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My Colleague Julius

ploum.net

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Re: My Colleague Julius

#11

Post by p4bl0 »

I saw the end coming miles away, but enjoyed reading this essay anyway as it's well written. I guess I saw it coming in good part because I can really relate to the story, from the point of view of a CS associate professor.

LLMs are a real pain for students on so many levels. These tools can destroy their confidence by being seemingly better than them at first, which also makes these students want to use these tools instead of learning, and then it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I kind of fear the impact this tech will have on our future. A society mostly full of Juliuses is doomed.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#12

Post by XenophileJKO »

electric_mayhem wrote: post #6
oddly wrote: post #2

Haha, I genuinely laughed, thanks for this gem.

At the risk of getting too meta, I feel like lots of folks will get the gist of Julius and check out from the article… …missing the twist. So as a TLDR, I’ll say that Julius is a peer of the author who is polished but uncomprehending, often spouting convincing-sounding nonsense. And here in 2024 we not only have folks like that to contend with, but also have polished AI output being forced at us from every direction.…

I mean I thought it was a allegory about LLMS right from the start.. way too long winded. Just skipped to the bottom to validate it.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#13

Post by dgeiser13 »

Julius sounds like repeated application of The Peter Principle except he never went past any level of competence because he was always incompetent. Polished but incompetent.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#14

Post by dgeiser13 »

electric_mayhem wrote: post #6
oddly wrote: post #2

Haha, I genuinely laughed, thanks for this gem.

At the risk of getting too meta, I feel like lots of folks will get the gist of Julius and check out from the article… …missing the twist. So as a TLDR, I’ll say that Julius is a peer of the author who is polished but uncomprehending, often spouting convincing-sounding nonsense. And here in 2024 we not only have folks like that to contend with, but also have polished AI output being forced at us from every direction.…

I read the whole thing and never saw any twist. What did I miss?

Re: My Colleague Julius

#15

Post by ocschwar »

p4bl0 wrote: post #11

I saw the end coming miles away, but enjoyed reading this essay anyway as it's well written. I guess I saw it coming in good part because I can really relate to the story, from the point of view of a CS associate professor. LLMs are a real pain for students on so many levels. These tools can destroy their confidence by being seemingly better than them at first, which also makes these students want to use these tools…

That's why the B-Ark was built.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#16

Post by buggy6257 »

If this is going to enter our lexicon as a short-name for this type of person, I'll point out that since "Julius" is originally latin derived, the pluralization should follow that of most/all latin nouns, and thus be "Julii".

Re: My Colleague Julius

#17

Post by bytesandbits »

we hired a Julius. Result after a year: Prolific people were laid off, yappers stayed, sales didn't grow, more money was spent than made. Company has 6 month left of runway. Oh Julius why you be like that? Amazing presentations tho. Like watching a movie.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#20

Post by whatisyourwork »

buggy6257 wrote: post #16

If this is going to enter our lexicon as a short-name for this type of person, I'll point out that since "Julius" is originally latin derived, the pluralization should follow that of most/all latin nouns, and thus be "Julii".

Well, yes. But the blog is an English blog and plural is Juliuses. The rules of grammar apply from the language, not from the word. Sometimes the language inherits the rules from the language of the word. But that's an exception.
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