[dcre]

In fact I do!

"I know I sound like an asshole, but I’ve got a serious question: what can LLMs do today that they couldn’t a year ago? Agents don’t work. LLMs - read stuff, write stuff, analyze stuff, search for stuff, 'write code' and generate images and video. And in all of these cases, they get things wrong."

https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3ma2b2zvpvk2n

This is obviously supposed to be a critique, but a year ago he would never have admitted LLMs can do any of these things, even with errors. This seems strange but it's typical of Zitron's writing, which is often incoherent in service of sounding as negative as possible. A couple of other examples I've written about are his claims about the "cost of inference" going up and about Anthropic allegedly screwing over Cursor by raising prices on them:

https://crespo.business/posts/cost-of-inference/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45645714

[danpalmer]

> incoherent in service of sounding as negative as possible

This is a great summary of it. Zitron has some good points on economics and shady deals in his criticism, but it's all buried beneath layers of bad faith descriptions that are almost religious in nature, totally closed off to any sort of debate.

It's a shame because I'd like to see another good and critical writer in this space. Simon Willison's writing for example is excellent, detailed, critical, but inquisitive and always speaks in good faith. There seems to be space for someone taking a less technical, more business/economics approach.

[delusional]

I don't know how far back you're intending to go on Zitron, but I listened a bit to him about 8 months ago, and I got the impression then that his opinion was exactly the same as what he's bringing to the table in that quote. The AI can "do" whatever you believe it does, but it does it so poorly that it's not doing it in any worthwhile sense of the word.

I could of course be projecting my opinions onto him, but I don't think your characterization of him is accurate. Feel free to provide receipts that show my impression of his opinion to be wrong though.

[dcre]

I think that’s roughly right — both then and now he has stressed that people think it does something but it fails to do so. However I do think I’ve seen a subtle shift in phrasing in both him and other critics as it has become more obvious and undeniable that experienced and highly skilled experts in various domains are in fact using LLMs productively to do all those things (most notably producing software)

I dug around a bit but wasn’t able to find a slam dunk quote from a year ago. Might look around more later.

[delusional]

> However I do think I’ve seen a subtle shift in phrasing in both him and other critics as it has become more obvious and undeniable that experienced and highly skilled experts in various domains

I'd caution that you separate the underlying opinion from the rhetoric in those cases. Personally I'm a huge skeptic, including of claims that it's "obvious and undeniable" that "experienced experts" are using it. I don't lead with that in discussions though, because those discussions will quickly spiral as people accuse me of being conspiratorial, and it doesn't really matter to me if other people use it.

As the assumptions of the public has changed, I've had to soften my rhetoric about the usefulness of LLMs to still project as reasonable. That hasn't changed my underlying opinion or belief. The same could be the case for these other critics.

[astrange]

I think Steve Yegge and Terry Tao are both experienced experts.

[dcre]

Reasonable, and I get it because I did the same thing before agents got good this year (obviously good, I say again) — I felt the trajectory was clear but didn’t want to sound like the shills and wackos.

On the other hand I think accusing Zitron of subtlety or tempering his rhetoric is a bridge too far.