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The Rise of Whatever

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Re: The Rise of Whatever

#11

Post by anonzzzies »

tyre wrote: post #5

The author is mad at Stripe and PayPal for banning transactions involving unicorn wieners but this is imposed on them by the backing banks. The reason behind banning adult materials has to do with Puritanism and with the high rates of refunds on adult websites.

I have an issue with Stripe or Paypal banning merchants without recourse that do not sell adult stuff or anything else bad/high refund, just because 'AI flagged the account'. And I know from Paypal that they have used 'AI' (statistics) to flag accounts, without recourse, almost since they started. It did cost us a lot of money; we had no refunds or anything and paypal was simply (in email and on the phone) repeating that there was no recourse. We moved to an EU system which we are using for 15 years now and never had any issues of course (as we never did anything weird, ever); also, I can call them or visit them if anything happens unlike the impersonal big guys. Far cheaper too. Screw paypal & stripe (their fees are an absolute joke, no idea why they are so popular), thanks.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#12

Post by ipdashc »

tptacek wrote: post #2

LLM output is crap. It’s just crap. It sucks, and is bad. Still don't get it. LLM outputs are nondeterministic. LLMs invent APIs that don't exist. That's why you filter those outputs through agent constructions, which actually compile code. The nondeterminism of LLMs don't make your compiler nondeterministic. All sorts of ways to knock LLM-generated code. Most I disagree with, all colorable. But this article is based…

There was an article that made the rounds a few weeks ago that still rings true. Basically, it feels like one is going crazy reading either "extreme" of the whole LLM conversation, with one extreme (obviously) being the "AI can do anything" Twitter techbro types, but the other extreme being articles like this that claim it can't do anything.

I know the author already addressed this, literally calling out HN by name, but I just don't get it. You don't even need agents (though I'm sure they help), I still just use regular ChatGPT or Copilot or whatever and it's still occasionally useful. You type in what you want it to do, it gives you code, and usually the code works. Can we appreciate how insane this would have been, what, half a decade ago? Are our standards literally "the magic english-to-code machine doesn't work 100% of the time, so it's total crap, utterly useless"?

I absolutely agree with the general thrust of the article, the overall sense of disillusionment, the impact LLM abuse is going to have on education, etc. I don't even particularly like LLMs. But it really does feel like gaslighting to the extent that when these essays make this sort of argument (LLMs being entirely useless for coding) it just makes me take them less seriously.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#13

Post by mumbisChungo »

Analemma_ wrote: post #8
mumbisChungo wrote: post #3

I think there's a decent chance that folks on the fringes find interesting uses for immutable and programmable distributed ledgers, even if the prevailing culture of crypto is hellish.

I keep hearing this theory, that “eventually” we will find the use cases for distributed ledgers, and I don’t buy it. Bitcoin was invented at roughly the same time as the iPhone, and the iPhone immediately found use cases. Right away the global economy reoriented itself around the smartphone, because it demonstrated real value to actual people. We did not need to wait and twiddle our fingers for years going “I think…

You make it sounds like it's a struggle between two sides. It's just another option for a creative person who has a problem to solve. Maybe it'll be used for something interesting. Maybe it won't be. It's just a piece of maybe frivolous optional technology.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#14

Post by maegul »

gyomu wrote: post #10

Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there. But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline. > There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge th…

Agreed!

The only silver lining I can see is that a new perspective may be forced on how well or badly we’ve facilitated learning, usability, generally navigating pain points and maybe even all the dusty presumptions around the education / vocational / professional-development pipeline.

Before, demand for employment/salary pushed people through. Now, if actual and reliable understanding, expertise and quality is desirable, maybe paying attention to how well the broader system cultivates and can harness these attributes can be of value.

Intuitively though, my feeling is that we’re in some cultural turbulence, likely of a truly historical magnitude, in which nothing can be taken for granted and some “battles” were likely lost long ago when we started down this modern-computing path.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#15

Post by paulddraper »

ipdashc wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #2

LLM output is crap. It’s just crap. It sucks, and is bad. Still don't get it. LLM outputs are nondeterministic. LLMs invent APIs that don't exist. That's why you filter those outputs through agent constructions, which actually compile code. The nondeterminism of LLMs don't make your compiler nondeterministic. All sorts of ways to knock LLM-generated code. Most I disagree with, all colorable. But this article is based…

There was an article that made the rounds a few weeks ago that still rings true. Basically, it feels like one is going crazy reading either "extreme" of the whole LLM conversation, with one extreme (obviously) being the "AI can do anything" Twitter techbro types, but the other extreme being articles like this that claim it can't do anything. I know the author already addressed this, literally calling out HN by name,…

> it just makes me take them less seriously

Indeed. This is how to spot an ideologue with an axe to grind, not someone whose beliefs are shaped by dispassionate observation.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#16

Post by icameron »

Love this writing. One paragraph hit very close to home. I used to be the guy who could figure out obscure scripts by google-fu and rtfm and willpower. Now that skill has been completely obliterated by LLMs and everyone’s doing it- except it’s mostly whatever

> I don’t want to help someone who opens with “I don’t know how to do this so I asked ChatGPT and it gave me these 200 lines but it doesn’t work”.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#17

Post by KPGv2 »

62702b077f3 wrote: post #6
tptacek wrote: post #2

LLM output is crap. It’s just crap. It sucks, and is bad. Still don't get it. LLM outputs are nondeterministic. LLMs invent APIs that don't exist. That's why you filter those outputs through agent constructions, which actually compile code. The nondeterminism of LLMs don't make your compiler nondeterministic. All sorts of ways to knock LLM-generated code. Most I disagree with, all colorable. But this article is based…

> The garbage generator generates garbage, but if you run it enough times it gets something slightly-less-garbage that can satisfy a compiler! You're stupid if you don't think this is awesome!

I had Copilot for a hot minute. When I wrote things like serializers and deserializers, it was incredible. So much time saved. But I didn't do it enough to make the personal cost worth it, so I cancelled.

It's annoying to have to hand-code that stuff. But without Copilot I have to. Or I can write some arcane regex and run it on existing code to get 90% of the way there. But writing the regex also takes a while.

Copilot was literally just suggesting the whole deserialization function after I"d finished the serializer, 100% correct code.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#18

Post by tptacek »

beckthompson wrote: post #4
tptacek wrote: post #2

LLM output is crap. It’s just crap. It sucks, and is bad. Still don't get it. LLM outputs are nondeterministic. LLMs invent APIs that don't exist. That's why you filter those outputs through agent constructions, which actually compile code. The nondeterminism of LLMs don't make your compiler nondeterministic. All sorts of ways to knock LLM-generated code. Most I disagree with, all colorable. But this article is based…

AIs still frequently make up stuff up - there isn't really a way to get out of that. Have they improved a lot in the last six months? 100%! But they still make mistakes its quite common

LLM calls make stuff up. Your compiler can't make things up. An agent iterates LLM calls. When your LLM call makes an API up, your compiler will generate errors. The errors get fed back into the iterative loop. In pretty much ever real case, the LLM corrects, but either way: the result is clear. The code may be wrong, but it shouldn't hallucinate entire APIs.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#19

Post by ipdashc »

62702b077f3 wrote: post #6
tptacek wrote: post #2

LLM output is crap. It’s just crap. It sucks, and is bad. Still don't get it. LLM outputs are nondeterministic. LLMs invent APIs that don't exist. That's why you filter those outputs through agent constructions, which actually compile code. The nondeterminism of LLMs don't make your compiler nondeterministic. All sorts of ways to knock LLM-generated code. Most I disagree with, all colorable. But this article is based…

> The garbage generator generates garbage, but if you run it enough times it gets something slightly-less-garbage that can satisfy a compiler! You're stupid if you don't think this is awesome!

I don't understand the point of this style of argument.

There are oh-so-many issues with LLMs - plagiarism/IP rights, worsening education, unmaintainable code - this should be obvious to anyone. But painting them as totally useless just doesn't make sense. Of course they work. I've had a task I want to do, I ask the LLM in plain English, it gives me code, the code works, I get the task done faster than I would have figuring out the code myself. This process has happened plenty of times.

Which part of this do you disagree with, under your argument? Am I and all the other millions of people who have experienced this all collectively hallucinating (pun intended) that we got working solutions to our problems? Are we just unskilled for not being able to write the code quickly enough ourselves, and should go sod off? I'm joking a bit, but it's a genuine question.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#20

Post by yieldcrv »

Analemma_ wrote: post #8
mumbisChungo wrote: post #3

I think there's a decent chance that folks on the fringes find interesting uses for immutable and programmable distributed ledgers, even if the prevailing culture of crypto is hellish.

I keep hearing this theory, that “eventually” we will find the use cases for distributed ledgers, and I don’t buy it. Bitcoin was invented at roughly the same time as the iPhone, and the iPhone immediately found use cases. Right away the global economy reoriented itself around the smartphone, because it demonstrated real value to actual people. We did not need to wait and twiddle our fingers for years going “I think…

there are many people with many use cases for distributed ledgers. we are already aware of the flowchart of your argument path

“list them”

“oh I can do that in this other convoluted way that doesnt solve any of these users goals or problems”

“I’m not the target audience for that so it doesnt count”

“ah so financial speculation, that doesnt count despite being the largest application and sector on the planet”

“marketcap doesnt matter and isnt indicative of anything in that economy, I would rather hold digital assets at a separate different standard than every other asset on the planet out of total ignorance that my same arguments apply to asset classes that I respect”

“see I proved my point for myself, there is no use case after 17 years, classic HN”

“those are strawman arguments despite all conversations following this same predictable path enough for any language model to regurgitate it verbatim”

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