Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by HarHarVeryFunny 171 days ago
What's the point?

None of this is individually difficult, but an actual human being had the motivation and talent to bring it all together in 7 days, which is impressive.

So what if an LLM can create the same components if you tell it to. It's a bit like someone sharing a handknit sweater they just made, and you counter with "Well, here's a machine made one I bought in Walmart, made in 5 min in China".

1 comments

Is it impressive in the way Max Verstappen winning the F1 World Championship in 2023 was impressive, operating at the absolute limit under pressure and getting paid beaucoup bux for it? Or is it impressive in the way your kid is impressive the first time they manage to draw stick figures and a house with crayons? Those are both real achievements, but they are impressive in completely different ways, and the value of the work produced is wildly different. I might fly to Vegas along with 300,000 other people and pay for hotel rooms and pay to watch some shows while I'm there as well as to watch him race, but (and don't take this the wrong way), but I ain't gonna do that to watch your kid draw with crayons.

The difference is the baseline. Once the default outcome is cheap, fast, and good enough, the human effort stops standing out in a way that matters. At that point, pointing at the Walmart sweater is not missing the point, it is the point.

So you don't put any value on being human, learning skills, showing creativity, doing inspiring things?

Should people stop playing chess just because a free chess engine can trounce everyone on the planet?

Humans can be awesome. Machines are just machines.