[xienze]

Like clockwork, every single thread about something AI-related has someone expressing their disgust at passages of LLM-written text. In many cases by the same people who are enthusiastically embracing LLM-generated software. Why don't we show the same level of contempt for LLM-authored software as we do for even the slightest hint of LLM-authored text in a blog post?

[stetrain]

We don't like LLMs throwing giant walls of code in PRs at repos and expecting devs to read and respond to all of them.

That's kind of similar to written content being posted and linked. There's an expectation that you are asking someone to take time to read it, and with LLMs now the cost to generate things to be read is a lot lower but our attention and capacity to read them remains the same.

[xienze]

> We don't like LLMs throwing giant walls of code in PRs at repos and expecting devs to read and respond to all of them.

One giant PR versus dozens of smaller ones, what's the difference? LLMs are going to send it your way whether you like it or not. No one is going to argue that usage of LLMs is going to lead to less code that has to be reviewed than normal, are they? It's by design since you're able to produce more code now, remember?

> There's an expectation that you are asking someone to take time to read it, and with LLMs now the cost to generate things to be read is a lot lower but our attention and capacity to read them remains the same.

I could understand this argument if this had been a 500 word blog post expanded out to 50K words, but it's not. And who's to say the author didn't write most of it and just had an LLM do a little polishing?

[anotherevan]

I don’t like humans throwing accusations that something was written by an LLM if they don’t like it. The constant insinuations that us machines are the ones with poor taste is fookin’ tiresome.

[bluebands]

code is not user-facing, functionality, ux, and specs are!

there are many apps with ai-generated ideas, specs, and functionality. nobody uses them because of the contempt.

in either case, the part that's user-facing is ai-resistant

[xienze]

> code is not user-facing

The user interacts with the code, and if it's sloppy AI generated code, it's going to impact the user somehow. Be it through poor performance, bugs, security holes, you name it.

Maybe I was naive in thinking the bar was higher than "as long as I can't tell an LLM wrote it that's good enough for me."

[NuclearPM]

Code is machinery, writing is communication between humans.

[xienze]

Users interface with programs, which are code. And even if you don't think that matters, do instances of "it's not X, it's Y" in a blog post make the text less readable? You could make a compelling argument that many people's prose is greatly enhanced by running it through an LLM, yet unlike in the case of code there's nothing but contempt for that.