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by enraged_camel 2 hours ago
>> Is it worth the social brainwork? IDK, for some tasks maybe - there are things a single person can do now that would have been impossible a year ago. But for all tasks? And wouldn’t that social brainwork do more good if it was directed at the real people you are working with?

It's the opposite. Many people find it exhausting to interact with humans, and do so only because they are required to.

Humans often don't understand what you are saying or asking, and they may not know exactly what steps they need to take to find the answer. They get tired. They might get their pride hurt. They might get angry or frustrated. They might judge you because your question is silly or just wrong.

LLMs, for all their faults, have none of these issues. I'm not saying I'd rather talk to LLMs all day every day, but when trying to get shit done, they really can be the superior coworker, especially if you're an introvert and suffer from social-battery-drainage issues.

1 comments

Fooling yourself into thinking the LLMs are "understanding" what you are saying or asking is a trap. The output you get may be useful, but it is not due to any sort of understanding.

The elements of human work you mentioned are why it can be both rewarding and painful to interact with humans, but at the end of the day it is important to keep trying to do that work/keep trying to interact with each other. I don't know if we want to go back to cubicles where we just talk to robots all day. Of course some work environments are just awful, and there is not much remedy for that.

>> Fooling yourself into thinking the LLMs are "understanding" what you are saying or asking is a trap. The output you get may be useful, but it is not due to any sort of understanding.

I hear this a lot but I think it's a matter of semantics and ultimately not very useful. I don't care whether the LLM understands me the way a human would. I use the LLM to get useful output. I want it to do something and it does that thing.