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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#931

Post by snackernews »

brokencode wrote: post #820
pera wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like the output of LLMs so much that ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever While people seem to love the output of their own queries they seem to hate the output of other people's queries, so maybe what people actually love is to interact with chatbots. If people loved LLM outputs in general then Google, OpenAI and Anthropic would be in the business of producing and selling content.

I think the thing people hate about that is the lack of effort and attention to detail. It’s an incredible enabler for laziness if misused. If somebody writes a design or a report, you expect that they’ve put in the time and effort to make sure it is correct and well thought out. If you then find the person actually just had ChatGPT generate it and didn’t put any effort into editing it and checking for correctness, t…

This is the biggest impact I have noticed in my job.

The inundation of verbose, low SNR text and documents. Maybe someone put thought into all of those words. Maybe they vibed it into existence with a single prompt and it’s filled with irrelevant dot points and vague, generic observations.

There is no way to know which you’re dealing with until you read it, or can make assumptions based on who wrote it.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#932

Post by BatmanAoD »

Like a lot of blog posts, this feels like a premise worth exploring, lacking a critical exploration of that premise.

Yes, "inevitabilism" is a thing, both in tech and in politics. But, crucially, it's not always wrong! Other comments have pointed out examples, such as the internet in the 90s. But when considering new cultural and technological developments that seem like a glimpse of the future, how do we know if they're an inevitability or not?

The post says:

> what I’m most certain of is that we have choices about what our future should look like, and how we choose to use machines to build it.

To me, that sounds like mere wishful thinking. Yeah, sometimes society can turn back the tide of harmful developments; for instance, the ozone layer is well on its way to complete recovery. Other times, even when public opinion is mixed, such as with bitcoin, the technology does become quite successful, but doesn't seem to become quite as ubiquitous as its most fervent adherents expect. So how do we know which category LLM usage falls into? I don't know the answer, because I think it's a difficult thing to know in advance.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#933

Post by const_cast »

brokencode wrote: post #706
lsy wrote: post #63

I think two things can be true simultaneously: 1. LLMs are a new technology and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that. It's difficult to imagine a future where they don't continue to exist in some form, with all the timesaving benefits and social issues that come with them. 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expen…

> “most people agree that the output is trite and unpleasant to consume” That is a such a wild claim. People like the output of LLMs so much that ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever. It and other AI apps like Perplexity are now beginning to challenge Google’s search dominance. Sure, probably not a lot of people would go out and buy a novel or collection of poetry written by ChatGPT. But that doesn’t mean the outp…

> > “most people agree that the output is trite and unpleasant to consume”

> That is a such a wild claim.

I think when he said "consume" he meant in terms of content consumption. You know, media - the thing that makes Western society go round. Movies, TV, music, books.

Would I watch an AI generated movie? No. What about a TV show? Uh... no. What about AI music? I mean, Spotify is trying to be tricky with that one, but no. I'd rather listen to Remi Wolf's 2024 Album "Big Ideas", which I thought was, ironically, less inspired than "Juno" but easily one of the best albums of the year.

ChatGPT is a useful interface, sure, but it's not entertaining. It's not high-quality. It doesn't provoke thought or offer us some solace in times of sadness. It doesn't spark joy or make me want to get up and dance.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#936

Post by booleandilemma »

feoren wrote: post #779
rafaelero wrote: post #770

Right now, I’m noticing how my colleagues who aren’t very comfortable using LLMs for most of their work are getting sidelined. It's a bit sad seeing them struggle by not keeping pace with everyone else who is using it for ~90% of our tasks. They seem to really care about writing code themselves, but, if they don't pivot, things are probably not going to end well for them. So is LLM inevitable? Pretty much if you want…

Can I take a guess and say that you and your colleagues are all pretty inexperienced? I'll wager less than 4 years experience max, working in a regimented structure, mostly closing tickets for well-understood features? Because I do not know anyone with >10 years experience working in a well-understood language but a relatively unexplored domain that uses LLMs to create any code. I only see LLMs being widely used by i…

Hi, someone with over 10 years of experience here. I finally got around to reading this thread and just saw your comment. Thanks for the sanity.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#937

Post by castigatio »

lwelyk wrote: post #641
castigatio wrote: post #594

The argument doesn't work because whatever you think of where generative AI is taking us or not taking us - it is 100% demonstrably better at doing a wide range of tasks than other technologies we have available to us - even in its current exact form. Once computers started to be connected could we have stopped the development of the world wide web. If there's a way of getting humanity to collectively agree on things…

What tasks is it better at doing than other technologies we have available to us? I'm not being sarcastic, I generally want to know in which areas you think it is better. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that isn't just doing the things that make it a generative AI. (It's better at generating an image that I describe to it, etc, but that's not something that another technology does.)

Google search + LLM based search is far more effective than Google search alone. Google's stated mission has been to organize the world's information. Being able to ask a far more nuanced question about the kind of information you are looking for - and getting mostly useful responses - is more useful. Just one example among many. Simple natural language interaction with computer systems is huge. Just look at what LLM's are doing for robotics.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#938

Post by castigatio »

kevindamm wrote: post #632
castigatio wrote: post #594

The argument doesn't work because whatever you think of where generative AI is taking us or not taking us - it is 100% demonstrably better at doing a wide range of tasks than other technologies we have available to us - even in its current exact form. Once computers started to be connected could we have stopped the development of the world wide web. If there's a way of getting humanity to collectively agree on things…

Slight correction, we have many tools that are demonstrably better and more consistent than LLMs for their intended task; LLMs are just the most generally applicable tool (and the fumes are heady).

I agree about the value of general application. I do think though that we just don't have the tools to do many things LLM's can do - searching information in a nuanced way and getting nuanced responses is one thing.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#939

Post by closewith »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #864
kenjackson wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is both right and wrong. There was a good book that came out probably 15 years ago about how technology never stops in aggregate, but individual technologies tend to grow quickly and then stall. Airplane jets were one example in the book. The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don…

> even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don't think LLMs share that characteristic today I think they pretty strongly do The solution seems to be "just lower your standards for acceptable margin of error to whatever the LLM is capable of producing" which should be concerning and absolutely unacceptable to anyone calling themselves an Engineer

99% or more of software developers behave in ways that would be inconceivable in actual engineering. That's not to say there aren't software engineers, but most developers aren't engineers and aren't held to that standard.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#940

Post by closewith »

da_chicken wrote: post #868
kenjackson wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is both right and wrong. There was a good book that came out probably 15 years ago about how technology never stops in aggregate, but individual technologies tend to grow quickly and then stall. Airplane jets were one example in the book. The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don…

> The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don't think LLMs share that characteristic today. The fundamental problem has already been mentioned: Nobody can figure out how to SELL it. Because few people are buying it. It's useful for aggregation and summarization of large amounts of text, but it'…

In my companies, AI subscriptions and API access are now the biggest costs after salaries and taxes. Don't know what makes you think these services aren't attracting paid customers?
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