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The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

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Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#91

Post by adamas »

elicash wrote: post #76
adamas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's an employee, which I doubt but ok, it's an employee you constantly have to probe, talk to, give instructions to, so, not a really good employee.

Neither of us have any idea whether his manufacturing startup is successful. It looks to be a 5 person team. A google search suggests they had a funding round early this year. It might, in fact, be that you are more successful with your approach. I have no idea. Congrats if so.

I mean, he must be pretty successful to be able to burn 10k in tokens. If he is successful because or despite of the AI, I don't know and I don't really care ? That wasn't the question.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#92

Post by quantummagic »

cj wrote: post #85
quantummagic wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same arguments were made against electronic computing in general, in the early days. Pearl clutching is a very human thing to do as new technologies are integrated and become common place. A whole generation or two of developers are going to have to pass away before we stop hearing incessant diatribes about LLMs.

Don't use calculator as an analogy, then. Calculators are a simple machine that implement very basic rules. LLMs are in a different category. The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense.

> The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense.

The technology doesn't matter, you can compare to say the power loom from the 1700's. I'm comparing the reaction of humans; human's haven't changed that much. They always react the same when they feel threatened and emotionally challenged by a technology.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#93

Post by threethirtytwo »

adamas wrote: post #86
threethirtytwo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Not true anymore. Right now the bottleneck is the review because code comes out so fast there is a measurable and adjustable trade off that can be made. If you review all code, your output will be slow. If you review less code, your output will be faster at the cost of more bugs in production. Bug rate will never go down to zero whether you use AI or not. That is the trade off, if you review everything then out…

With that logic, you would let an intern force push his way to prod, that's not a smart move.

no force pushes. And probably not an intern.

But code that never gets looked at and only tested? Yes. And as AI gets better this will be happening in all companies... more and more.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#94

Post by nottorp »

msdz wrote: post #2

> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thou…

> and am noticing a speedup in areas I was already familiar with, and a quicker introduction to new ones.

Only problem is that, like a LLM, you don't retain anything.

Hobby projects may become a lot more important now because if you do them without LLMs you may retain a brain cell or two.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#95

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #39
mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #7

>as a senior, you don’t need juniors anymore. The mundane tasks, at least I find that a lot of people agree with that one, can be fully outsourced to an LLM Master craftsmen didn't take on apprentices to give them chores.

>Master craftsmen didn't take on apprentices to give them chores. Is today opposite day?

So the purpose of a graduate degree is TAing a few classes?

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#96

Post by dspillett »

simianwords wrote: post #13
hatefulheart wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have no critiques about a piece of technology in an area of technology that has existed for less than 10 years I think that speaks for itself.

so you are saying that the advent of internet also deserved criticism in much the same way as LLM's? - job displacement - ethics - environmental - skill atrophy

Such concerns were present, and rightly so. Concern and critique is important to express so that we are sure new tech is useful and negative side-effects are realised and appropriately mitigated.

Job displacement: When the Internet first arrived in a significant number of non-technical lives, there were concerns about research jobs and library jobs. In fact it increased the need for that sort of thing so increased that sort of job, and even if it hadn't the access to information for the average person would have been worth that cost. As remote work grew initially, then massively in 2020, there were major concerns about that sort of thing again (people working in Manchester on London wages, going into the office very little, it being even easier to outsource jobs to countries with cheaper workforces, etc.). These concerns are still being debated today, and that is quite valid.

Ethics: Hell yes. And again, it is good that we are still refining what we think is acceptable to this very day. There have been ethical concerns almost from the start of the Internet in the public mind, and they have only increased over time as new parts of it take shape.

Environmental: That is a lot less relevant, as the Internet itself didn't directly have the sort of impact that LLMs are having. There have been local concerns though, over the building of data-centers and the power infrastructure to support them, disturbing land to lay cables, and so forth, and again these concerns are still relevant (though have somewhat folded into just being a concern about LLMs & related ATM as they are the main reason for the current rapid growth).

Skill Atrophy: The Internet never really threatened that, except maybe a small amount of concern wrt certain research roles, it increased the base level of those skills in the general population much more than it had any negative effects (but people did raise the concerns). It gave better access to training and knowledge, but wasn't actually doing things for us in the same way LLMs and the agent systems linked to them are being used, you still needed to learn from that information/training in order to complete your task.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#97

Post by throw4847285 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #78
mark_and_sweep wrote: post #61

> a genuinely good tool that enriches your thinking A smartphone is also a genuinely good all-around tool. Even social media is a genuinely good tool for connecting people. Yet, I feel like we've been overly optimistic about the impact of said tools on us and our societies in the past two decades. Smartphones are so good, in fact, in some societies, half of us are addicted to them. Billions of people world-wide. I as…

There's a saying that the intelligence of an average prehistoric cave man should be, in general, higher than a modern day human simply because the lack of technology required stone age humans to be far more intelligent then we are today. Now you can survive by working as a clerk in McDs, but in the stone age you needed to be on your toes and smart af. LLMs are just continuing the trend humanity has long been travelin…

How do you know that? What do you know about prehistory? Nothing. You might as well be picturing the Flintstones in your head.

You're using broadly shared but totally unsubstantiated about past humans just to argue that things are good right now.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#98

Post by simianwords »

dspillett wrote: post #96
simianwords wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you are saying that the advent of internet also deserved criticism in much the same way as LLM's? - job displacement - ethics - environmental - skill atrophy

Such concerns were present, and rightly so. Concern and critique is important to express so that we are sure new tech is useful and negative side-effects are realised and appropriately mitigated. Job displacement: When the Internet first arrived in a significant number of non-technical lives, there were concerns about research jobs and library jobs. In fact it increased the need for that sort of thing so increased th…

What about the impact of internet itself - its utility. Thats the primary mode of criticism on LLM

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#99

Post by Silagi »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #82
voidfunc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem that wild if youre doing large green field dev with frontier models. Im spending about 2-3K a week on personal projects and 5K a week on corporate stuff.

Crazy. I use claude pro and I barely hit the quota working on greenfield stuff.

You could realistically be burning through ~5k of tokens without hitting the quota. The subscriptions are crazy subsidized relative to the API rates.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#100

Post by breadzeppelin__ »

Diogenesian wrote: post #74
qsort wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will just point out the benefit is not as obvious as you think. Developers have consistently overestimated LLM I think there are two different claims here: - developers overestimate productivity gains, which is a solid finding in many of these studies. Skepticism of extremely large productivity gains is warranted and I flatly disbelieve "10x uplift" claims. - LLMs give no productivity uplift at all, which is much…

Specifically my claim is "the relatively minor productivity uplift I would personally get out of agentic development is offset by the high cost, along with unresolved questions about long-term code maintainability, so I am not convinced that it is actually beneficial." IMO the bigger problem is that ~1.5x individual dev productivity uplift seems to translate into 1.05x uplift across the team. People have been waaaaay…

I am both a career developer and experienced team manager. from first hand experience the 1.5x im getting from AI is not flowing down to my team / org because why would i output 50% more when the pay environment and leadership are already underwhelming. That additional 50% productivity goes completely to side projects built on my second computer between 9-5 tasks
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