[the_af]

I didn't read it like that.

I read it like... say, asking a genie to produce stuff for you out of thin air. "Make the most beautiful gem for me!". Then, "a marvelous painting that will impress my beloved!", "a meal worthy of a king!", etc.

After the novelty wears off, those are empty achievements. They are not yours, you haven't chipped a single facet of the gem, nor found it yourself, nor lifted a paintbrush or understood how paint flows. It's not about struggling (or not just that), it's about doing [1].

You haven't earned the things you didn't do. You don't think you're cooking when you order a ready meal. Same here.

And yet there's not a single bit of condemnation in the comment we're discussing. Just understanding, "this is a phase we all go through, but look...".

---

[1] I hate that we must add disclaimers now, but I promise this is me, a human, and not an LLM'ism, "it's not X. It's Y."

[rcxdude]

Phrases like 'you haven't earned it' imply some kind of judgement, IMO. You have the thing now, if all you wanted was the thing, not the lessons you learned along the way, then job done. The prediction that this will ring hollow, IMO, strongly depends on your personality. And LLMs are not like the genie, anyhow. You need to put in some effort yourself for anything past trivial examples.

(To project the argument to absurdity, it would be like saying you didn't bake a cake because you didn't grind the flour. And this isn't a new phenomenon: every time something is made easier and more accessible there are people claiming 'well you didn't _really_ do it unless you did it the old fashioned way', which lasts maybe a generation until the new way is just how you do it.)

[the_af]

> Phrases like 'you haven't earned it' imply some kind of judgement, IMO.

But those are my words, not the original commenter's. This is what the original said:

> Yet, you didn't go on the journey to get there.

This is the comment to which the reply was "you're overreacting". Yet there was no judgment, only understanding:

> I think the Slot Machine question is where a lot of early adopters are now at in this journey, and once more of us are there, then we can start asking the hard questions. Right now too many of us are where you're at, and it's impossible to know where things will end up in a year or so.

It's really, really hard to make the claim that it's judgmental and not understanding. "Too many of us", "we can start asking the hard questions", all of that points to a shared understanding of the situation.

> You have the thing now, if all you wanted was the thing, not the lessons you learned along the way, then job done.

Fair enough, but if you only wanted "the thing", then you're a consumer, not an author/creator/builder of the thing. It's the difference between buying (or commissioning) a painting or painting it yourself. If you just "want the thing" (the painting) commission it. But you're not a painter, you're a buyer of paintings.

> To project the argument to absurdity, it would be like saying you didn't bake a cake because you didn't grind the flour.

No, it would be like selecting a cake from an online store, selecting frosting, fillings, etc, and then upon having it delivered to you, claiming you baked it.

[rcxdude]

'understanding' is orthogonal to 'judging'. OP may be judging themselves as well, but it's still a judgement. It reads like "I understand why you don't think this is bad', which is a statement that 100% implies the premise that this _is_ bad.

(and yeah, the consumer vs creator set of values seems to be a large part of the divide in the attitude to AI. But you must understand that a lot people got into creation because they wanted the thing, not because they wanted to be making the thing)

[the_af]

> 'understanding' is orthogonal to 'judging'

Sort of. "Understanding" in the sense I mean it has an empathetic inflection.

Anyway, I have nothing to gain by defending someone else's statement, so I'll let it rest. They can defend themselves if they feel like it.

> (and yeah, the consumer vs creator set of values seems to be a large part of the divide in the attitude to AI. But you must understand that a lot people got into creation because they wanted the thing, not because they wanted to be making the thing)

This is way more interesting to discuss and yes, I agree a lot of the divide happens there. In particular, I don't think you can be a programmer if you mostly prompt an AI. You're something else, but not a programmer. Does it matter? I don't know. "Programming" as an occupation doesn't have a fundamental right to exist; maybe it'll go the way of the Dodo. I care more about things like AI in art and human communication, in that case I do have a strong stance: the journey is as important as "the thing".

In general I think there's a drive in modern society (not all of it, but powerful parts of it) that wants to turn us into consumers of things. I'm pushing back against that.