[fao_]

> Try using it on something you just want to exist, not something you want to build or are interested in understanding.

I don't get any enjoyment from "building something without understanding" — what would I learn from such a thing? How could I trust it to be secure or to not fall over when i enter a weird character? How can I trust something I do not understand or have not read the foundations of? Furthermore, why would I consider myself to have built it?

When I enter a building, I know that an engineer with a degree, or even a team of them, have meticulously built this building taking into account the material stresses of the ground, the fault lines, the stresses of the materials of construction, the wear amounts, etc.

When I make a program, I do the same thing. Either I make something for understanding, OR I make something robust to be used. I want to trust the software I'm using to not contain weird bugs that are difficult to find, as best as I can ensure that. I want to ensure that the code is clean, because code is communication, and communication is an art form — so my code should be clean, readable, and communicative about the concepts that I use to build the thing. LLMs do not assure me of any of this, and the actively hamstring the communication aspect.

Finally, as someone surrounded by artists, who has made art herself, the "doing of it" has been drilled into me as the "making". I don't get the enjoyment of making something, because I wouldn't have made it! You can commission a painting from an artist, but it is hubris to point at a painting you bought or commissioned and go "I made that". But somehow it is acceptable to do this for LLMs. That is a baffling mindset to me!

[arbitrary_name]

>I don't get any enjoyment from "building something without understanding" — what would I learn from such a thing? How could I trust it to be secure or to not fall over when i enter a weird character? How can I trust something I do not understand or have not read the foundations of? Furthermore, why would I consider myself to have built it?

All of these questions are irrelevant if the objective is 'get this thing working'.

[sauercrowd]

You seem to read a lot into what I wrote, so let me phrase it differently.

These are ways I'd suggest to approach working with LLMs if you enjoy building software, and are trying to find out how it can fit into your workflow.

If this isnt you, these suggestions probably wont work.

> I don't get any enjoyment from "building something without understanding".

That's not what I said. It's about your primary goal. Are you trying to learn technology xyz, and found a project so you can apply it vs you want a solution to your problem, and nothing exists, so you're building it.

What's really important is that wether you understand in the end what the LLM has written or not is 100% your decision.

You can be fully hands off, or you can be involved in every step.

[CuriouslyC]

> You can commission a painting from an artist, but it is hubris to point at a painting you bought or commissioned and go "I made that". But somehow it is acceptable to do this for LLMs. That is a baffling mindset to me!

The majority of the work on a lot of famous masterpieces of art was done by apprentices. Under the instruction of a master, but still. No different than someone coming up with a composition, and having AI do a first pass, then going in with photoshop and manually painting over the inadequate parts. Yet people will knob gobble renaissance artists and talk about lynching AI artists.

[habinero]

I've heard this analogy regurgitated multiple times now, and I wish people would not.

It's true that many master artists had workshops with apprenticeships. Because they were a trade.

By the time you were helping to paint portraits, you'd spent maybe a decade learning techniques and skill and doing the unimportant parts and working your way up from there.

It wasn't a half-assed, slop some paint around and let the master come fix it later. The people doing things like portrait work or copies of works were highly skilled and experienced.

Typing "an army of Garfields storming the beach at Normandy" into a website is not the same.

[CuriouslyC]

That's a straw man and you know it.

Anti-AI art folks don't care if you photobashed bits of AI composition and then totally painted over it in your own hand, the fact that AI was involved makes it dirty, evil, nasty, sinful and bad. Full stop. Anti-AI writing agents don't care if every word in a manuscript was human written, if you asked AI a question while writing it suddenly you're darth fucking vader.

The correct comparison for some jackass who just prompts something, then runs around calling it art is to a pre-schooler that scribbles blobs of indistinct color on a page, then calls it art. Compare apples to apples.

[habinero]

That's not what a strawman is lol. Me saying the analogy sucks is just criticism.

If you feel judged about using AI, then your choices are (1) don't use it or (2) don't tell people you use it or (3) stop caring what other people think.

Have the courage of your own convictions and own your own actions.

[PaulHoule]

Lately I've been interesting in biosignals, biofeedback and biosynchronization.

I've been really frustrated with the state of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) research and HRV apps, particularly those that claim to be "biofeedback" but are really just guided breathing exercises by people who seem to have the lights on and nobody home. [1]

I could have spent a lot of time reading the docs to understand the Web Bluetooth API and facing up to the stress that getting anything with Bluetooth working with a PC is super hit and miss so estimating the time I'd expect a high risk of spending hours rebooting my computer and otherwise futzing around to debug connection problems.

Although it's supposedly really easy to do this with the Web Bluetooth API I amazingly couldn't find any examples which made all the more apprehensive that there was some reason it doesn't work. [2]

As it was Junie coded me a simple webapp that pulled R-R intervals from my Polar H10 heart rate monitor in 20 minutes and it worked the first time. And in a few days, I've already got an HRV demo app that is superior to the commercial ones in numerous ways... And I understand how it works 100%.

I wouldn't call it vibe coding because I had my feet on the ground the whole time.

[1] for instance I am used to doing meditation practices with my eyes closed and not holding a 'freakin phone in my hand. why they expect me to look at a phone to pace my breathing when it could talk to be or beep at me is beyond me. for that matter why they try to estimate respiration by looking at my face when they could get if off the accelerometer if i put in on my chest when i am lying down is also beyond me.

[2] let's see, people don't think anything is meaningful if it doesn't involve an app, nobody's gotten a grant to do biofeedback research since 1979 so the last grad student to take a class on the subject is retiring right about now...

[leptons]

>When I enter a building, I know that an engineer with a degree, or even a team of them, have meticulously built this building taking into account the material stresses of the ground, the fault lines, the stresses of the materials of construction, the wear amounts, etc.

You can bet that "AI" is coming for this too. The lawsuits that will result when buildings crumble and kill people because an LLM "hallucinated" will be tragic, but maybe we'll learn from it. But we probably won't.

[fao_]

Have you heard of the Horizon IT Post Office Scandal[0]?

> Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover illusory shortfalls caused by Horizon with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. > > Although many subpostmasters had reported problems with the new software, and Fujitsu was aware that Horizon contained software bugs as early as 1999, the Post Office insisted that Horizon was robust and failed to disclose knowledge of the faults in the system during criminal and civil cases.

(content warning for the article about that for suicide)

Now think of places where LLMs are being deployed:

- accountancy[1][2]

- management systems similar to Horizon IT

- medical workers using it to pass their coursework (A friend of mine is doing a nursing degree in the USA and they are encouraged to use Gemini, and she's already seen someone on the same course use it to complete their medical ethics homework...)

- Ordinary people checking drug interactions[3], learning about pickling (and almost getting botulism), talking to LLMs and getting poisoned by bromide[4]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

[1]: https://www.leapfin.com/luca-ai

[2]: https://www.autoentry.com/integrations/sage

[3]: https://www.tumblr.com/pangur-and-grim/805013689696747520?so...

[4]: https://www.livescience.com/health/food-diet/man-sought-diet...

[c-hendricks]

I build a lot of custom tools, things with like a couple of users. I get a lot of personal satisfaction writing that code.

I think comments on YouTube like "anyone still here in $CURRENT_YEAR" are low effort noise, I don't care about learning how to write a web extension (web work is my day job) so I got Claude to write one for me. I don't care who wrote it, I just wanted it to exist.