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I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

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Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#41

Post by CursedSilicon »

mindcrime wrote: post #14

Great. And you felt the need to scream this to the entire world? Look, if you don't like Generative AI, then don't use it. This isn't rocket science, and you're not making yourself look hip, cool, edgy, informed, suave, or anything else by yelling about it. Just go do you. Other people may do likewise. Others still might make different choices. And both cases are fine. And never mind that the whole premise of this ar…

The problem (particularly on places like HN) are that if you are openly Anti-AI the people who disagree will flex their ability to downvote you (which contravenes HN's rules [1] [2])

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605192 (currently at -1 but went as as low as -7)

You go on other sites like Reddit and posit a question. Someone will inevitably reply "So I asked $insert_AI_bot and it said"

It's like second hand smoke. Those of us who don't want to smoke are still subjected to the externalities of the people who want to smoke in public

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#42

Post by CursedSilicon »

ang_cire wrote: post #37
g-b-r wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm praying that you're not a developer

Worse, I'm someone who's been reviewing code for a long time. And it's not much different now than it was before.

Do you work for IBM? [1]

[1] In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand line of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 5OK-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS 2, how much they did. How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to convince them - hey, if we have - a developer's got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he's made something smaller and faster, less KLOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that's the methodology. Ugh anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing.

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#43

Post by encyclopedism »

burntpineapple wrote: post #6

Outright refusal of the tech based on outdated takes is such a boring, luddite opinion

He is lamenting the tech in a similar manner to lamenting social media. Social media is also 'tech', and yet I don't think we could poor quite enough scorn on it, it deserves more!

I understand the qualities of LLM's but I do fear that we might lose much which once lost may be gone forever. That gives me pause for thought.

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#44

Post by paularmstrong »

rkagerer wrote: post #35

If I get even a whiff of AI smell from an email I receive, the sender gets permablocked. My attention is too valuable for you to insult me by subjecting me to your slop. Take the time for some human interaction. If it's not worth your time to do so, then it most certainly isn't worth mine, either.

If only it were so simple to block all of my coworkers.

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#45

Post by ang_cire »

g-b-r wrote: post #38
ang_cire wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, I'm someone who's been reviewing code for a long time. And it's not much different now than it was before.

If you believe that compilation proves that the code is good, and that the only thing you should care about a program is if "it works", I don't think you're a great code reviewer. And in any case, if the code you had experience with (and produced?) before AIs was stack overflow answers pasted together, it's not surprising that you don't see any worsening. Btw, if your idea of LLMs is of something doing "mathematical…

I think you're putting words in my mouth.

I believe that 2 programs that execute the same are of equal value, no matter the intentions of the person writing the code (or lack thereof). If you read the article, you'd probably know what I was referring to:

> But at least we know that each line, as bad as it can be, was added by a human for a reason.

That's what immediately preceded the bit I quoted, and the entire point of my critique is that this author is treating human intention in coding as intrinsically valuable.

And rather than snark, I'd love if you actually explained why me calling LLMs "mathematical approximations" of their training data is inaccurate? They're literally weighted vector graphs of their training data.

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#46

Post by archagon »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #10

I'm very sorry to say it, but even reading LLM-slop is less tiresome, then reading yet another anti-AI slop article. It's a pretty low bar. I could find 10 anti-AI posts on HN and they all will contain points from a very narrow pool of anti-AI takes. I mean, how many more times do you need to repeat them? > stochastic algorithms trained to produce tons of "average," non-human content As we can see, humans are also qu…

So why are you commenting on it?

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#47

Post by ang_cire »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #42
ang_cire wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, I'm someone who's been reviewing code for a long time. And it's not much different now than it was before.

Do you work for IBM? [1] [1] In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand line of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 5OK-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS 2, how much they did. How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to c…

No, never worked for Big Blue. ;)

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#48

Post by abstractspoon »

I'm a 60M, recently retired and I wholly agree with this piece. I was classically educated and trained as a structural engineer before turning to software. My experience throughout my career was to observe at every turn the total absence of an engineering ethos which rests on a deep understanding of theory, materials, process and construction. Vibing software will destroy what little rigor there ever was in software development.

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#49

Post by vova_hn2 »

truro wrote: post #40
vova_hn2 wrote: post #10

I'm very sorry to say it, but even reading LLM-slop is less tiresome, then reading yet another anti-AI slop article. It's a pretty low bar. I could find 10 anti-AI posts on HN and they all will contain points from a very narrow pool of anti-AI takes. I mean, how many more times do you need to repeat them? > stochastic algorithms trained to produce tons of "average," non-human content As we can see, humans are also qu…

"...ven reading LLM-slop is less tiresome, then reading..." You meant "than."

Kinda ironic, that a "stochastic parrot" from TFA probably wouldn't make such mistake :)

Re: I Don't Want to Interact with Stochastic Parrots

#50

Post by vova_hn2 »

archagon wrote: post #46
vova_hn2 wrote: post #10

I'm very sorry to say it, but even reading LLM-slop is less tiresome, then reading yet another anti-AI slop article. It's a pretty low bar. I could find 10 anti-AI posts on HN and they all will contain points from a very narrow pool of anti-AI takes. I mean, how many more times do you need to repeat them? > stochastic algorithms trained to produce tons of "average," non-human content As we can see, humans are also qu…

So why are you commenting on it?

Because every time I hope to see something new and interesting, and every time I'm disappointed.
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