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The Human Is the Loop

brentfitzgerald.com

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Re: The Human Is the Loop

#31

Post by pringk02 »

borski wrote: post #25
Systemerror7A69 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation is you are, having ADHD, and my observations have been similar. I've been more hestiant to use AI at all for a while at the beginning but even now I only ever use it for one thing at a time. It helps me tremendously with the things I want to have done but not do - find out who clutters my home directory, build a small DMS plugin for local models, stuff like that. But even if I work on a big…

I don’t know, there may be something to this. I shared this post with another ADHD friend of mine and he also resonated with your and my experience, not the OP’s. Now I want to do a study! I wonder if the extremely fast dopamine hits of LLM use trigger the same sort of dopaminergic response that ADHD does when faced with a stimulus? If so, are we simply better at dealing with those swings, since we’ve literally dealt…

I’m also interested in a study as I also have ADHD and this is also my work loop. I tend to cut up and serialise rather than parallelise. I can not deal with the degree of context switching described in this blog post. I’d have felt frayed within two weeks.

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#32

Post by boesboes »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #6

Yes. This is consistent w/ my default position: "if LLMs are good at it, we probably don't need to do it."

100% Anything worth doing, is worth doing yourself. LLMs create nothing of real value imo.

And all my colleagues that whole heartily agree, just to go 'but i use it ...', are not much different from smokers & day traders that think they are the exception.

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#35

Post by flemhans »

AI is definitely the loop. Humans are at the top (for now) making overall decisions and at the bottom (trivialities that the AI doesn't have access to or requires physical access). Everything in the middle is a black ever-growing and expanding blob / orb.

Some people reluctantly position themselves solely at the bottom or at the top.

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#36

Post by alansaber »

borski wrote: post #13

I find it interesting that so many of my friends resonate with this. I… don’t, really. I only ever have 2-4 opencode/claude tabs open at once. And I use them for consistent tasks. There’s no way I’d be able to keep track otherwise. I have an “email reviewer” terminal, and a “doc maker” terminal, and 1-2 “coding” terminals. But I don’t start a half dozen things simultaneously (which is ironic, because I have ADHD). I…

Probably because with fewer tabs, you actually get to do the deeper thinking that you enjoy? With more, you're constrained to quickly converging on the best way to keep the plate spinning

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#37

Post by alansaber »

flemhans wrote: post #35

AI is definitely the loop. Humans are at the top (for now) making overall decisions and at the bottom (trivialities that the AI doesn't have access to or requires physical access). Everything in the middle is a black ever-growing and expanding blob / orb. Some people reluctantly position themselves solely at the bottom or at the top.

Not sure I see what would displace humans from the top. AI keeps getting better at the middle bit. Sure, that means you can be lazier with instructions from the top. But surely we see diminishing returns from that- you can only RL so hard, you need increasingly large inputs to create sufficiently specific outputs

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#38

Post by alansaber »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #8
appplication wrote: post #2

I like this, and resonate with the same thoughts. I do wonder when it comes to work though if the answer isn’t doing less but maybe breaking through in some way. I don’t know what it looks like but I do have the feeling LLMs are here to stay. Or maybe it’s just keeping them in the work box - if someone wants to pay me to use LLMs and generate code, so be it. But keeping them away from hobbies, plans, art. Noble maybe…

There's a lot of stuff that we just don't need to do. Not right now. Not ever. That's OK.

This has always been true. No?

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#39

Post by borski »

alansaber wrote: post #36
borski wrote: post #13

I find it interesting that so many of my friends resonate with this. I… don’t, really. I only ever have 2-4 opencode/claude tabs open at once. And I use them for consistent tasks. There’s no way I’d be able to keep track otherwise. I have an “email reviewer” terminal, and a “doc maker” terminal, and 1-2 “coding” terminals. But I don’t start a half dozen things simultaneously (which is ironic, because I have ADHD). I…

Probably because with fewer tabs, you actually get to do the deeper thinking that you enjoy? With more, you're constrained to quickly converging on the best way to keep the plate spinning

Yeah, I think that’s true, but that isn’t really my question. My question is why this seems easier and more natural for people with ADHD to do than people without.

(That is also an unproven statement, obviously, but that’s what I’d want to study/test)

Re: The Human Is the Loop

#40

Post by alansaber »

stillpointlab wrote: post #4

One thing I have been doing to avoid the feeling of starting 100 projects and finishing none, is to work on one big ambitious project. That way I don't have a bunch of half finished projects staring at me, each accusing me of abandoning them and competing for my attention. There is always one big project that I return to and continue to invest in.

Even before AI this was the best way to sustain attention/effort imo
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