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The Rise of Whatever
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Re: The Rise of Whatever
#42Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there. But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline. > There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge th…
More fundamental question: if everyone can generate an album in an afternoon, why would anyone else listen to any of those? It turns into dust in the long tail.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#43Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there. But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline. > There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge th…
More fundamental question: if everyone can generate an album in an afternoon, why would anyone else listen to any of those? It turns into dust in the long tail.
All we are is dust in the wind.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#44Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there. But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline. > There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge th…
People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article)
But it really is. Humans have been looking for easier and lazier ways to do things since the dawn of civilization.
Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so. World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented. World record of how many digits of pi memorized kept improving even when a computer does that indefinitely times better.
It's ridiculous to think drawing will become a lost art because of LLM/Diffusal models when we live in a reality where powerlifting is a thing.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#45Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there. But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline. > There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge th…
Agreed, it'll be a big problem if we don't keep our skills and rely on AI too much. Same with outsourcing manufacturing, at some point you loose the skill to produce products completely and are dependent on other countries.
With the WWW we thought everyone having access to all information would enlighten them, but without knowledge people do not recognize the right information, and are more likely to trust (mis)information that they think they understand.
What if LLMs give us all the answers that we need to solve all problems, but we are too uninformed and unskilled to recognize these answers? People will turn away from AI, and return to information that they can understand and trust, even if it's false.
Anyway, nothing new actually, we've seen this with science for some time now. It's too advanced for most people to understand and validate, so people distrust it and turn to other sources of information.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#46Love this writing. One paragraph hit very close to home. I used to be the guy who could figure out obscure scripts by google-fu and rtfm and willpower. Now that skill has been completely obliterated by LLMs and everyone’s doing it- except it’s mostly whatever > I don’t want to help someone who opens with “I don’t know how to do this so I asked ChatGPT and it gave me these 200 lines but it doesn’t work”.
I am still the guy doing google-fu and rtfm.
The skill has not been obliterated. We still need to fix the slop written by the LLMs, but it is not that bad.
Some people copy and paste snippets of code without knowing what it does, and in a sense, they spread technical debt around.
LLMs lower the technical debt spread by the clueless, to a lower baseline.
The issue I see is that the amount of code having this level of technical debt is created at a much faster speed now.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#47Wow, the lack of self-awareness on the part of the writer of this is stunning. To say "I don't go out of my way to dunk on people who use LLMs", and then write a multipage blog post doing exactly that is fascinating.
You do you, and I'll do me. Perhaps spend more time coding which you say you like to do and less time sneering at people who use different tools.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! The only silver lining I can see is that a new perspective may be forced on how well or badly we’ve facilitated learning, usability, generally navigating pain points and maybe even all the dusty presumptions around the education / vocational / professional-development pipeline. Before, demand for employment/salary pushed people through. Now, if actual and reliable understanding, expertise and quality is desir…
To be fair, LLMs are just the most recent step in a long road of doing the same thing. At any point of progress in history you can look backwards and forwards and the world is different. Before tractors a man with an ox could plough x field in y time. After tractors he can plough much larger areas. The nature of farming changes. (Fewer people needed to farm more land. ) The car arrives, horses leave. Computers arrive…
The difference between GenAI and your examples is a theft component.
They stole our data - your data - and used it to build a machine that diverts wealth to the rich. The only equitable way for GenAI to move forward is if we all own a share of it, since it would not exist in its current form without our data. GenAI should be a Universal Basic Asset.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#49Wow, the lack of self-awareness on the part of the writer of this is stunning. To say "I don't go out of my way to dunk on people who use LLMs", and then write a multipage blog post doing exactly that is fascinating. You do you, and I'll do me. Perhaps spend more time coding which you say you like to do and less time sneering at people who use different tools.
You've read that paragraph backwards. They are talking about LLM enthusiasts dunking on people who aren't using.
Re: The Rise of Whatever
#50[deleted]