[elmer2]

"Many LLM maximalists say they use the tech to learn new things, but to what effect? Are you going to apply that knowledge of physics or computer science yourself, or will you just prompt the LLM again?"

Many of the LLM maximalists I know don't have the skills or knowledge to excel in technology and need to use LLMs to do their job. It's seen as a cheat code to get work done.

As an example, A person I went to high school with that could barely figure out how to setup a Drupal site a few years ago, is now a frontier engineer at an AI startup. His Linkedin posts are filled with AI buzz words on a daily basis.

"It's inherently worth more because it's hard-earned and anchored to experiences we share. "

At some point, it will be impossible to tell the difference. Many people already can't tell if something was generated by AI.

[MisterTea]

> At some point, it will be impossible to tell the difference. Many people already can't tell if something was generated by AI.

So what if its indistinguishable - its not a product of human intellect or effort. I feel there is a large disconnect where people look at artful output such as music or writing as a thing no different than a box of paper clips. To them, "It's just there." They don't care how it got there, they just like the feeling they get from the consumption.

That's fast food thinking; It's engineered to be "tasty" in the sense that they put the right amount of chemicals into the food to tickle the right nerve endings. It's junk food that exists to turn a profit. Whereas even the local diner puts effort into its food and has a damn fine Greek menu and the best mozzarella sticks.

[planb]

I’m not sure it’s so simple. I went on a trip with friends this weekend and cut a video from all the short clips we filmed on our phones. Before AI I would have used some song from my music library as the background tune. This time I created a song with Suno that fits the clips and includes some funny anecdotes from our vacation. If I was very talented and had the time, I could have written the lyrics and recorded the song myself (which undoubtedly would be even more awesome), but I can’t do this. So I used AI as a tool to do it for me. Everyone agrees it’s more personal and a better conserved memory of our shared experiences.

[wcedmisten]

I don't get how people can listen to and share AI generated "music" and not feel legitimately embarrassed to their core. Like the AI Charlie Kirk song, but unironically. I'm truly baffled how anyone can enjoy it.

> If I was very talented and had the time, I could have written the lyrics and recorded the song myself (which undoubtedly would be even more awesome), but I can’t do this.

I promise you that any art you produced would be better than slop. There is not a single crayon scribble or off-tune melody that would be worse than the generic garbage that comes out of an AI model

[shimman]

You have to remember that the vast majority of tech workers have open disdain towards humans and share zero solidarity with their fellow workers.

Just look at the leadership of tech workers, some of the most deeply anti-human and anti-democratic people on the planet. Not hard to see how these terrible people rub off of their workers.

[baggy_trough]

Astonishing bigotry.

[antonvs]

How do you rate that against all the generic garbage that comes out of the pop music industry? Do you really think it’s meaningfully worse?

[ElProlactin]

If you knew how the modern music industry and local diners work, you might not be so impressed.

It's not all artisanal, made with love goodness just because human hands did it.

[MisterTea]

> If you knew how the modern music industry and ...

This just assumes I'm listening to mainstream music or whatever when I mostly buy grungy metal and whatever else I enjoy off Bandcamp. Many times, directly supporting the artist.

> ... local diners work, you might not be so impressed.

I already stated the homemade gyro platter and they're mozzarella sticks w/sauce are slammin and they are proud of it. Sure it's business but they crafted some damn fine mozzarella sticks and they always come out crispy and oozing with hot but not roof melting cheese. That's giving a damn even if its slammin a few in the fryer then tossin em on a plate and sendin em into the human ether. I hope they stay around as they're a great Sunday afternoon lunch spot with friends.

[rmunn]

I love gyros; you're making me want to go visit that diner. Do you mind revealing its name and the city it's in? (If you don't want to because that would reveal too much about your own location, I understand perfectly well and have no objections). Odds are I'm nowhere close to it, but sometimes my job takes me to unexpected locations, so I'm always happy to have a list like "If you're ever in Topeka, Kansas, check out (name of hole-in-the-wall burrito joint), they make the best darn burritos I've ever had". (For clarity: that's a made up example, I don't know anything about restaurants in Topeka).

[MisterTea]

Esquire Diner in Ozone Park NYC. They're struggling so I hope they stay open and the quality remains. So far, so good.

[ericfr11]

But the AI would not be able to perform live on a stage, producing emotions. I can't imagine staying 3 hours in a crowded room looking at a robot or a computer screen, even if it produces great music. Or if we get to that point, what gives the right and permission for humans to exist anymore?

[pixl97]

>But the AI would not be able to perform live on a stage

The vast majority of music consumption is by people that have never seen the artist live. Hell, I have no idea myself if there is a human behind it.

>what gives the right and permission for humans to exist anymore?

Nothing. We are just a mote in incomprehensibly small fraction of eternity. Eventually the process of equalizing entropy will erase all traces of our existence. Enjoy it while you have it.

[ben_w]

> I can't imagine staying 3 hours in a crowded room looking at a robot or a computer screen, even if it produces great music.

May I introduce you to the runtime of The Lord of the Rings films?

Also the American Federation of Musicians' campaign against "robot" musicians replacing live musicians in movie theatres? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-ag...

[rmunn]

One of my college buddies, when getting set up for a marathon viewing of the trilogy (extended editions, naturally), referred to it as "twelve hours of butt-numbing Tolkien goodness". Exact words: it was more than 20 years ago but that phrase was so evocative it stuck in my memory.

[Otterly99]

May I introduce you to vocaloid concerts?

[ben_w]

I'm not sure what you're arguing here?

If it's indistinguishable, that could be because the user doesn't care to look closely, or it could be because it's just that well made now. For simple profile pictures, I genuinely stopped being able to tell if I'm looking at a real photo or not last year.

> That's fast food thinking; It's engineered to be "tasty" in the sense that they put the right amount of chemicals into the food to tickle the right nerve endings. It's junk food that exists to turn a profit. Whereas even the local diner puts effort into its food and has a damn fine Greek menu and the best mozzarella sticks.

The former is molecular gastronomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy

The digital version fast food we already have and is a little different, in that it's the tuning of "the algorithm" to addict us, while text and image models* seem to be trying to actually fool us.

* I suspect video and music models are trying to addict, but I'm not super sure either way.

[budsniffer952]

>That's fast food thinking

You're simply drawing the line where it suits you.

I don't consider it pure human coding if you use anything but Notepad.

[hoppp]

What about punch cards?

Real programmers write the code and throw it away after compilation. All the fixes happen in the binary. You are not a real programmer unless you debug hex dumps and add changes directly to the compiled program.

Text editor? No. You punch the program on cards and then wait 1 week to get your turn and get a compiler error.

[pixl97]

https://xkcd.com/378/

[hoppp]

https://www.quiche-eater.com/the_real_text.html

[budsniffer952]

Nope, I draw my line at Notepad!

[rmunn]

EDLIN.EXE or bust!

[MisterTea]

> You're simply drawing the line where it suits you.

I'm drawing the line where the human effort is no longer there.

There was a similar argument against electronic music. No effort because no instrument is played. But the fact is the instrument just changed shape, drastically.

Like there's an artist I am sure a few here would be familiar with: Master Boot Record, a video game heavy metal electronic blend fully composed on a DAW. MBR live streams his composition sessions while chillin in his own irc channel he's hosting himself so you can chat with him. It's impressive to hear how he lays down notes, loops it, tweaks and expands it, then little by little builds a song passage by passage. Often with the irc channel reacting to the process itself and perhaps influencing the output. You know when it finally clicks and you're left feeling "Oh that was cool as fuck!" That's uniquely human, a life form that evolved over billions of years on a mud ball floating in a vast vacuum - at random. Talking, thinking, playing, laughing meat. Amazing huh?

An AI shitting out a similar pattern because it was trained on the same and similar patterns is not interesting or original. It's just a really good illusion from a well tuned stochastic parrot. It's interesting in the technical sense, but not in the artistic one. There was no creative process involved. Prompting is just a well formed set of instructions and questions which a human could understand - a spec. Nothing special there. It's like driving to McDonalds and ordering a quarter pounder with cheese meal. As a search engine, cool. As an artist, no thanks.

[EagnaIonat]

> It's just a really good illusion from a well tuned stochastic parrot.

The stochastic parrot claim is long gone.

Someone with actual skill in their respective field can create something new and original from current AI systems.

The real danger is that creative/intelligent people are giving up those abilities and letting the AI do it for them.

[MisterTea]

> The stochastic parrot claim is long gone.

That's just marketing.

[EagnaIonat]

Can you elaborate?

[antonvs]

The stochastic parrot claim is as apt as ever. It’s just that it turned out that humans are just stochastic parrots, too.

[antonvs]

Excuse me, I use Neovim but with no automation - no completions, no language server. Pure human coding. It’s not Notepad, but I’m not a masochist.

[ElProlactin]

Perhaps you underestimated the person you went to high school with? The fact he or she "could barely figure out how to set up a Drupal site a few years ago" doesn't mean much. Lots of people are capable of immense progress when they apply themselves.

[resonious]

I consider myself an LLM maximalist, at least in the context of software engineering. Even after delegating everything you can to LLMs, there's still work left for you. And it's far more interesting. Even the delegation to LLMs is interesting - it's not that easy to make it work well.

In my domain (web app CRUD), we build the same thing over and over and over. And it's not beautiful or interesting like furniture. It feels like with LLMs, all that repetitive stuff is gone and I can focus myself on the tricky problems.

[idiotsecant]

If we're contributing anecdata I have used LLMs to tremendous effect to learn all kinds of interesting stuff because I like learning interesting stuff and LLMs can tailor the level of instruction to exactly where you're at and don't mind questions interrupting ever 6 seconds which is better than both textbooks and teachers, mostly.

[bluefirebrand]

Have you ever tried to do the thing you learned without the LLM holding your hand?

Or are you just assuming you learned something because you made a finished product of some kind?

[pixl97]

Actually yes, I've used an LLM to make a better old fashioned (whisky based drink). Turns out skimping on the orange oil/zest makes a huge difference. And, no now that I've learned it I don't expect I'll have to go back for this express need.

This is where LLMs and even things like youtube videos muddle the difference between what you are and things you have to do as a human. The number of things you can be presented with in the modern world that you'd like, or have to do, is simply endless. If it's something small, with little opportunity cost if failure occurs, then just going to an LLM for an answer doesn't bother me. Now if it's something that's more costly like DIY remodeling an LLM isn't a primary driver, but in as a device that can push back when I ask about mistakes that can be made and what to watch out for.

[idiotsecant]

Of course I have. What a weird question. If someone learned algebra would you ask them if they can do algebra without their teacher there?

[bluefirebrand]

If someone was studying under a teacher that had a reputation of stepping in and doing the work for them, yes I absolutely would

And AI has that reputation!

[ex-aws-dude]

The question is does that even matter

You may argue what if LLMs are inaccessible but that’s like teachers saying “you won’t always have a calculator”

[ClikeX]

> that’s like teachers saying “you won’t always have a calculator

They were right, though. For one, you still need to now what kind of equation to put into the calculator. If you don't know the concepts, what are you going to calculate. Real life situations don't actually spell out neat textbook questions.

And just take a look throughout the day how many quick maths you do subconsciously. Just things like cooking or grocery shopping have tons of moments where you just do the calculation in your head. And you can do that because you've learned how and when to do that.

It's not just a matter of "What if it's inaccessible", but also "Do you want to be dependent on your phone even more". Are just going to walk around with your phone on voice mode narrating your life into your LLM to let it tell you what to do?

[ssl-3]

> They were right, though.

They were not. I'm not dead yet so I suppose there's still a chance, but so far in decades of living life I've always had calculators when I've needed them.

> For one, you still need to now what kind of equation to put into the calculator.

That's a very different construct. Math concepts don't care how the arithmetic is performed.

> If you don't know the concepts, what are you going to calculate.

If you don't know the concepts, then what kind of arithmetic are you going to perform with anything -- whether the mind's eye, pencil and paper, a sliderule, or a pocket supercomputer?

[rmunn]

I have a calculator (and many other tools, of course) in my pocket at all times, now... and yet I don't pull it out very often. Because I can add $1.99 + $3.49 faster in my head ($2 plus $3.50 minus two cents = $5.48) than I could get the result by pulling out the phone, swiping my access pattern, tapping the calculator app, and punching in the results. Heck, even if I had a dedicated calculator that only required pulling it out and pressing an On button, I'd still come up with the result faster than I could punch the buttons.

It's definitely worth it for kids to invest the time it takes to learn the little shortcuts involved in mental math: that effort gets repaid many times over during the course of a normal human lifetime.

[ClikeX]

I feel like you missed the point I was trying to make.

Sure, a teacher framing the necessity of learning math as "you don't always have calculator" is pretty lazy answer that doesn't really get to the point. In my experience, teachers rarely even made this point, students did that tried to argue that Mathematics was pointless when you have calculators.

But my point was that actually knowing these concepts is good for complex reasoning you can do in all aspects of life. Whether you have the calculator with you or not.

[bluefirebrand]

An LLM always being accessible is not my problem

My problem is that filtering all of human creativity and expression through an LLM is ugly

[walt_grata]

Sure it does. I still nees to know the correct mathematics to type into the calculator and the calculator is deterministic. If you don't understand it without the llm explaining it, how can you be sure you actually understand it? How can you catch mistakes made due to it being non-deterministic? Ask another llm? Same problem

[palmotea]

>> "It's inherently worth more because it's hard-earned and anchored to experiences we share."

> At some point, it will be impossible to tell the difference. Many people already can't tell if something was generated by AI.

Nit: it won't be impossible, just so hard so most people won't bother or give up if they try, and society will settle into a mediocre, regressed state. Then wait a little while, and the next generation will justify their mediocrity as actually some kind of progress, and the people who knew better will be dead and unable to challenge that.

More technology != more progress. Just look what social media had done. At its best, it's like what came before, just more isolating.

[pixl97]

I mean, you act if society is something that always progresses into something you in particular want. Studying history shows us that society commonly progresses in to horrific terrors that defy reason. And so we may be entering that state again.

[budsniffer952]

This is the classic gatekeeping our industry loves:

"This guy couldn't do a thing we found easy, now he can! Boooo!"

Yes, I can now set up a Drupal website in a few hours. That is great for me.

[ThrowawayR2]

"Gatekeeping" is a derogatory way of saying "maintaining standards of quality", usually by those who stand to benefit from lowered standards. I heartily approve of "gatekeeping" because I like having competent co-workers.

[pixl97]

Both sides have validity.

I don't want some random joe smoking crack working on my aircraft before I fly.

At the same time I don't want to have to pay a light bulb changer after filing 6 safety forms in triplicate.

Extremism on both sides leads to suboptimal outcomes.

[timmytokyo]

Why does anyone need you then?