LLMs are the ultimate demoware • Hacker News Board

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#11

Post by dsr_ » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

slaterbug wrote: post #5

clueless wrote: post #3

"then fails to consistently help in completing tasks when deployed for daily use." This article seems to be baitware trying to push some outdated perspective. LLMs have only gotten more powerful over the last 3 years (being able to do more things), and so far not much has stopped them from becoming even more powerful (with the help of reasoning, other external methods, etc) in the future. "daily use" is so subjective…

What evidence is there that AGI will come “soon”?

Or "ever"?

(I'm not denying the possiblity. I'm proclaiming a lack of evidence.)

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#12

Post by tedggh » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

I wish demoware or even battle tested software was that easy to sell.

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#13

Post by tptacek » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #10

tptacek wrote: post #7

It's wild to me that, of all the things to call LLMs out for, this piece has chosen to include math tutoring. I've been doing Math Academy for a bit over 6 months now, going from (essentially) Algebra II through Calc II (integration by parts, arc lengths, Taylor expansions) and LLMs have been a huge part of what has made that effective: * Clear explanation of concepts that respond to questions and reformulate when th…

It seems very hard to maintain the belief that LLMs are useless in the face of the fact that millions of people are using them. It's very much "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"

I think you'd be crazy to say LLMs are blockchain-style hype when it comes to software development but I don't begrudge anybody who believes they're not currently workable for the kinds of problems they work on; I think reasonable people can disagree about how ready for prime time they are for production software development.

But for math tutoring? If you claim LLM math tutoring is demoware, you're very clearly telling on yourself.

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#14

Post by cronelius » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

LLM improvement is a sigmoid, not a parabola. The sooner we understand this, the less money we will lose to deceptive marketing

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#15

Post by dingnuts » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #8

This is such a weak take to read while I have Claude Code running in the background creating a new database migration for a feature we're building

If Claude Code can do it what do we need you for?

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#16

Post by skydhash » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #8

This is such a weak take to read while I have Claude Code running in the background creating a new database migration for a feature we're building

How much time to create a new database migration, like for actually typing it?

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#17

Post by simonw » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #7

It's wild to me that, of all the things to call LLMs out for, this piece has chosen to include math tutoring. I've been doing Math Academy for a bit over 6 months now, going from (essentially) Algebra II through Calc II (integration by parts, arc lengths, Taylor expansions) and LLMs have been a huge part of what has made that effective: * Clear explanation of concepts that respond to questions and reformulate when th…

This https://www.mathacademy.com/ ? Interesting, hadn't seen that before. I've been thinking I'd like to brush up on a bunch of those topics.

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#18

Post by jdiff » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:54 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #4

Again and again people keep saying this while many of us keep using LLMs to create value.

Countless people in comments say this, but other people fail to see evidence of that in the wild. As has been said in response to this point many times in the past: Where's the open source renaissance that should be happening right now? Where are the actual, in-use dependencies and libraries that are being developed by AI?

The only times I've personally seen LLMs engaged in repos has been handling issues, and they made an astounding mess of things that hurt far more often than it helped for anything more than automatically tagging issues. And I don't see any LLMs allowed off the leash to be making commits. Not in anything with any actual downstream users.

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#19

Post by simonw » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #15

turnsout wrote: post #8

This is such a weak take to read while I have Claude Code running in the background creating a new database migration for a feature we're building

If Claude Code can do it what do we need you for?

Someone needs to know what a "database migration" is in order to ask Claude to build one.

I think a lot of people are massively underestimating how much knowledge and skill is needed in software engineering beyond typing code into a text editor.

Re: LLMs are the ultimate demoware

#20

Post by some-guy » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #9

dpflan wrote: post #2

Yes, AI allows for exquisite demos, demos that tantalize the audience into thinking of the infinite potential of the technology, that stunning vision expands and expands until the universe of potential overwhelms the dreamer into a state of terminal fantasy. So it is always a solution looking for a problem. There are cases where the two meet more realistically and a valuable impactful company develops it. The fact it…

LLM models have evolved to autonomously convince humans that they're useful. They're the ultimate memetic parasites.

I think LLMs can both be bad for humanity (which I believe) AND useful at certain tasks. The general populace has been convinced that they’re the ultimate authority which is very sad (e.g. “@grok is this true?”)