[righthand]

It’s not supposed to be logical, it’s an LLM evangelism blog that rarely, if ever, has any critical analysis that isn’t pro-industry. Read any/all of the other posts and you won’t find much skepticism but you will find a lot of shilling how great it all is.

[aerhardt]

I like his other posts. He's bullish on AI, which is fine. I'd like to read a mix of bearish and bullish level-headed takes from people who are subject matter experts. His technical credentials are well past discussion - I love Django, and he comes across as a pretty upbeat but level-headed guy. Certainly beats radical takes in either direction from people who have no clue what they're talking about. It's just this article that I find rather confusing.

[simonw]

The thing that matters most to me is if reading what I wrote teaches you some new things and gives you something useful to think about.

If I make an argument and you disagree that's fine with me, provided I didn't use misinformation or sloppy thinking in making that argument.

[aerhardt]

That's how I feel about most of your writing. I click through most times when I see you either on the front page or in the comments, and I generally walk away feeling like I have food for thought, without necessarily buying everything wholesale. It's part of why I keep coming back.

My root comment simply represented my two cents about the current post. I don't think anything about the post is outrageously incorrect or anything, just somewhat confusing. You're a very prolific contributor in this community and I don't think me or anyone else that welcomes your takes expects everything you write to rock our collective socks every single time, anyway.

[simonw]

308 posts on AI ethics: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-ethics/

52 on AI misuse: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-misuse/

149 on the unsolved challenge of prompt injection: https://simonwillison.net/tags/prompt-injection/

40 on slop: https://simonwillison.net/tags/slop/

If you want an "LLM evangelism blog that rarely, if ever, has any critical analysis that isn’t pro-industry" there are plenty out there. I'm not one of them.

[saulpw]

People are confusing "excitement" with "evangelism". Your blog is definitely on the pro-AI side of things, but as you say, it's not one-sided or uncritical.

[alexchamberlain]

I think you should highlight your exemplary pre-AI writing too.

[csomar]

All of these are about AI misuse, not skepticism of AI. By skepticism I mean doubting whether AI actually delivers on its promises which, based on this last post, sounds like something you think we're already past.

Many people still think AI coding agents are slop on steroids despite all the current hype around AI actually shipping functional products.

[simonw]

It's hard for me to write about skepticism that coding agents deliver on their promises when I've been using them daily and know, for an absolute fact, that they boost my own productivity.

(And that's after taking into account the METR paper that says engineers over-estimate their productivity with these tools.)

I have plenty of doubts about AI delivering on its promises outside of coding. I don't write about AGI because I think it's science-fiction hysteria. I write about slop precisely because it represents a mis-use of AI that demonstrates people completely misunderstanding what it's useful for.

[aspenmartin]

Love when people say "its promises". What specifically are you disappointed with? Simon's posts are high quality and evidence driven. AI has already delivered an incredible amount. Read Epoch for industry trends and analyses, METR to, everything points to a pretty consistent picture.

"Many people still think AI coding agents are slop on steroids despite all the current hype around AI actually shipping functional products."

Oh yes, tons and tons, especially on HN. But the plural of anecdote is not data. Enterprise spend speaks for itself. You are using AI-coded functional products all the time. Do you want like a diff history for the Google codebase or something?

[ModernMech]

Tbf the OPs blog and comments (including their sibling to your comment) are also heavily anecdotal.

> I’ve called November 2025 the November inflection point because that was when GPT-5.1 and Opus 4.5, combined with their respective coding agent harnesses, got good—good enough that we’ve spent the last six months adapting to agent systems that can reliably get useful work done.

Claiming a grand inflection point based on your own personal usage is very anecdotal.

[aspenmartin]

If that were it I would absolutely agree with you. But this experience maps exactly to adoption trends. My job in the last 6 months has become so unrecognizeable to me it’s insane, the adoption at the very least at large companies is truly truly incredible, and it really does coincide with the quality of opus 4.5 (which has now been surpassed).

[ModernMech]

"Adoption trends" are just herd behavior which may or may not be driven by compelling anecdotes and may or may not be evidence of something more. I'm just saying it seems wrong to dismiss the post the way you did when the OP in question and your own post here are just more anecdotes.

[simonw]

I think my claim about November is looking very solid today.

[ModernMech]

My point was claiming a broad inflection point based on your own personal usage is not "evidence driven", it's anecdote-driven. It's hard to disprove any claim you made because you didn't really make one that's disprovable, and your opinion on it now is still just an opinion.