Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making

beej.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 194 posts

Re: Making

#151

Post by planb »

Balooga wrote: post #108
liminal-dev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this line of reasoning. To the same extent, I could say that you did not make an app because you didn’t write the compiled assembly code, build the processor, make the silicone yourself, etc. Tools are tools. Same as Photoshop, Ableton, they get you to where you want to go. Where is the line drawn?

When you create a work using a tool, you own the copyright. When you create a work using an LLM, there is no copyright. So then isn't an LLM less than a tool?

This is not correct and a common misunderstanding of the court ruling. The verbatim output of an LLM is not copyrightable. If you create a work using an LLM, this IS of course copyrightable.

Re: Making

#152

Post by soulofmischief »

supersour wrote: post #125
c1sc0 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about movie directors? Aren't they celebrated as creative geniuses? They're also just leading a team.

A property developer is the other real-world example which comes to my mind.

Architects and civil engineers don't physically build the infrastructure they design.

Re: Making

#153

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

saulpw wrote: post #9

I have been using vi/vim for 30 years and I had no idea about using ^K-M to insert an em-dash.

Yep: https://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/digraph.html

I started using them a long time ago to type Greek characters, but then I switched to vscode with a vim extension and it didn't support that keybinding so I lost the habit. Might work with the neovim extension now.

edit: Yep, but you have to add "k" to the list of "control characters handled by neovim" in the extension's settings.

Re: Making

#154

Post by lesostep »

echelon wrote: post #87
InitialBP wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The restaurant comparison doesn't really hold up. The parent didn't go choose from a menu of new apps that they wanted AI to create. They discovered a problem or a feature that doesn't exist on other platforms and they employed tools to create that. Does a product manager not get to claim they "made" something because they plan it out and employ others to actually build the finished product? Both of the examples the…

You did not make the cheeseburger. Yet, Christopher Nolan made "The Odyssey" Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma made "Ocarina of Time" Mark Zuckerberg made "Meta" I feel just as proud of everything I'm making with LLM, image, and video models as I do the code I wrote by hand for years and the photons I shot on film to make movies. This is just a new higher level thing. I'm still the "director". It's my design and my ta…

>> 'Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma made "Ocarina of Time"'

I googled that to check, and on first few pages no one said that they did? It was always "the team made".

Mark Zuckerberg for sure made "Meta" – whatever it is – at least into the joke it is today, but that's beside the point. Meta isn't a product, it's a company

Re: Making

#155

Post by cobbzilla »

Balooga wrote: post #108
liminal-dev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this line of reasoning. To the same extent, I could say that you did not make an app because you didn’t write the compiled assembly code, build the processor, make the silicone yourself, etc. Tools are tools. Same as Photoshop, Ableton, they get you to where you want to go. Where is the line drawn?

When you create a work using a tool, you own the copyright. When you create a work using an LLM, there is no copyright. So then isn't an LLM less than a tool?

No, the court case you’re thinking of was when someone tried to say the AI itself had the copyright ownership. That’s not allowed (at least in the US), the copyright owner must always be a human. This doesn’t mean that a human cannot copyright AI-directed works.

Re: Making

#156

Post by lesostep »

JaumeGreen wrote: post #74
wlesieutre wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandw…

You know Gaudí? He was a great architect, and made great constructions visited by millions, like Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, or la Sagrada Familia. To be fair he didn't place a single stone, and la Sagrada Familia was finished long after his death. So yes, I believe you can make products using LLMs. If there is a line, it's definitely between "I designed the architecture, and decided on what each class should do, before…

>> He was a great architect, and made great constructions

He designed them. If you can find any book that claims Gaudi made them, I will personally send you 5$ for an isbn

But that wouldn't happen, because any editor would catch that mistake easily. It's not how language works, and it never was

Re: Making

#157

Post by ramon156 »

Only positive thing I can say about LLM assisted projects is how fast you can get from zero to something (but not quite hero).

For example, I want to learn more about algorithms for a rubiks cube project. I already read through the speedcubers wiki, and the algorithms you can apply irl (note I am not fast by hand, hence the project).

At some point I need to get hands-on with algorithms. I can copy-paste existing algorithms into my project, but it's much more fun to ask GLM 5.2 what it would do, and why. I can reason, ask questions, then throw away the entire chat; having learned something during that session.

Doing the same thing by hand would get me blocked at least three times, and would've taken me almost two weeks. This took two days.

Re: Making

#158

Post by sethammons »

dd8601fn wrote: post #48
planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

Seems pretty simple in your analogy. You can be proud of having commissioned a thing… be it landscaping or software… just not for making anything you didn’t. And of course there are shades of grey in between, depending on how critical you were to the doing .

There is a missing word. "Make" is too loose and people disagree that it applies because they disagree on the base meaning of the word. "Commission" is much closer to what is happening, but I am not sure it is it. "Vibe-Coded" tries and fails to fill the niche.

Re: Making

#159

Post by ModernMech »

geodel wrote: post #76
ModernMech wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a director of a movie. They aren't responsible for the creative performances but they are certainly given a heap of credit for having made the movie. I ask 10 actors for 10 scenes and I combine them into a movie I wanted. I ask 10 agents for 10 functions and I combine them into a program I wanted. What's the difference and why is the guy who used agents not credited the same way as a director? Maybe all th…

10 agents for 10 function sounds like IT director. I see enterprises are full of those and they are getting credited appropriately for "AI led innovation" at workplace. The difference with Movie director at least is in details. IT director most likely does not care about Python, bash, js, mermaid, performance characteristics and so many other things that AI agent might have used to solve the problem. The user of thes…

So you're saying the difference is just in how many details are specified or how deeply the director cares about the details?

i.e. if you have a DSLR and you point it at a subject and press the shutter button, that doesn't make you a "photographer"; but if you do the same while adjusting all the knobs and such using knowledge from your brain to get an intended result, that's what makes you a "photographer", despite in both cases the camera is doing the same amount of work?

So in the AI prompting case, if you send out a prompt to "clone twitter", that doesn't make you a "software director" (or whatever we might call it); but if you do the same while specifying the system topology, the various transport protocols, the implementation language, the database schema, then you might be a "software director".

Is that what you're saying?

Re: Making

#160

Post by applfanboysbgon »

echelon wrote: post #104
apsurd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. There would be no X without Y person. Undeniably. The scope of the project matters seems clear though. I think it should be clear and obvious what one means when they say "I made this" recipe from scratch. Even then, there's "did you invent this recipe!?" or do you mean you "prepared it in your kitchen?." That scale and scope is very different from what it means to make a film. And it's where I agre…

Future people will look back on this transitional time with curiosity. This is all going to be a non-issue in time. The fairy path of human language is going to adopt "creation" as assuming someone could have prompted it. It's the path of least resistance, and it's something that will only increase in normality in our daily lives and experience. Nobody in the future is going to have these paragraphs-long diatribes ab…

> Nobody bickers about the definition of "photograph".

Uh, yeah, because there's nothing to bicker about in the definition of a photograph itself. But people absolutely do not view photographers the same way they view illustrators. Nobody would ever, in a million years, consider you an artist because you snapped a selfie. You also don't "make" a photograph, you "take" a photograph (and this kind of distinction exists in every language I speak). You really couldn't have introduced a better example to defeat your own point.

Post reply on HN