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LLM Inevitabilism

tomrenner.com

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#481

Post by ndiddy »

nosianu wrote: post #287
blks wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how big was the library? If I understood correctly, it was a single file library (with hours worth of documentation)? Or did you go over all files of that library and copy it file by file?

Funny you use something the author of the linked post talks about at the start. This is one of those debate methods. Reframe what was said! I don't remember that the OP claimed that all problems are solved, perfectly. Do you think by showing examples where AI struggles you really show their point to be wrong? I don't see that. I use AI only sparingly, but when I do I too experience saving lots of time. For example, I…

Did you reply to the wrong comment?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#482

Post by lupusreal »

I don't really know what the author's real angle is here, does he think LLMs aren't inevitable because they will be supplanted by something better? That's certainly plausible. But if he thinks they might get banned or pushed to the margins, then he's definitely in loony town. When new technology has a lot of people who think it's useful, it doesn't get rolled back just because some people don't like it. To get rid of that technology the only way forward is to replace it with something that is at least as good, ideally better.

Is my position "inevitablism"? Does the author slapping that word on me mean that he has won the debate because he framed the conversation? I don't care about the debate, I'm just saying how it will be, based on how it always has been. Winning the debate but turning out to be wrong anyway, funny.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#483

Post by techpineapple »

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…

I don’t think anyone is arguing that there’s something that’s not inevitable that these tools are useful and work. LLM’s being forever apart of our life (until something better comes along) is likely inevitable. But these tools have been literally described as the coming utopia and the end of work. What exactly is in scope of “inevitable”

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#484

Post by ka94 »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #392
pavlov wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Every single HN post on AI or crypto I see this argument and it’s exhausting. When Eliza was first built it was seen a toy. It took many more decades for LLMs to appear. My favourite example is prime numbers: a bunch of ancient nerds messing around with numbers that today, thousands of years later, allow us to securely buy anything and everything without leaving our homes or opening our mouths. You can’t dismiss a te…

The problem with this kind of argument is what I'd call the "Bozo the Clown" rejoinder:

It's true that people spent a lot of time investigating something that decades (centuries, millennia) later came to be seen as useful. But it's also true that people spent a lot of time investigating things that didn't.

From the perspective of the present when people are doing the investigating, a strange discovery that has no use can't easily be told apart from a strange discovery that has a use. All we can do in that present is judge the technology on its current merits - or try to advance the frontier. And the burden of proof is on those who try to advance it to show that it would be useful, because the default position (which holds for most discoveries) is that they're not going to have the kind of outsize impact centuries hence that number theory did.

Or in other words: It's a bad idea to assume that everybody who get laughed at is a Galileo or Columbus, when they're more likely to be a Bozo the Clown.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#485

Post by ivolimmen »

A few days ago I saw a nice tweet being shared and it wend something like: I am not allowed to use my airco as it eats to much power and we must think about the environment. Meanwhile: people non-stop generating rule 34 images using AI...

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#486

Post by elric »

cmdli wrote: post #204
chadcmulligan wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any code thats easy to define and tedious I just get AI's to do it now, and its awesome. Saves me so much work, though you have to read the code, it still puts in odd stuff sometimes.

How much of the code you are writing is tedious? If its a significant amount, the framework you are using could use some improvement.

Raising the level of abstraction can greatly reduce tedium, and can make code a lot easier to grok.

Introducing LLM generated code doesn't do that in my experience.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#487

Post by pjc50 »

pavlov wrote: post #353
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…

I think AI is inevitable in the way that bitcoin is now inevitable: it's not going to go away, it consumes a huge amount of energy, has various negative externalities, but a massive fanbase.

It doesn't really matter whether crypto is "useful", it has billions of dollars worth of fans. Similarly the LLM fans are not going to go away. However, there will probably be curated little oases for human-made works. We're also going to see a technique adapted from self-crashing cars: the liability human. A giant codebase is launched and a single human "takes responsibility" (whatever that ends up meaning) for the failures.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#488

Post by bradly »

itsoktocry wrote: post #396
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…

Why were you so hung up on whether it had a laptop or not? You know that it doesn't, don't you? Get it to write the code, then you test it.

> Why were you so hung up on whether it had a laptop or not?

Curiosity. I was interested in how it would respond once it realized it was lying or once it realized I knew it was lying.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#489

Post by zzzeek »

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…

this post didn't talk about LLM inevitability in terms of coding. It was about LLM inevitability for everything.

Using LLMs to help write code may be perfectly fine but perhaps we as a society don't need to accept that LLMs will also be our psychotherapists, teachers for our children, and romantic partners.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#490

Post by techpineapple »

pavlov wrote: post #353
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…

I feel like my personal experience of the metaverse is a really good comparator for LLM’s. Really cool, I can see the possibilities, I want it! It seems like it’s there, But I can also see that the gap between what exists and what would make it truly useful is too great.
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