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The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

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Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#361

> Classic procedural generation is noteworthy here as a precedent, which gamers were already familiar with, because by and large it has failed to deliver. With the notable exception of Minecraft terrain generation, which I think most would say was successful in what it set out to achieve.

Minecraft terrain generation produces invalid states, such as empty spaces within water, where once you interact with it the boundary collapses into a valid state. I don't think Mojang planned to have those invalid states.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#362

> 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,…

localization? Why would you oppose LLMs doing localization?

It’s bad at it. At least, it can’t be guaranteed to get nuance or context correct in a way that doesn’t feel artificial to a fluent speaker.

My favourite example I saw was where Google translated an information page of the Italian branch of a large multinational as “this is the UK branch of [multinational]”, presumably because the LLM thought that was more contextually appropriate in English.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#363

I am bit tired of such discussions. I don't care if LLMs are good at coding or bad at it (in my experience the answer is "it depends"). I don't care how good are they at anything else. What matters in the end is that this tech is not to empower a common person (although it could). It is not here to make our lives better, more worthwhile, more satisfying (it could do these as well). It is there to reduce our agency, t…

> It is there to reduce our agency, to make it easier to fire us, to put us in even more precarious position, to suck even more wealth from those that have little to those that have a lot.

You could say this is the story of society, it makes us dependent on each other, reduces our agency, puts us in precarious positions (like WW2). But nobody would argue against society like that.

What happens here is that we become empowered by AI and gain some advantages which we immediately use and become dependent on, eventually not being able to function without them - like computers and even thermostats.

Does anyone think how would economy operate without thermostats? No fridges, no data centers, no engines... they all need thermostats. We have lost some freedom by depending on them. But also gained.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#364
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because code reuse is hard. Like, really hard. If it weren't we wouldn't be laughing at left-pad. If it weren't hard we wouldn't have so many front-end JavaScript frameworks. If it weren't Unreal wouldn't still have their own GC and std-like implementation today. Java wouldn't have been reinventing build system every five years. The whole history of programming tool is exploring how to properly reuse code: are functi…

I think you could also argue that LLMs in coding are actually just a novel approach at code reuse: At the microscopic level, they excel at replicating known patterns in a new context. (Many small dependencies can be avoided by letting the LLM just re-implememt the desired behavior; ~ with tradeoffs, of course) The issue is orchestrating this local reuse into a coherent global codebase.

LLMs in coding are like code reuse in the same way your neighbor hotwiring your car you parked in your driveway is just borrowing it

You didn't park your car in your driveway so anyone could take it to get groceries

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#365
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all the inertia and inefficiencies of the organization Honestly you can probably use this as a means to measure the amount of regulation, graft, and corruption in an economy. In a wild west free for all code velocity would likely be very fast with software popping up, changing rapidly, and some quickly disappearing. But in an economy that doesn't care what you make, then who you pay or what laws you buy is far more…

In many organizations, software just isn't what makes the money. It's a supporting role at best. The software needs to work reliably, and it needs to keep working for a long time, but it doesn't need to gain new features at a rapid pace. If the janitors swept the floors 10x faster, we wouldn't see any KPIs to shoot up from that. You still need it to happen regularly and reliably and on demand in case there's a mess,…

>If the janitors swept the floors 10x faster, we wouldn't any KPIs to shoot up from that

I mean I'd expect that you'd see a decrease in the number of janitor staff as was convenient per the companies policies. That and janitorial services would turn into contracted services rather than in house positions. Oddly enough both these things have already occurred as tooling to janitors became better and the legal incentives made it cheaper.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#366
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people doing the most rote and monotonous work were and are doing so in some of the least productive circumstances, with clear ways of increasing speed and productivity. If development velocity was truly an important factor in these businesses, we'd migrated away from that gang of four ass Java 8 codebase, given these poor souls offices, or at least cubicles to reduce the noise, we wouldn't make them spen…

Yep. It's ridiculous to talk about 10x or 5x or 2x anything in any but the smallest companies. All this talk about programmer velocity is micro-optimizing something that's not a bottleneck .

Literally the most useful LLMs have been to me is dealing with the pile of corporate bullshit we have to put up with day to day.

For example, we have to plan 8 to 12 sprints in advance. Full acceptance criteria, story points, and slotted into a sprint with points balanced across the team. Of course this is utterly useless, anything past the second sprint is going to be wrong, but they want it done. LLMs got me through that in a few hours instead of a few days.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. This reminded me of a conversation about AI I had with an artist last year. She was furious and cursing and saying how awful it is for stealing from artists, but then admitted she uses it for writing descriptions and marketing posts to sell her art.

Which I would point out isn’t necessarily hypocrisy on their part. I can rage against guns and gun manufacturers for their negative effects on our nation and hate when they are used for monstrous evil, but also believe that police should have firearms and that the second amendment is important. It’s a tool. You can hate the way it’s made and marketed, and hate many of its popular use cases, and still think there are…

I mean, the police probably shouldn't have firearms and the second amendment is one of the worst legal creations in human history.

Re: The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying

#369
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What matters in the end is that this tech is not to empower a common person (although it could). How do you figure? 20 dollars/month is insanely cheap for what OpenAI/Anthropic/Google offer. That absolutely qualifies as "empowering a common person". It lowers barriers! A lot of the anti-AI sentiment on HN concerns people losing their jobs. I don't think this will happen: programmers who know what they're doing are…

It's also, for example, the studies finding that when companies adopt AI employees' jobs get worse. More multitasking, more overtime, more burnout, more skills you're expected to learn (on your own time if necessary), more interpersonal conflict among colleagues. And this is not being offset by anything tangible like an increase in pay. $20/month in return for measurable reductions in quality of life is not an amazin…

> It's also, for example, the studies finding that when companies adopt AI employees' jobs get worse. More multitasking, more overtime, more burnout, more skills you're expected to learn (on your own time if necessary), more interpersonal conflict among colleagues. And this is not being offset by anything tangible like an increase in pay.

Can you share those studies? I'm pretty skeptical of this effect. I find that AI has made my job easier and less stressful.

In general, I think your atittude is not realistic, it's just general pessimism about the world ("everything new is bad") that is basically unfounded.

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