[stavros]

The gambling trope is so tired. AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree, certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" (you never know what you're going to get!).

It's just paying to get stuff done, which is how it's always been, since the dawn of man.

[Thanemate]

>AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree

Reading this while I'm prompting for the third time to fix a 100+ line function is amusing, to say the least. I don't care about the definition of "appreciable", but I definitely have to repeat myself to get stuff done, sometimes even to undo things I never told it to touch.

[pickleRick243]

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

There is certainly randomness in model output that the user has to work around, but sending the same prompt with the same context (or even worse- with added entropy leaving the previous failed prompt in the context) over and over again akin to pulling a slot machine lever is certainly user error and not the way to "hold it".

[stavros]

That sounds like a process problem. LLMs, like any tool, work better if you don't use them in the naive "do this" way. This works well for me:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083267

[daveguy]

> The gambling trope is so tired...

>>> That sounds like a process problem. LLMs, like any tool, work better if you don't use them in the naive "do this" way...

The "you're holding it wrong" trope is even more tired than the gambling trope.

[stavros]

If you can't get results with the thing I'm getting results with, what other explanation would you give?

[wavemode]

That logic only makes sense if you and the other person are working on the exact same kinds of projects.

[daveguy]

Exact same kinds of projects with the exact same development environment, models, etc. Either he's never worked with a development team or he doesn't consider things outside his own perspective. shrug

[wrer]

What results lmao? Literally everything you've shared has zero-value - yes I checked them out. Thinking wtf is this?

[stavros]

What a useless comment to leave. Of course it's a throwaway account.

[glouwbug]

Classic no Scotsman

[xantronix]

What's your monthly token spend?

[stavros]

I have a $100 Claude sub and a $20 OpenAI sub.

[js8]

> certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling"

Actually it's quite possible that being a business manager/owner is actually addictive (having power over people), we just don't recognize it as such.

[stavros]

All gambling addiction is addiction, not all addiction is gambling.

[js8]

Then you miss the point - AI use is being compared to gambling because it is addictive, partly due to same mechanism - the results (and rewards) are somewhat random, but it makes you feel as if you're completely in control of the outcome.

[stavros]

Yeah, that hasn't been my experience. The outcome, for me, is extremely consistent. I ~never have to "reroll" by wiping work and doing it again.

[js8]

Strange. I tell Claude Code to do things differently all the time.

[stavros]

I'd recommend a different workflow, with extensive upfront planning. This works extremely well for me:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-i-write-software-with-llms/

It's to the point that I just push the output of that to production and know it'll be OK, except for very large changes where I'm unlikely to have specified everything at the required level of detail. Even then, things won't so much be wrong, as they'll just not be how I want them.

[pllbnk]

For most people who are not doing their day to day jobs it's just a prompt of their idea roughly sketched out and a miracle happens - LLM fills in the blanks. Every time it's different but it works, sometimes even better than initially expected. That's why the addiction and gambling. Gambling is a lot of things, not only flashing lights or play sounds. Some people claim prediction markets isn't gambling either, though that doesn't change the fact.

[stavros]

How is this different from hiring a designer, telling them "make me a website" and then waiting to see if they resolve the uncertainty into something you like or not?

I tell LLMs what to do in pretty high detail, and they do it. With LLMs I have much less variance than with coworkers.

[js8]

It is different because for humans, it takes time to produce some result, while AI does it instantly. So if you tell a programmer to do X, you have a week for your adrenaline to cool off. If you tell AI, it will do it in minutes.

[stavros]

I don't think the difference between a designer and a slot machine is that one gives you results more slowly, "therefore it's not gambling".

If you're making the argument that LLMs are gambling simply because they're faster than humans, I'd like to see some evidence.

[js8]

> If you're making the argument that LLMs are gambling simply because they're faster than humans

No I am not. It's more addictive because of the timescale. The comparison of AIs to gambling is through addiction mechanism, as I explain elsewhere.

My aunt used to put in (the same) lottery numbers every week. It was gambling, but probably not an addiction in the clinical sense. If she had played slot machines, god forbid, it could have been more problematic. AI is a slot machine, a hire is a lottery ticket.

[HumblyTossed]

I don’t like the gambling comparison either. It’s more like smoking or drinking. It’s an addiction you lean on to help you do something- even if that something is just getting through the day.

[stavros]

Yeah but those are classified as addictions because they have a harm component (lung cancer, liver disease, societal impact). LLMs aren't going to kill you. If anything, it might be like gaming addiction.

If you've gotten to the point where you'd rather talk to an LLM than socialise, go to work, etc, then yes, you definitely have a problem, same as with a gaming addiction.

Saying "LLMs are slot machines" is like saying "video games are slot machines", and nobody says that, even though it's more true of video games (some are actual slot machines/gacha) than of LLMs.

[miyoji]

> Saying "LLMs are slot machines" is like saying "video games are slot machines", and nobody says that, even though it's more true of video games (some are actual slot machines/gacha) than of LLMs.

People absolutely do say that video games are slot machines. [0][1]

0: https://lvl-42.com/2018/11/06/video-games-as-slot-machines/

1: https://www.psu.com/news/three-ways-casino-games-are-similar...

[stavros]

Hence the parenthesized section of the part of my comment you quoted.

[Schiendelman]

Like the internet!

[rasur]

I'd observe that there are professional gamblers, and there are amateur gamblers.

If you know what you're doing, know how to spec a problem space, and can manage the tool competently enough to churn out good results, then everything's fine, and you're maybe being productive or increasing your productivity by some degree. (Professional "Gambler")

If you DON'T know what you're doing, and you're just vibe-coding, then I would argue that it is at least a form of gambling (Amateur "Gambler")

Both of these conditions can also be applied to "hiring people to do a job" however there we can also observe things like reputation, credentials and so on.

"It's just paying to get stuff done..." is, with respect, superflous.

[stavros]

I don't know, I can understand "some people might overdo it and get addicted to LLMs". I can't understand "LLMs are slot machines and that's all they're good for" when I use LLMs every day to do tons of actual work.

[mrbungie]

The gambling part is because of the (hopefully emergent and not purposefully designed) intermittent reinforcement due to the limits. You don't get that with regular hires.

[stavros]

Really? All the hires I've seen had an 8-hour/5-day limit, or you had to pay through the nose for extended usage outside that window.

Where do you get your 24/7 hires from?

[mrbungie]

You usually don't get immediate responses from hires which means delayed gratification and avoiding much of the potential dopaminergic effects you get when engaging with LLMs.

You can play overextending the hire analogy all you want but it is simply not the same.

[timacles]

Not in that sense but social media companies already know the value of not giving a user exactly what they want. This keeps them on the platform longer and excited some lizard part of our brain for challenge.

Due to capitalism’s law of all businesses convergening on maximizing profit, it’s just a matter of time until AI companies employ similar techniques with LLMs. We can all imagine how that will look like