctness in either the code, behavior, or tests. We unfortunately haven't fully unlocked completely solipsistic value generation yet. This is also part of why I like end to end tests that use actual UI flow, so I…

Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but I cannot understand what you are saying. What do you mean by "be epistemically sound enough"? You are using it as if to say "if your code is grounded in sound abstractions, you'll be fine and tests will therefore generate successfully" but preface that claim with "the code provides a baseline truth for the tests". The latter does not follow from the former, and it a…

I mean that your code has to accomplish something in the real world that is verifiable on a human level. It has to let customers get something done, or trade resources via a market, or something. That requires that it have some basis in reality that provides a ground truth about whether the system is working or not, and that's what gives you feedback that drives your tests and design.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#345

Post by rapind »

skydhash wrote: post #311
rapind wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe famous last words, but I'm not buying the hype that the "clankers" will take over. I suspect reality will catch up soon and we'll be left with a set of pretty powerful but still limited tools. I see no evidence to the contrary, just investment hype on one side and sky is falling on the other.

The “clankers” won’t take over, but have you also noticed that most people are talking about their workflows/process instead of their results/outcomes? It’s all about “Is the train still running?” than “Are we getting close to the destination?”.

That's true and interesting. Personally I've been rebuilding an application in Rust, learning Rust at the same time and leaning heavily on AI agents for both the building, but also the learning. I've been at it for a few months now (large application) and should be done pretty soon. I'm fairly comfortable with ML languages, and Rust has felt pretty good.

It's been an experiment to see how much more performance I can squeeze from a Rust version (spoiler: it's a lot), how well the agents code in Rust (pretty great and seems idiomatic AFAICT), and if this is a good way to learn a new language (I'm learning, but the verdict on how efficient is still out).

I might be self deluding, but I do think it's been productive, even though I'm intentionally moving slow with small TDD vibe spikes followed by completely reading over everything, adding more guard rails if necessary, refining requirements and tests, sometimes ripping it out then and have the agent rewrite it more iteratively with meticulous reviews, etc. Honestly, I have the time to do this right, so I've been focused on correctness and making it enjoyable to avoid burn out... but what I find enjoyable, won't be the same thing others find enjoyable. I also have the autonomy and financial security to adopt entirely new workflows and do rewrites of my own products, which not everyone has. I would absolutely hate being forced to token max or w/e that insane BS is all about.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#346

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway_7274 wrote: post #191
block_dagger wrote: post #25

I've started feeling slightly physically ill when I read Opus output for hours straight. This article rings very true for me. I've started complaining about it with my team; at least have a personal style guide in your agent rules that eliminates emdashes, the "it's not X, it's Y"s, the long lists of modifiers before the noun, using the word "land" to mean finish, etc. I hope this is just a phase of adolescent LLMs.

Me too. It feels like I’m taking psychic damage from reading so much of this stuff. Contrary to the theory that it’s “just the contract workers’ Nigerian English,” I think the models are developing an ultra-terse hyper-stylized dialect of their own under RL pressure. They seem to be writing increasingly in _code_, and I don’t mean computer code. The words don’t mean quite what they mean to humans.

[deleted]

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#347

Post by jedbrooke »

stasomatic wrote: post #332
vaylian wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right! Do you want me to write these markdown files for you?

And... Me: "The gap, stated plainly:" stop using the type of language. Claude: "You're right. That's one of the constructions your preferences told me to drop, and I used it anyway."

I find sonnet and haiku will do that, but I rarely get that with opus. When it does happen it’s a good cue to start a new session. That’s another benefit of the style guide is it’s a good canary for when the model has gone off the rails. If it’s left the style guide, the rest of the response can likely be discarded as departed from reality.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#348

Post by ssl-3 »

win311fwg wrote: post #343
ssl-3 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about gated communities earlier today, in fact. We don't have many of them around here. But where we do have them: At a given time, the gate might be open or closed; passable, or impassable. The presence of a gate is implicit, but the status of that gate is not known without advance knowledge or direct observation. And even when it is closed (even if it defaults to always being closed), there's general…

In the context of an LLM using "gate" within code: obviously one can always modify the code to bypass the gate, so there is a built-in implicit assumption that the gate isn't "impossible lava". Most readers are able to read between the lines, but you cannot serve everyone.

That's not how the bot uses the word, though -- at least in my experience. The bot uses "gate" to describe a thing that only blocks, and can never open.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#349

Post by win311fwg »

ssl-3 wrote: post #348
win311fwg wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of an LLM using "gate" within code: obviously one can always modify the code to bypass the gate, so there is a built-in implicit assumption that the gate isn't "impossible lava". Most readers are able to read between the lines, but you cannot serve everyone.

That's not how the bot uses the word, though -- at least in my experience. The bot uses "gate" to describe a thing that only blocks, and can never open.

Code that never opens is code you can delete. If the bot hasn't deleted dead code, especially given that this is code it recognizes as being dead and documents it as such, it must believe that you plan to use it again someday. That would imply an expectation of the gate opening eventually, even if not immediately.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#350

Post by ssl-3 »

win311fwg wrote: post #349
ssl-3 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the bot uses the word, though -- at least in my experience. The bot uses "gate" to describe a thing that only blocks, and can never open.

Code that never opens is code you can delete. If the bot hasn't deleted dead code, especially given that this is code it recognizes as being dead and documents it as such, it must believe that you plan to use it again someday. That would imply an expectation of the gate opening eventually, even if not immediately.

Your description of this thing differs from my observation of the reality that I participate in.

Perhaps we're holding it differently.

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