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2025: The Year in LLMs

simonwillison.net

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Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#261

Post by techpression »

zingar wrote: post #235
windexh8er wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are helping their users create things that didn't exist before. That is a derived output. That isn't new as in: novel. It may be unique but it is derived from training data. LLMs legitimately cannot think and thus they cannot create in that way.

Could you give us an idea of what you’re hoping for that is not possible to derive from training data of the entire internet and many (most?) published books?

This is the problem, the entire internet is a really bad set of training data because it’s extremely polluted.

Also the derived argument doesn’t really hold, just because you know about two things doesn’t mean you’d be able to come up with the third, it’s actually very hard most of the time and requires you to not do next token prediction.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#262

Post by fmbb »

scotty79 wrote: post #225
llmslave2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty neat how this exponential progress hasn't resulted in exponential productivity. Perhaps you could explain your perspective on that?

How long before introduction of computers lead to increases in average productivity? How long for the internet? Business is just slow to figure out how to use anything for its benefit, but it eventually gets there.

> How long before introduction of computers lead to increases in average productivity?

I think it never did. Still has not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#263

Post by techpression »

mgfist wrote: post #164
OGEnthusiast wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto bros in hindsight were so much less dangerous than AI bros. At least they weren't trying to construct data centers in rural America or prop up artificial stocks like $NVDA.

It's funny how people complain about the rust belt dying and factories leaving rural communities and so on, then when someone wants to build something that can provide jobs and tax revenue, everyone complains.

As if any taxes will be paid to the areas affected, and add to that the billions in taxes used to subsidize everything before a single cent is a net positive.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#264

Post by legulere »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #207
syndacks wrote: post #89

I can’t get over the range of sentiment on LLMs. HN leans snake oil, X leans “we’re all cooked” —- can it possibly be both? How do other folks make sense of this? I’m not asking for a side, rather understanding the range. Does the range lead you to believe X over Y?

I think it may be all summed up by Roy Amara's observation that "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

The effects might be drastically different from what you would expect though. We’ve seen this with machine learning/AI again and again that what looks probable to work doesn’t work out and unexpected things work.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#265

Post by XenophileJKO »

weatherlite wrote: post #208
ogou wrote: post #97

This is a good tooling survey of the past year. I have been watching it as a developer re-entering the job market. The job descriptions closely parallel the timeline used in the post. That's bizarre to me because these approaches are changing so fast. I see jobs for "Skill and Langchain experts with production-grade 0>1 experience. Former founders preferred". That is an expertise that is just a few months old and sta…

> Skill and Langchain experts with production-grade 0>1 experience. Also , it's just normal backend work - calling a bunch of APIs. What am I missing here?

That is like saying training tensorflow models is just calling some APIs.

Actually making a system like this work seems easy, but isn't really.

(Though with the CURRENT generation or two of models it has gotten "pretty easy" I think. Before that, not so much.)

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#266

Post by watwut »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #204
Madmallard wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using it for anything actually complicated? Lol. It's worse than nothing at all.

I think the split between vibe coding and AI-assisted coding will only widen over time. If you ask LLMs to do something complex, they will fail and you waste your time. If you work with them as a peer, and you delegate tasks to them, they will succeed and you save your time.

I work with leers by delegating complex task to them while I do other complex tasks.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#267

Post by mrheosuper »

I'm not against AI/LLM(in fact, i am quite supportive to it). But one of my biggest fear is overusing AI. We may introduce some tool that only "AI/LLM" can resonably do(Like tool with weird, convoluted UI/UX, syntax) and no one against it because AI/LLM can use/interact.

Then genAI, It's become more and more difficult to tell which is AI and which is not, and AI is in everywhere. I dont know what to think about it. "If you can't tell, does it matter ?"

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#268

Post by techpression »

viraptor wrote: post #148
didip wrote: post #67

Indeed. I don't understand why Hacker News is so dismissive about the coming of LLMs, maybe HN readers are going through 5 stages of grief? But LLM is certainly a game changer, I can see it delivering impact bigger than the internet itself. Both require a lot of investments.

Based on quite a few comments recently, it also looks like many have tried LLMs in the past, but haven't seriously revisited either the modern or more expensive models. And I get it. Not everyone wants to keep up to date every month, or burn cash on experiments. But at the same time, people seem to have opinions formed in 2024. (Especially if they talk about just hallucinations and broken code - tell the agent to sea…

Just last week Opus 4.5 decided that the way to fix a test was to change the code so that everything else but the test broke.

When people say ”fix stuff” I always wonder if it actually means fix, or just make it look like it works (which is extremely common in software, LLM or not).

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#269

Post by simonw »

techpression wrote: post #268
viraptor wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on quite a few comments recently, it also looks like many have tried LLMs in the past, but haven't seriously revisited either the modern or more expensive models. And I get it. Not everyone wants to keep up to date every month, or burn cash on experiments. But at the same time, people seem to have opinions formed in 2024. (Especially if they talk about just hallucinations and broken code - tell the agent to sea…

Just last week Opus 4.5 decided that the way to fix a test was to change the code so that everything else but the test broke. When people say ”fix stuff” I always wonder if it actually means fix, or just make it look like it works (which is extremely common in software, LLM or not).

What did Opus do when you told it that it shouldn't have done that?

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#270

Post by [deleted] »

watwut wrote: post #266
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the split between vibe coding and AI-assisted coding will only widen over time. If you ask LLMs to do something complex, they will fail and you waste your time. If you work with them as a peer, and you delegate tasks to them, they will succeed and you save your time.

I work with leers by delegating complex task to them while I do other complex tasks.

[deleted]
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