Silamoth

Nit: I’ve never heard of Magnus Carlsen, and I can’t imagine most people have, outside of those really into chess. The only chess person I’ve ever heard of is Gary Kasparov, and that’s only because it was a big deal when Deep Blue beat him.

Okay, sure - maybe. But how does that weigh against any of the other concerns? So we consume large amounts of energy, build lots of new data, emit more pollution, concentrate even more wealth and power in the hands of a few companies, and ruin the job market. Is that really worth it so some people interested in games (but not interested enough to actually learn!) can “make” games by prompting an LLM?

That’s the piece that’s missing from this and other analyses. At least in other cases it makes a little sense in automating work. But game development is a creative endeavor, and the health of our planet and the lives of real people are at stake. Can’t you at least weigh the downsides against the benefits?

This feels like Jurassic Park: “Your scientists spent so much time asking if they could, they didn’t stop to ask if they should.” LLM supporters act like LLMs are inevitable and talk about the benefits, even when they’re relatively minimal. But serious discussion of the risks and downsides is missing. And it has been missing for years now.

What about them? No, really, I’m not trying to be snarky, but what about them? Lots of people want to do lots of things. Plenty of them don’t want to put in the work. So what?

For the record, I was one of those people who wanted to make games. That led me to learn programming and eventually led to a career as a programmer. Lots of others with similar stories. But if you’d given a younger me an LLM, I may never would have developed those skills.

That’s one of my concerns. I have others, like effects on the job market, the general unfairness of all our data being used to train models we’re now expected to pay for, negative effects on the environment, and the way in which LLMs promote inequality and can potentially crush small businesses. How do these concerns weigh against someone who wants to make a video game but doesn’t want to learn how to make video games?

Wow, we really do live in the worst timeline. At least a lot of gamers are rallying against generative “AI” slop assets, and indie devs are largely against generative “AI” in general. But yikes, this is just unfortunate.

I don’t want the games industry to be polluted with slop that has no soul. But also, I want opportunities for people to learn or just exist in game development via smaller projects. There is some market for web games, casual games, and generally small games. These markets can be great for indie devs and beginners. But if we lose that market to the slop machine, real people will lose a lot of these opportunities.

Man, if my old DoD contractor job paid $150K, I’d probably still be working there. A lot of DoD contracting firms pay much less than that. Especially in the R&D space where a lot of smart people want to work.

At best that seems like a nitpick based on a specific notion of “all of mathematics”. Care to explain what you mean?

Did you read TFA? They never claimed they’ve formalized all of mathematics. For a couple decades now, mathematicians have been discussing formalizing all of mathematics. Some are now proposing AI can be used for this. But TFA argues that’s not necessarily the best approach. It’s a discussion of how to move forward in formalizing all of math, not a claim about having done so. Not clickbait at all.

Do yourself a favor and search “Agent Orange” on your preferred search engine (Sidenote: I’m trying to avoid using “Google” as a verb). Most people associate that term with the very harmful Vietnam-era herbicide, not the band. The band name may be a reference to the herbicide?

Did we read the same article? You’re quoting from the end, so it seems like you did at least skim the article. But this article has nothing to do with child porn? Where did you even get that idea? It’s talking about a famous mathematical proof.

“…at least half of all academic researchers have retracted a paper at least once in their lives”

Source: Ass, My

Who’s “we” here? Formal verification isn’t common, sure. But you don’t speak for all programmers. You might work on “plain enterprise and web software”. But there’s still plenty of other software out there that many of us work on. And lots of code being written for internal use (e.g., data analysis code) that needs to be correct.

Of course, even enterprise and web software benefits from a little rigorous thinking. It’s pretty wild that understanding your code and its assumptions and informally proving it works is controversial. But I guess that explains why most software I use has actively gotten worse over the years.

Yes, just file a ticket and let the people with relevant expertise and context handle it - obviously. Do software engineers ask Claude for recommendations on handling network outages and bug IT with “AI” slop? Do accountants bring “AI” slop advice to electricians wiring a building? Do lawyers use Claude to try helping physicians diagnose illnesses?

By providing a bad “AI” slop solution that you can’t evaluate, you’re actually creating more work for the people responsible for doing the thing. Now they have to understand the slop you’ve given them, explain why it’s wrong/won’t fit in the existing architecture/has other issue you can’t see without deep context. Or, they have to play politics to ignore your slop without angering you and creating more problems down the line. Either way, it’s harder than just letting them do their job.

Interesting. I feel the same way about Medium - it’s mostly a bunch of undergrads and tech bootcamp students regurgitating basic tutorials.

But in my experience, Substack is much higher quality. I actually read several Substack blogs regularly because they’re better and more consistent than most blogs I come across. YMMV, I guess, but I have at least half a dozen blogs I actively follow on Substack, compared to maybe 1 elsewhere.

If a lot of people make the same claim, then from their perspective, you’re the one with a “wildly different” experience. What makes you so certain your experience generalizes to “most people’s experiences”?

You don’t “need” any LLMs to do software development. Plenty of us were productively writing code for years before these models were released, and many of us continue to do so. The “AI” companies want to sell you hype. But you don’t “need” them - not if you’re a legit, professional programmer.

In what world is rent lower than mortgage? Part of the reason my fiancé and I bought a house is because it was cheaper than renting. Not just long-term, but our monthly payment is actually noticeably lower.

Of course, we did need to pay a down payment. But if you amortize that over a 30 year mortgage period, we’re still better off buying than renting.

Funny enough, I see it the exact opposite. LLM slop code degrades software quality. While one person may appear to move quickly, the software quality suffers dramatically. It takes them (or other team members) more time to fix the issues than it would have to just do it right the first time.

I mean, even with the advent of “AI” agents, is software today any better than it was 3 years ago?

I think teams embracing too much LLM coding are going to see a continued decrease in quality and a massive drop in team productivity. Godot, on the other hand, is avoiding this. While it might not be as trendy, I think it’ll be a competitive advantage in the long term.

Not the person you were responding to, but genuine question: How are you interacting with computers without practically ever using a mouse? And how do you expect to use CAD software without a mouse?

Do they? And if so, by choice?

I don’t like “AI”, and I don’t use it. I read lots of stories where people are forced to use it at work but don’t use it otherwise. Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it?

That’s a pretty naive model of how laws get passed in the US. A lot of laws would be different if your model held true.

Regardless of American vs. British spellings, those are not the same sound. Some British people may pronounce them the same. Americans definitely pronounce them differently, though. For instance, the word “water” has a hard “r” sound at the end; Americans don’t pronounce it “watuh” like some British people do.

This should be entirely non-controversial. Listening is much more passive. You can zone out more easily without re-reading. You don’t have to work your brain to figure out pacing or anything like that.

I think the only people who claim audiobooks are the same as actual reading are people who have never bothered to do much actual reading.

I had a similar experience in my undergrad software engineering course. One group literally took a JS facial recognition library and wrapped a halfway decent UI around it. That’s it, that was their entire project. But the grad student teaching the class and a lot of the other students were very impressed.

Hackathons are about making and finishing something. That’s the whole premise: Instead of spending months working on a personal project that goes nowhere, give yourself a time constraint so you’re forced to finish something. Now you have something concrete to put on your portfolio (even if it’s still a proof-of-concept) - plus you’ve probably learned a lot.

Setting up config files for a tool is not making something. That’s like if I spent hours setting up my IDE, build processes, a CI/CD pipeline, and even unit tests. That might be cool and enhance my productivity down the line. But I still haven’t made anything.

I’m all for hardware hackathons. But I think there’s still a place for software hackathons: Just don’t use LLMs. Generating an entire application with LLMs kinda defeats the point of a hackathon to begin with. It’s supposed to be about showing you can make something in a short time frame. It’s supposed to be about exploring and learning new areas with no long-term commitment. It’s supposed to let you develop your skills and build your portfolio; the time constraint forces you to actually finish something.

I can’t imagine going to a hackathon just to not write any code and outsource it all to an LLM. I wonder if any hackathons ban LLMs?

If a couple gives birth to a baby with a debilitating condition and dies after 6 weeks, that’s an additional baby death. If instead of having that baby, a couple gives birth to a healthy baby, it will likely survive into adulthood, meaning there’s one less baby death.

It sounds like you just take issue with abortion. That’s more of a you problem than a problem with quantifying baby deaths.

Did you read TFA? It explicitly mentions Bloom’s 2 sigma problem. The best quality education, based on the data, is private tutoring with mastery learning. That is unaffordable for most. Nothing about the data indicates that “ideology and politics” are having a negative effect on education.

MGTOW nonsense most certainly is not the common mode of operation for young men. Where are you getting this idea?

It’s a sad state of affairs when so many think math is about “rote memorizing formulas and rules like a robot”. That’s how math is taught through freshman or sophomore material for a somewhat ‘general’ audience. But real math is nothing like that - it requires far more creativity. You need to discover formulas and rules. You invent new rules and see what the consequences are. This all requires a great deal of creativity. Nothing “rote” about it.

If you don’t believe me, crack open a text on something like graph theory (that’s pretty accessible, and if you’re a programmer, you’re familiar with graphs) and read through some proofs. Or better yet, try to prove some theorems yourself. No amount of rote memorization of formulas or rules will replace the creativity needed to write these proofs. Doubly so for discovering the facts in the first place.

Much of the US is in a drought. While we can generate plenty of electricity, doing so with outdated fossils fuels and ‘natural gases’ introduces a lot of pollution that harms people and the environment. We need to be careful about making these decisions.

But that’s really the problem - “we” don’t get any say in these decisions. A bunch of corrupt politicians and rich oligarchs make these decisions that screw over the rest of us.

And yes, for the record, I’m not uniquely against “AI” data centers. I’m opposed to a lot of other environmentally harmful and wasteful developments. They don’t get hyped up like “AI” does, though.