Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

> But my impression right now is that a large percentage of LLM use is for spamming, scamming, and cheating on homework.

LLMs as we have them now are the application which makes a computer be able to understand a non-programmer and to communicate to a non-programmer, it is the new eyes, ears and mouth of computers.

This works so well, that it can already pretend to be a human. This is like realizing: Yes, in fact, this mouse allows me to move a cursor in the computer with which I can click on an application, as if it were my finger in the computer.

But I guess it will ultimately be agents what will show the true power of this new interface. Agents which assist you with your memory by properly reminding you of things, by allowing you to ask it things while you are leaving the house and so on, it even contacting other agents or even persons in order to answer your questions or execute what you asked it to.

How can this not be world-changing?

View on HN

Its funny how back in the day there were people who were CLI elitist, and forwent using a mouse for as long as possible because "the CLI is just better at everything". People like this still exist to some extent, and man can they ever wield a keyboard, but if computer development was left to them, we would all be regular people slogging through a command line everyday to do everything.

And now kids can't use desktops because they only understand "apps", is this a win too ?

The difference is that both CLIs and GUIs are deterministic.

Gatekeeping is not always bad. Most people, including many members of this forum, have not seen their happiness and value to society increase because of ubiquitous personal computing. Perhaps the CLI interfaces should have prevailed and compute should have remained the domain of the educational, research, industrial and financial sectors.

Perhaps more people should heed the 'AI' skeptics. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.

It isn't even a specifically nerd thing for terminal tools to be more efficient as a whole. Pharmacies here until very recently used MS DOS based software (probably running on an emulator) to type your data, ordered drugs etc and the efficiency was much greater than your average mouse bumbler. I cringe every time I see a point of sale device with a touchscreen. Absolute abominations.

I've actually seen much more of the opposite since I got into the industry a decade ago, with some developers absolutely terrified of touching a CLI. That approach can work out fine for some roles but man I think it's unnecessarily limiting. I'm far from a CLI guru but find some basic knowledge there pretty useful from time to time. Most of the CLI experts I've personally met are experts at much newer tools as well.

>How can this not be world-changing?

For one, the principal-agent problem. Who's building, running, and maintaining these agents? I doubt that these are running locally and tweaked by the user themselves. The business model is to sell these things as a service running in the cloud. That means the operator has final say on how these systems are implemented. Sure, your helpful AI agent today may remind you to pick up some soda at the store. But if the last decade+ of "enshittification" has shown, it's only a matter of time before your helpful AI agent will remind you to pick up some delicious Mountain Dew (TM) at the Piggly Wiggly (TM) and use your American Express (TM) card to earn Roblox (TM) points.

And even if we assume these agents don't eventually come to serve masters other than the end-user, the internet is already a user-hostile place. It's entirely reasonable to believe it'll be agent-hostile too, where APIs and UI designs adapt to trick AI agents with "dark patterns" to do things that aren't necessarily in their users' best interests.

Techno-utopianism might feel good, but economics and money-making will drive how these things actually play out.

FWIW when I buy groceries online using Instacart I appreciate the box that pops up after I click "Check out" and asks me if I want to add anything purchased previously, and if I want to see my most recent orders: almost always there's something I DID want to order today but forgot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com