| > Surely it matters where the LLM sits against these values, no? Yes, I agree, but it's all trade-offs. The core problem is this: 1. Software is very expensive to write 2. So, you need to sell to as many people as possible 3. So, you need to add lots of features to attract as many people as possible 4. And you need to monetize it with ads, data-selling, and SaaS subscriptions. 5. But that makes software complicated, brittle, and frustrating. LLMs can break the cycle if they make it cheap to write software. Instead of buying a mass-market product with 10x more features than you need, you create custom software that does exactly what you need and no more. But aren't we trading one master of another? Instead of bowing down to Microsoft/Meta/Google, we bow down to OpenAI/Anthropic/Meta/Google? Maybe, but when an LLM writes code for you, you own the code. The code runs outside of the LLM (usually) on an open platform. But what if you have to modify the code? Then you ask an LLM (maybe not the original LLM) to modify the code. That's far easier than asking Google to modify Gmail. If you believe in the suggestions of the author, then I don't think there is a better answer than LLMs. We don't live in a world where everyone can solve their software problems by forking some code, much less modifying it themselves. And the reason I think it's ironic is because I suspect the author hates LLMs. |
I disagree with this, right at the start. I think software is cheap to write but expensive to maintain when you try to sell to as many people as possible. It's the OpEx that kills you, not the CapEx. I go into this more in the current state of https://akkartik.name/about
So I wrote OP to encourage more exploration of the alternative path. If you build something and don't keep adding features to it in a futile attempt at land-grabbing "users" who will for the most part fail to pay you back for the over-investment your current VC-based milieu causes you to think is the only way to feel a sense of meaning from creating software -- if you don't keep adding features to it and you build on a substrate that's similarly not adding features and putting you on a perpetual treadmill of autoupdates, then software can be much less expensive.
I plan to just put small durable things out into the world, and to take a small measure of satisfaction in their accumulation over the course of my life. The ideal is a rock: it just sits inert until you pick it up, and it remains true to its nature when you do pick it up.
> LLMs can break the cycle if they make it cheap to write software. Instead of buying a mass-market product with 10x more features than you need, you create custom software that does exactly what you need and no more.
That's the critical question, isn't it. Will LLMs yield custom software that does exactly what you need and stabilizes? Or will they addict people to needing to endlessly tweak their output so AI companies can juice their revenue streams?
What skills does it take to nudge an LLM to create something durable for you? How much do people need to know, what skills do they need to develop? I don't know, but I feel certain that we will need new skills most people don't currently have.
Another way to rephrase the critical question: do you trust the real AIs here, the tech companies selling LLMs to you. Will the LLMs they peddle continue to work in 10 years time as well as they do today? If they enshittify, will you be prepared? Me, I'm deeply cynical about these companies even as LLMs themselves feel like a radical advance. I hope the world will not suffer from the value capture of AI companies the way it has suffered from the value capture of internet companies.