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The Rise of Whatever

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Re: The Rise of Whatever

#81

Post by dspillett »

anonzzzies wrote: post #11
tyre wrote: post #5

The author is mad at Stripe and PayPal for banning transactions involving unicorn wieners but this is imposed on them by the backing banks. The reason behind banning adult materials has to do with Puritanism and with the high rates of refunds on adult websites.

I have an issue with Stripe or Paypal banning merchants without recourse that do not sell adult stuff or anything else bad/high refund, just because 'AI flagged the account'. And I know from Paypal that they have used 'AI' (statistics) to flag accounts, without recourse, almost since they started. It did cost us a lot of money; we had no refunds or anything and paypal was simply (in email and on the phone) repeating…

> no idea why they are so popular

Momentum. They are the big games in town because so many people use them, so many people use them because they are the big games in town. There was a time for both when they didn't suck as much as they do now, at least relative to what other options existed.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#82

Post by worldsayshi »

zwnow wrote: post #57
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invente…

My guy its not only about the art its about killing passion and the lifeline of people. Your take is incredibly ignorant to people who value human created work. These things will kill industries. What jobs should people work in, who got their income cut by LLMs? Force them into blue collar work?

Your point is very valid. It is the luddite argument. And that is valid. But the problem is never the technology itself but, as you point out, the loss of livelihood and meaning and especially the shifts in power from the many to the few.

We need to learn to make technology truly benefit the many. Also in terms of power.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#83

Post by simonw »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #67
simonw wrote: post #62

Looks like I was the inspiration for this post then. https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3lt2xbayttk2... > Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw. The reaction to that post has been interesting. It's mainly intended to be an argument against the LLM hype! I'm pushing back against all the people who ar…

You have to realize that we're only a couple years into wide spread adoption of LLMs as agentic coding partners. It's obvious too everyone, and you that LLMs currently cannot replace coders. People are talking about the trendline, what AI was 5 years ago versus what AI is today points to a different AI 5 years down the line. Whatever AI will be 5 years from now it is immensely possible that LLMs may eliminate program…

The more time I spend using LLMs for code (and being impressed at how much better they are compared to six months ago) the less I worry for my career.

Using LLMs as part of my process helps me understand how much of my job isn't just bashing out code.

My job is to identify problems that can be solved with code, then solve them, then verify that the solution works and has actually addressed the problem.

An even more advanced LLM may eventually be able to completely handle the middle piece. It can help with the first and last pieces, but only when operated by someone who understands both the problems to be solved and how to interact with the LLM to help solve them.

No matter how good these things get, they will still need someone to find problems for them to solve, define those problems and confirm that they are solved. That's a job - one that other humans will be happy to outsource to an expert practitioner.

It's also about 80% of what I do as a software developer already.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#84

Post by JW_00000 »

zwnow wrote: post #57
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invente…

My guy its not only about the art its about killing passion and the lifeline of people. Your take is incredibly ignorant to people who value human created work. These things will kill industries. What jobs should people work in, who got their income cut by LLMs? Force them into blue collar work?

But isn't that the same as saying: what about all the horse carrier drivers who lost their jobs due to cars? What about all the bank tellers we lost after inventing the automated teller machine?

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#85

Post by tgv »

raincole wrote: post #44
gyomu wrote: post #10

Broadly 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 invente…

> Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so

Even though that is a generalization that you cannot prove, you implicitly admit that it will prevent everybody else from gettings any skills. Which is quite a bad outcome.

> powerlifting is a thing

Those people have a different motivation: looks, competition, prestige, power. That doesn't motivate people to learn to draw.

Your easy dismissal is undoubtedly shared by many, but it is hubris.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#86

Post by squidbeak »

simonw wrote: post #62

Looks like I was the inspiration for this post then. https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3lt2xbayttk2... > Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw. The reaction to that post has been interesting. It's mainly intended to be an argument against the LLM hype! I'm pushing back against all the people who ar…

The thing is that at this stage, LLMs, and perhaps AI in other forms, also have careers. Right now they're junior developers. But whose career will develop faster or go further? Theirs? or the new programmer's?

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#87

Post by kenjackson »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #61
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invente…

>LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time. Or a microwave oven that told you it grilled the chicken but it didn't and you have to die from Salmonella poisoning.

My microwave regularly doesn’t cool things as the instructions describe. I’ve learned to pay attention.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#88

Post by molteanu »

vincnetas wrote: post #65

After reading "...the press release and in the fine print it says that now it can count the number of letters in “Mississippi” correctly or whatever" tried to count letters in another word :) You said: how many letters are in the lithuanian word "nebeprisikaspinaudamas"? Just give me one number. ChatGPT said: 23 You said: how many letters are in the lithuanian word 'nebeprisikaspinaudamas'. Just give me one number. C…

I got 22 the first time. But then 21 the second time. And the third time...

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#89

Post by jkhdigital »

reasonableklout wrote: post #51
csomar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM outputs are nondeterministic. LLM outputs are deterministic. There is no intrinsic source of randomness. Users can add randomness (temperature) to the output and modify it. > But this article is based on a model of LLM code generation from 6 months ago There hasn't been much change in models from 6 months ago. What happened is that we have better tooling to sift through the randomly generated outputs. I don't d…

Nit: in practice, even at temperature 0, production LLM implementations have some non-determinism. One reason is because many floating point computations are technically non-commutative even when the mathematical operation is, and the order can vary if they are carried out in parallel by the GPU. For example, see: https://www.twosigma.com/articles/a-workaround-for-non-deter...

I ran into this a bit while working on my PhD research that used LLMs for steganography. The output had to be deterministic to reverse the encoding, and it was—as long as you used the same hardware. Encoding a message on a PC and then trying to decode on a phone broke everything.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#90

Post by JW_00000 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #61
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invente…

>LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time. Or a microwave oven that told you it grilled the chicken but it didn't and you have to die from Salmonella poisoning.

My grandma did not have a microwave oven because she didn't see the point of it.
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