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The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

mazzzystar.github.io

161–170 of 311 posts

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#161
post #43

Has anyone been able to use it to effectively build more than a green field poc? It's absolutely great for that, but it's been a little clunky when trying to iterate when the context gets too large or when trying to add stuff to am existing system.

The beauty of abstraction, though, is that it liberates a person from needing to worry about lower-level complexities. The same should be true for LLMs. It shouldn’t need to know your entire system. Start a new thread with judiciously restricted context when you move on to the next task.

I'm sure you could get code that would work going this route, but I'm worried about the code base growing to have lots of duplication and it generally just growing into a mess without any standard patterns and it would become a nightmare to maintain if that's the case.

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#162

ChatGPT has been useful to me for learning/looking-up a lot of things, although it sometimes drives me crazy. Often I'll want to use libraries which are rapidly developing, and the training data ending at 2021 kills the accuracy. A webcrawler + chatGPT would be incredibly useful. So far I've only found tools designed for the web admin (finetune on your support docs + make a chatbot for users) rather than something de…

Take a look at https://phind.com

Being able to search the web allows it to deal with recent information: you can ask it to limit its search to the API documentation for the library you're working with.

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#163

> Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. I think it's a bit sad that the only benefit someone can see in their workplace is their salary. Also, I get the feeling this person has never done anything outside of consumer app development with minimal stakeholder interaction. Overall I think it's great we can supercharge our learning and coding capabilities, but it would…

As the author of the article, I would say it has nothing to do with money. It has to do with your definition of living your life in a more meaningful way. By return I don't mean money, but your energy, time and potential. Also, I admire the group that optimized OS, but I'm just not used to teamwork. In my previous job, once I had come up with an idea of having a virtual pet, and they thought it was awesome, but when…

A) awesome username, b) I love my work and hired somebody who also loves the work. I told them explicitly up front this is a relationship based on the capitalist structure we live in and to keep an eye out for better pay but to give me a chance to make a counter.

Nobody should be exploited and in my experience the easiest people to rip off are the passionate ones - which is why my advice to such people is always to get paid because somebody up the stack is siphoning off what should be yours.

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#164
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using it a lot for programming, but I also have a security background and it will often generate insecure code. I’ll point it out and tell it to fix and it will. So be careful if you don’t want AI-generated sql intentions!

As if injections weren’t bad enough, they’re now done with intent.

Intent worries me less! It’s the PHP days all over again - lots of new coders (good thing!), copying insecure code (VERY bad thing!), and it won’t end well.

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#165

This post reminded me that I’m still somewhat surprised ChatGPT-like systems did not arise out of China first due to their massive investment funds for AI and their base of stem talent. Once they catch-up their censors will have a super power and people will have their writings censored before they hit submit. Will be an interesting decade.

US export controls certainly must slow down China somewhat. They can't import Nvidia's fastest GPUs, but are stuck with buying hobbled variations. Getting a domestic industry on par is hard.

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#167
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who use ChatGPT to spit out code as a method of learning software engineering are going to be seriously deficient in fundamentals like performance. I've already worked with way too many engineers who copy/paste code without understanding what it does.

I think this is currently an open question. It may turn out that ChatGPT results in a new generation of developers who produce terrible code, full of flaws, with no understanding of how it actually works. Or... it might be that ChatGPT helps newcomers get over that horrendous initial learning curve, start by writing bad code... and then get better at it. I'm currently cautiously optimistic that the latter scenario is…

I share your optimism.

ChatGPT could also empower individuals who may not have considered learning programming to create practical programs that enhance their daily routines, similar to how VB6 significantly reduced the barrier to entry for developing various applications.

Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#168
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the novelty and excitement, the profit potential for AI generated applications and content isn't particularly strong. If you can make something using AI, so can everyone else. You work at a company to make money. Using AI doesn't magically allow you to do that. If you have the ability to make a profitable company, AI may help, but it's not a business plan.

As always, you still have to bring your own ideas and hustle to the table. The difference is that GPT flattens the learning curve on a lot of things that would previously prevent you from executing on your ideas and it helps keep the momentum up when you hit the hard part of the grind.

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Re: The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

#169
post #166

>Unless you work for OpenAI, your GPT leverage is likely wasted on trivial business code But trivial code is the only level of code GPT can really write.

I think the point is that the individual doesn’t reap the full reward of trivial code written for an employer. Instead, the individual should leverage the new tool to scratch his own itch, build products for his own use or as part of a business which more directly benefits him.
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