I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs

A while ago I asked Gemini to set an alarm, it said "Sure!"

...that was the LLM responding, and it did not set an alarm.

I think LLM skeptics and cheerleaders all have a point but I lean toward skepticism. And that's because though LLMs are easy to pick up, they're impossible to "master" and are extremely finicky. The tech is really fun to tinker with and capable of producing some truly awesome results in the hands of a committed practitioner. That puts it in the category of specialized tools. Despite this fact, LLMs are hyped and valued by the markets like they are breakthrough consumer products. My own experience plus the vague/underwhelming adoption and revenue numbers reported by the major vendors tell me that something's not quite right in this area of the industry.

Sabine is an obvious grifter. Crazy to see her on the frontpage of HN

Yes, exactly. There is a bell curve of hype, where some people think autoregressive decoders will lead us to AGI if we just give it the right prompt or perhaps a trillion dollars of compute. And there are others who haven’t even heard of ChatGPT. Depending on which slice of the population you’re interacting with, it’s either under or over hyped.

I totally agree, and this community far is from the worst. In trans communities there's incredible hostility towards LLMs - even local ones. "You're ripping off artists", "A pissing contest for tech bros", etc.

I'm trans, and I don't disagree that this technology has aspects that are problematic. But for me at least, LLMs have been a massive equalizer in the context of a highly contentious divorce where the reality is that my lawyer will not move a finger to defend me. And he's lawyer #5 - the others were some combination of worse, less empathetic, and more expensive. I have to follow up a query several times to get a minimally helpful answer - it feels like constant friction.

ChatGPT was a total game-changer for me. I told it my ex was using our children to create pressure - feeding it snippets of chat transcripts. ChatGPT suggested this might be indicative of coercive control abuse. It sounded very relevant (my ex even admitted in a rare, candid moment that she feels a need to control everyone around her one time), so I googled the term - essentially all the components were there except physical violence (with two notable exceptions).

Once I figured that out, I asked it to tell me about laws related to controlling relationships - and it suggested laws either directly addressing (in the UK and Australia), and the closest laws in Germany (Nötigung, Nachstellung, violations of dignity, etc., translating them to English - my best language). Once you name specific laws broken and provide a rationale for why there's a Tatbestand (ie the criterion for a violation is fulfilled), your lawyer has no option but to take you more seriously. Otherwise he could face a malpractice suit.

Sadly, even after naming specific law violations and pointing to email and chat evidence, my lawyer persists in dragging his feet - so much so that the last legal letter he sent wasn't drafted by him - it was ChatGPT. I told my lawyer: read, correct, and send to X. All he did was to delete a paragraph and alter one or two words. And the letter worked.

Without ChatGPT, I would be even more helpless and screwed than I am. It's far from clear I will get justice in a German court, but at least ChatGPT gives me hope, a legal strategy. Lastly - and this is a godsend for a victim of coercive control - it doesn't degrade you. Lawyers do. It completely changed the dynamics of my divorce (4 years - still no end in sight, lost my custody rights, then visitation rights, was subjected to confrontational and gaslighting tactics by around a dozen social workers - my ex is a social worker -, and then I literally lost my hair: telogen effluvium, tinea capitis, alopecia areata... if it's stress-related, I've had it), it gave me confidence when confronting my father and brother about their family violence.

It's been the ONLY reliable help, frankly, so much so I'm crying as I write this. For minorities that face discrimination, ChatGPT is literally a lifeline - and that's more true the more vulnerable you are.