[everdrive]

Generally speaking people have worse impulse control than they believe they do. Once you give a tool that does most of the work for you, very very few people will actually be able to use that tool in truly enriching ways. The majority of people (even the smart ones) will weaken over time and take shortcuts.

[jacquesm]

I have a very simple solution to this but it is a bit expensive. I run two laptops, one that I talk to an LLM on and another where I do all my work and which is my main machine. The LLM is strictly there in a consulting role, I've done some coding experiments as well (see previous comments) but nothing that stood out to me as a major improvement.

The trick is: I can't cut-and-paste between the two machines. So there is never even a temptation to do so and I can guarantee that my writing or other professional output will never be polluted. Because like you I'm well aware of that poor impulse control factor and I figured the only way to really solve this is to make sure it can not happen.

[everdrive]

This is a nice solution, but I think it speaks to just how enticing the problem is. This is the sort of tactic someone with a gambling addiction would employ. I don't say that to be rude to you: I've had to do similar things with regard to addicting infinite-scroll internet sites, and I definitely give in more than I'd like.

[jacquesm]

I am totally aware of my weakness in light of potential addiction, that's why I don't give it any chance, so you are spot on and it is not taken as rude at all.

[ethmarks]

In a similar vein, I want a text editor where pasting from an external source isn't allowed. If you try, it should instantly remove the pasted text. Copy-pasting from inside the document would still be allowed (it could detect this by keeping track of every string in the document that has been selected by the cursor and allowing pastes that match one of those strings).

It wouldn't work in every use case (what if you need to include a verbatim quote and don't want to make typos by manually typing it?), but it'd be useful when everything in the document should be your words and you want to remove the temptation to use LLMs.

[jacquesm]

The clipboard is one of the most dangerous components of any operating system when it comes to running secure environments.

[manbash]

This somewhat of the equivalent of "quitting cold turkey", in the sense that you remove the temptation from your reach.

The problem is that it's just much easier to un-quit and run the LLM in the same laptop you work on.

It's just so very tempting.

[jacquesm]

I think that's the only way to deal with such temptations. Kidding yourself that you are strong enough to do it 'just once' or that you can handle the temptation is foolish and will only lead to predictable outcomes. I have a similar policy to smoking, drugs, alcohol and so on, I just don't want the temptation. It helps to have seen lots of people who thought they were smart enough eventually go under (but the price is pretty high).

Oh, and LLMs are of course geared to pull you in further, they are on a continuous upsell salespitch. Drug pushers could learn a thing or two from them.

[jjgreen]

You could ssh in to the "dirty" machine ... just sayin'

[jacquesm]

Yes, I could. But I've purposefully made linking the two quite hard.

[jjgreen]

People do similar things installing an app locking their phones so they don't spend all day on them, then "oh just this once", ...

[hodgehog11]

That's an excellent point. It seems likely they thought they could operate as a proper reviewer, but when the deadline came, they took the shortcut they knew they were not supposed to take.

It really does sound like an addiction when you put it this way.

[retsibsi]

I think you're framing this behaviour too generously. Laziness is one thing, lack of integrity is another, and this seems to be a straightforward case of cheating and lying.

[everdrive]

I think it's just numbers. When one person errs it's a fault of character. When most people err, we call it a systematic fault. Why are most people overweight for the first time in history? Do most people lack the good character to restrict their diet? You could argue yes, however appeals to character won't actually solve the problem.