Greg WilsonI used to think that when I retired, I would spend my time writing short tutorials on topics I was interested in as a way to learn more about them myself. I've now been unemployed for three months, and while I've written some odds and ends, it's not nearly as fulfilling as I expected because I _know_ that most people aren't going to read a three-thousand word exposition of discrete event simulation: they're going to ask an LLM, and get something pseudo-personalized in return. 1/3
To be clear, I don't think this is inherently a bad thing: ChatGPT and Claude have helped me build https://github.com/gvwilson/asimpy and fix bugs in https://github.com/gvwilson/sim, and I believe I've learned more, and more quickly, from interacting with them than I would on my own. But they do make me feel a bit like a typesetter who suddenly finds the world is full of laser printers and WYSIWYG authoring tools. 2/3
I believe I can write a better explanation than an LLM, but (a) I can only write one, not a dozen or a hundred with slight variations to address specific learners' questions or desires, and (b) it takes me days to do somewhat better what an LLM can do in minutes. I believe I go off the rails less often than an LLM (though some of my former learners may disagree), but is what I produce better *enough* to outweigh the speed and personalization that LLMs offer? If not, what do I do instead? 3/3
David Beazley@gvwilson I'm trying to decide which is worse: having no work at all or struggling to find steadily diminishing work. The problem with the latter being constant nagging of the question of whether to continue to drag it out even longer or to simply call it "done", accept, and move on.
@gvwilson I'm finding myself pretty close to the edge on the latter right now. I recently applied to a grad program in possible preparation for it.
Dustin Mitchell