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I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

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Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#91

Post by runiq »

bambax wrote: post #36
ryeats wrote: post #14

You know that teammate that makes more work for everyone else on the team because they do what they are asked to do but in the most buggy and incomprehensible way, that when you finally get them to move on to another team and you realize how much time you spent corralling them and fixing their subtle bugs and now when they are gone work doesn't seem like so much of a chore. That's AI.

I'm extremely wary of AI myself, especially for creative tasks like writing or making images, etc., but this feels a little over the top. If you let it run wild then yes the result is disaster, but for well defined jobs with a small perimeter AI can save a lot of time.

In the context of code, where review bandwidth is the bottleneck, I think it's spot on. In the arts, comparatively -- be they writing, drawing, or music -- you can feel almost at a glance that something is off. There's a bit of a vibe check thing going on, and if that doesn't pass, it's back to the drawing board. You don't inherit technical debt like you do with code.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#92

Post by runiq »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #80
scarecrowbob wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gen AI is a great tool, if you approach it with the right mindset." People keep writing this sentence as if they aren't talking to the most tool-ed up group of humans in history. I have no problems learning tools, from chorded key shortcuts to awk/sed/grep to configuring all three of my text editors (vim, sublime, and my IDE) to work for their various tasks. Hell, I have preferred ligature fonts for different langua…

They write that sentence because gen ai has been effective for them. We have intelligent people using ai and claiming it’s useful. And we have other intelligent people who’s saying it’s not useful. I’m inclined to believe the former. You can’t be deluded about positives usefulness. But you can be about the negative simply by using the LLM in a half assed way and picking the most convenient conclusion without nuance.

> You can’t be deluded about positives usefulness.

If you honestly believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#93

Post by andersmurphy »

billy99k wrote: post #90
andersmurphy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of crypto’s “have fun being poor”. Except now it’s “have fun being left behind/being unemployed”. The more things change the more things stay the same.

A bit different when you actually see the results. A guy I went to highschool with complains endlessly about AI generated art and graphics (he's an artist) and like you, just wants to bury his head in the sand. Consumers don't care if art is generated by AI or humans and in a short period of time, you won't be able to tell the difference. With the money being poured into AI by all major tech companies, you will be un…

If the last few years of the AI hype cycle has taught me anything is there's massive late movers advantage.

Anyone who spent time learning the AI tools over that period of time has basically wasted their time. Working with agents is nothing like prompt engineering. I imagine whatever comes after will be nothing like agents etc. Sounds like those who try to keep up with AI will be equally unemployed.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#94

Post by raincole »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #81
bdangubic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

smart people are reading comments like and going “I am glad I am in the same market as people making such comments” :)

I’m glad for now. Understanding how to utilize AI to your advantage is still an edge at the moment, but it won’t be long before almost everyone figures it out.

Yeah. Interestingly enough, I've found utilizing AI is a very shallow skill that anyone should be able to learn in days. But (luckily) people have some tendency preventing them from doing so.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#95

Post by andersmurphy »

mwigdahl wrote: post #86
andersmurphy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of crypto’s “have fun being poor”. Except now it’s “have fun being left behind/being unemployed”. The more things change the more things stay the same.

Yes, and it was exactly the same with compilers. All hype and fad -- everyone who's serious about software development writes in assembly.

It's false comparison compilers are deterministic. The only probabilistic behavior I've seen has been for performance (query planning/branch prediction).

I mean you're not wrong the serious people drop into assembly when they need too. Even if you work in a context where you can't or don't drop down into assembly being able to make your own compilers is incredibly useful.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#96

Post by abenga »

billy99k wrote: post #90
andersmurphy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of crypto’s “have fun being poor”. Except now it’s “have fun being left behind/being unemployed”. The more things change the more things stay the same.

A bit different when you actually see the results. A guy I went to highschool with complains endlessly about AI generated art and graphics (he's an artist) and like you, just wants to bury his head in the sand. Consumers don't care if art is generated by AI or humans and in a short period of time, you won't be able to tell the difference. With the money being poured into AI by all major tech companies, you will be un…

We care. If I get a video recommendation on YouTube and it is AI-created, I blacklist the channel. I will never listen to AI music. Even articles, the only way I will keep reading someone's writing is if I never find out they don't use it. I consume media and art to commune with my fellow man, not to look at pretty bitmaps and read just strings of prose.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#97

Post by billy99k »

abenga wrote: post #96
billy99k wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit different when you actually see the results. A guy I went to highschool with complains endlessly about AI generated art and graphics (he's an artist) and like you, just wants to bury his head in the sand. Consumers don't care if art is generated by AI or humans and in a short period of time, you won't be able to tell the difference. With the money being poured into AI by all major tech companies, you will be un…

We care. If I get a video recommendation on YouTube and it is AI-created, I blacklist the channel. I will never listen to AI music. Even articles, the only way I will keep reading someone's writing is if I never find out they don't use it. I consume media and art to commune with my fellow man, not to look at pretty bitmaps and read just strings of prose.

You are not the average consumer.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#98

Post by nerevarthelame »

jdietrich wrote: post #88

As a professional writer, the author of this post is likely a better writer than 99.99% of the population. A quick skim of his blog suggests that he's comfortably more intelligent than 99% of people. I think it's totally unsurprising that he isn't fully satisfied with the output of LLMs; what is remarkable is that someone in that position still finds plenty of reasons to use them. Now consider someone further down th…

I'm worried that an increasing number of people are relying on LLMs for things as fundamental to daily life as expressing themselves verbally or critical thinking.

Perhaps LLMs can move someone's results from the 25th percentile to the 50th for a single task. (Although there's probably a much more nuanced discussion to be had about that: people with poor writing skills can still have unique, valuable, and interesting perspectives that get destroyed in the median-ization of current LLM output.) But after a couple years of using LLMs regularly, I fear that whatever actual talent they have will atrophy below their starting point.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#99

Post by billy99k »

andersmurphy wrote: post #93
billy99k wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit different when you actually see the results. A guy I went to highschool with complains endlessly about AI generated art and graphics (he's an artist) and like you, just wants to bury his head in the sand. Consumers don't care if art is generated by AI or humans and in a short period of time, you won't be able to tell the difference. With the money being poured into AI by all major tech companies, you will be un…

If the last few years of the AI hype cycle has taught me anything is there's massive late movers advantage. Anyone who spent time learning the AI tools over that period of time has basically wasted their time. Working with agents is nothing like prompt engineering. I imagine whatever comes after will be nothing like agents etc. Sounds like those who try to keep up with AI will be equally unemployed.

If the HN community is an example of this, they will be left behind regardless because they will avoid all tooling and the benefits that comes along with it.

I suppose I shouldn't care too much. Less competition for people like me that have embraced the change.

Re: I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer

#100

Post by nathan_douglas »

cardanome wrote: post #56
0xEF wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not wrong, but I pose the argument that too many people approach Gen AI as a replacement instead of a tool, and therein lies the root of the problem. When I use Claude for code, for example, I am not asking it to write my code. I'm asking it to review what I have written and either suggest improvements or ways to troubleshoot a problem I am having. I also don't always follow its advice, either, but that depen…

Generative AI is like micromanaging an talented Junior Dev that never improves. And I mean micromanaging to such a toxic degree that not human would ever put up with that. It works but it simply not what most people want. If you love to code then you just abstracted away the most fun parts and have to only do the boring parts now. If you love to manage, well managing actual humans and seeing them grow and become inde…

I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I _do_ think I'm starting to enjoy this workflow. I don't mind the micromanagement because it's usually the ideas that appeal most to me, not the line-level details of writing code. I suppose I fit in somewhere between the "love to code" and "love to manage" dichotomy you've presented. Perhaps I love to make it look like I have coded? :)

I set up SSH certificates in my homelab last night with Claude Code. It was a somewhat aggravating process - I had to remind it a couple times of some syntax issues, and I'm not sure that it actually took less time than I would've taken to do it myself. And it also locked me out of my cluster when it YOLO'ed some changes it should not have. On the whole, one of the worst AI experiences I've had recently.

But I'm thrilled with it, TBH, because it got done, it works, I didn't have to beat my head against the wall for each little increment of progress, and while Claude Code was beating its own head against the wall, I was able to relax and 1) practice my French, and 2) read my book (Steven Levy's _Artificial Life_, which I recently saw excerpted on HN).

The general state of things is probably still pretty terrible. I know there're no end of irritations that I have with Claude Code, and everything else I've looked at is even less pleasant. But I feel like this might be going in a good direction.

*EDIT*: It should go without saying though that I'd much rather be mentoring a junior person, though, as you said.

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