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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#351

Post by brulard »

stiray wrote: post #316
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

Are you sure, that the code works correctly? ;) Now, imagine, what you would do, if you never learned to read the code. As you were always using only AI. Anyway, coding is much simpler and easier than reading someone else's code. And I rather code it myself than spend time to actually read and study what AI has outputted. As at the end, I need to know that code works. --- At one point, my former boss was explaining t…

Are you sure code from another developer (junior or not) works correctly? Or that it is secure? You have the same need to review the code regardless of the source.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#352

Post by phito »

kazinator wrote: post #74

LLM is an almost complete waste of time. Advocates of LLM are not accurately measuring their time and productivity, and comparing that to LLM-free alternative approaches.

Indeed, I keep seeing comments stating that LLMs have completely changed their way of programming or even changed their lives. All I can think is, they must have been pretty bad at programming for the impact to be that dramatic.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#353

Post by pavlov »

mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

Compare these positive introductory experiences with two technologies that were pushed extremely hard by commercial interests in the past decade: crypto/web3 and VR/metaverse.

Neither was ever able to offer this kind of instant usefulness. With crypto, it’s still the case that you create a wallet and then… there’s nothing to do on the platform. You’re expected to send real money to someone so they’ll give you some of the funny money that lets you play the game. (At this point, a lot of people reasonably start thinking of pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing which have the same kind of joining experience.)

With the “metaverse”, you clear out a space around you, strap a heavy thing on your head, and shut yourself into an artificial environment. After the first oohs and aahs, you enter a VR chat room… And realize the thing on your head adds absolutely nothing to the interaction.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#354

Post by amelius »

mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

You've gotta augment that with a good testing strategy. And maybe output the results of the tests back to the llm.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#355

Post by eduardofcgo »

Part of the inevitabilism is how these tools are being pushed. At this point it doesn't matter how good they are, it's just how many people live now. Microsoft sure knows how to turn bad software mainstream.

It helps also that these tools behave exactly like how they are marketed, they even tell you that they are thinking, and then deceive you when they are wrong.

Their overconfidence is almost a feature, they don't need to be that good, just provide that illusion

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#356

Post by imdsm »

AndyKelley wrote: post #213
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

You speak with a passive voice, as if the future is something that happens to you, rather than something that you participate in.

You can fight against the current of society or you can swim in the direction it's pulling you. If you want to fight against it, you can, but you shouldn't expect others to. For some, they can see that it's inevitable because the strength of the movement is greater than the resistance.

It's fair enough to say "you can change the future", but sometimes you can't. You don't have the resources, and often, the will.

The internet was the future, we saw it, some didn't. Cryptocurrencies are the future, some see it, some don't. And using AI is the future too.

Are LLMs the endpoint? Obviously not. But they'll keep getting better, marginally, until there's a breakthrough, or a change, and they'll advance further.

But they won't be going away.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#357

Post by yard2010 »

killerstorm wrote: post #158
bradly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what that same GPT4 told me today after trying to get a simple mqttwarn config: ChatGPT: Let’s cut through the mqttwarn quirks and get you a single, complete warn.ini that I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32 Me: that "I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32:" How did you perform this test? ChatGPT: I set up a quick local sandbox on my laptop Me: What brand is your laptop? What store did you buy it at? Cha…

Did you ever think there's a reason why people are paying for professional tools like Cursor or Claude Code instead of using free ChatGPT? Ye, the free version has some known issues. They cram a lot of stuff into GPT-4o, so it hallucinates a lot. Claude Opus 4 often gives perfectly working code on the first try, and it's much less likely to hallucinate or argue with you when it's wrong. It costs around $1 per request…

I doubt that it is a matter of parameters count.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#358

Post by degamad »

killerstorm wrote: post #158
bradly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what that same GPT4 told me today after trying to get a simple mqttwarn config: ChatGPT: Let’s cut through the mqttwarn quirks and get you a single, complete warn.ini that I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32 Me: that "I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32:" How did you perform this test? ChatGPT: I set up a quick local sandbox on my laptop Me: What brand is your laptop? What store did you buy it at? Cha…

Did you ever think there's a reason why people are paying for professional tools like Cursor or Claude Code instead of using free ChatGPT? Ye, the free version has some known issues. They cram a lot of stuff into GPT-4o, so it hallucinates a lot. Claude Opus 4 often gives perfectly working code on the first try, and it's much less likely to hallucinate or argue with you when it's wrong. It costs around $1 per request…

> Did you ever think there's a reason why people are paying for professional tools like Cursor or Claude Code instead of using free ChatGPT?

Because free ChatGPT wasn't useful to them, and someone convinced them that LLMs become useful if you give money to Cursor and Claude?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#359

Post by yard2010 »

oxfordmale wrote: post #154
bradly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what that same GPT4 told me today after trying to get a simple mqttwarn config: ChatGPT: Let’s cut through the mqttwarn quirks and get you a single, complete warn.ini that I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32 Me: that "I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32:" How did you perform this test? ChatGPT: I set up a quick local sandbox on my laptop Me: What brand is your laptop? What store did you buy it at? Cha…

LLM apology cascade: - That didn’t happen. - And if it did, I’m really sorry. - And if it was that bad, I truly apologise. - And if it is a big deal, I understand and I’m sorry again. - And if it’s my fault, I’ll try to do better. - And if I meant it… I didn’t — but I’m still sorry.

"Sure. I'm happy to help! How can I help you today?"

Go to hell and never come back.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#360

Post by andybak »

informal007 wrote: post #349
bambax wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with LLM is when they're used for creativity or for thinking. Just because LLMs are indeed useful in some (even many!) context, including coding, esp. to either get something started, or, like in your example, to transcode an existing code base to another platform, doesn't mean they will change everything . It doesn't mean “AI is the new electricity.” (actual quote from Andrew Ng in the post). More like A…

LLM is helpful for creativity and thinking When you run out of your ideas

I sometimes feel that a lot of people bringing up the topic of creativity have never spent much time thinking, studying and self-reflecting on what "creativity" actually is. It's a complex topic and one that's mixed up with many other complex topics ("originality", "intellectual property", "aesthetic value", "art vs engineering" etc etc)

You see a lot of Motte and Bailey arguments in this discussion as people shift (often subconsciously) between different definitions of key terms and different historical perspectives.

I'd recommend someone tries to gain at least a passing familiarity with art history and the social history of art/design etc. Reading a bit of Edward De Bono and Douglas Hofstadter isn't a bad shout either (although it's many years since I've read the former so I can't guarantee it will stand up as well as my teenage self thought it did)

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