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The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

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Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#161
post #106

Many people don't know this, but the Luddites were right. I studied Art History and this particular movement. One of the claims of the Luddites is that quality would go down, because their craft took half a lifetime to master (it was passed down from parent to chile.) I was able to feel wool scarves made in europe from the middle ages. (In museum storage, under the guidance of a curator) They are a fundamentally diff…

Your comment made me think of the Japanese. They have a highly industrialised society, but they also value greatly hand-made products from food and clothes to woodwork and houses.

And they also like to emphasise how long it takes for someone to become a master at a given trade.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly.... I will just copy paste my comment from another thread but still very relevant> Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, and almost nobody outside this bubble cares Most of the world doesn’t care about “good code.” They care about “does it work, is it fast enough, is it cheap enough, and can we ship it before the competitor does?” Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions — those things feel…

This is just sad. If your passion for creating something you can be proud of is entirely propped up by imaginary sex appeal that not even most teenagers would believe exists, it's no surprise you'd arrive at such a cynical, pathetic conclusion. Your perspective is a path with only one logical end. That nothing you do or think or believe matters unless someone you're attracted to finds it attractive. That is not how I…

Yeh cool story. But being passionate about a hobby is not gonna pay my bills...

When I charge a customer for a solution they don't care about how elegant my code is. They just care if it works for solving their problem...

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#163
post #84
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to teach you things way faster than the old alternatives I'm not sure if you ever had a teacher or instructor that you didn't trust, because they were a compulsive liar or addiction or any other issue. I didn't (as least not that I can remember) but I know I would be VERY on guard about it. I imagine I would consequently be quite stressed learning with them, even if they were brilliant, kind, etc. It would feel a b…

I agree, it can be incredibly frustrating at times. My rule is that if it “compiles” in my brain as an understood idea then i accept it. I also push back a lot (sometimes it points out good errors in my thinking, sometimes it admits it hallucinated). Real humans hallucinate a lot as well or confidently state subtly wrong ideas, it’s a good habit anyway. It’s basically the same approach when presented with a “formula”…

>Real humans hallucinate..

You seem to have a different understanding of what it means in the context of neural networks.

Real humans will not make up non existent api and implement a solution with it, (unless they do it on purpose).

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#164

> Video games stand out as one market where consumers have pushed back effectively No, it's simply untrue. Players only object against AI art assets. And only when they're painfully obvious. No one cares about how the code is written. If you actually read the words used in Steam AI survey you'll know Steam has completely caved in for AI-gen code as well. It's specifically worded like this: > content such as artwork,…

> Classic procedural generation is noteworthy here as a precedent, which gamers were already familiar with, because by and large it has failed to deliver. Yes, this is a wildly uneducated perspective. Procedural generation has often been a key component of some incredibly successful, and even iconic games going back decades. Elite is a canonical example here, with its galaxies being procedurally generated. Powermonge…

Roguelike/lites are is of the most popular genres of indie games nowadays. One of it's main characteristics is randomization and procedural generation.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#165

> Engineers who know their craft can still smell the slop from miles away when reviewing it, despite the "advances" made. It comes in the form of overly repetitive code, unnecessary complexity, and a reluctance to really refactor anything at all, even when it's clearly stale and overdue. I’ve seen reluctance to refactor even 10+-year-old garbage long before LLMs were first made available to the broader public.

LLM-generated snippets of code are a breath of fresh air compared with much legacy code. Since models learn probability distributions they gravitate to the most common ways of doing things. Almost like having a linter built in. On the other hand, legacy code often does things in novel ways that leave you scratching your head--the premise behind sites like https://thedailywtf.com/

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Classic procedural generation is noteworthy here as a precedent, which gamers were already familiar with, because by and large it has failed to deliver. Yes, this is a wildly uneducated perspective. Procedural generation has often been a key component of some incredibly successful, and even iconic games going back decades. Elite is a canonical example here, with its galaxies being procedurally generated. Powermonge…

Procedural generation underlies the most popular game of all time (Minecraft) and is foundational for numerous other games of a similar type - Dwarf Fortress, et al. And it's used to power effect where you might not expect it (Stardew Valley mines). What procedural generation does NOT work at is generating "story elements" though perhaps even that can fall, Dwarf Fortress already does decently enough given that the p…

> And it's used to power effect where you might not expect it (Stardew Valley mines).

Apparently Stardew Valley's mines are not procedurally generated, but rather hand-crafted. Per their recent 10 year anniversary video, the developer did try to implement procedural generation for the mines, but ended up scrapping it:

https://www.stardewvalley.net/stardew-valley-10-year-anniver...

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#167
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oblivion, one of the first high-profile games to use procedural terrain/landscape generation I might be misremembering but wasn't the Oblivion proc-gen entirely in the development process, not "live" in the game, which means... > "In the best case, a skilled artist uses automation to fill in mechanical rote work" ...is what Bethesda did, no?

Yes, but I beg to differ on the "skilled" part. I find the result very jarring somehow; the scale of the world didn't seem right. (Probably because it was too realistic; part of the art of game terrain design is reconciling the inherently unrealistic scales.)

WoW had this but you never really thought about it - even the massive capital cities were a few blocks at most.

The problem with procedural generation is it's hard to make it as action-packed and desirable as WoW zones, and even those quickly become fly-over territory.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example is upscaled texture mods, which has been a trend for a long while before 'large language' took off as a trend. Mods to improve textures in a game are definitely not new and that probably means including from other sources, but the ability to automate/industrialize that (and presumably a lot of training material available) meant there was a big wave of that mod category a few years back. My impression…

This should be completely crushed by Nano Banana models?

If we're talking about texture upscaling alone (I suppose that's what the parent comment means), Nano Banana is a huge overkill.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#169
post #106

Many people don't know this, but the Luddites were right. I studied Art History and this particular movement. One of the claims of the Luddites is that quality would go down, because their craft took half a lifetime to master (it was passed down from parent to chile.) I was able to feel wool scarves made in europe from the middle ages. (In museum storage, under the guidance of a curator) They are a fundamentally diff…

You're right. Automation often trades quality for speed and quantity.

The difference between automating the creation of software and automating the creation of physical products is that software is everywhere. It is relied on for most tools and processes that keep our civilization alive. Cutting corners on that front, and deciding to entrust our collective future to tech bros and VC firms fiending for their next payout, seems like an incredibly dumb and risky proposition.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#170

There’s a cold reality that we in this profession have yet to accept: nobody cares about our code. Nobody cares whether it’s pretty or clever or elegant. Sometimes, rarely, they care whether it’s maintainable. We are only craftsmen to ourselves and each other. To anyone else we are factory workers producing widgets to sell. Once we accept this then there is little surprise that the factory owners want us using a tool…

Exactly.... I will just copy paste my comment from another thread but still very relevant> Coding isn’t creative, it isn’t sexy, and almost nobody outside this bubble cares Most of the world doesn’t care about “good code.” They care about “does it work, is it fast enough, is it cheap enough, and can we ship it before the competitor does?” Beautiful architecture, perfect tests, elegant abstractions — those things feel…

>does it work, is it fast enough..

Isn't the problem right now the vibe coded sotware does not appear to meet these requirements?

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