i do not want to get into the business of posting LLM takes but very briefly:
It feels clear to me that some people* are getting value out of using LLMs for programming. Basically see https://simonwillison.net/'s whole blog. If I think about it purely on the basis of "in a vacuum, can this help me write programs", it seems like an exciting technology.
BUT...
(1/?)
(* it also feels clear that some people are NOT getting value out of LLMs, hoping to avoid flamewars about that please)
(continued from ^)
Google search doesn't work as well anymore because the results are full of LLM-generated articles? I hear about CEOs putting pressure on their teams to produce more faster because they've been told that AI will increase productivity?
it feels sad. even though I find LLMs useful sometimes, with all of the societal impacts it often feels like it isn't actually improving my life.
(2/?)
@b0rk I think that the way we perceive the Internet is still in a state of flux and 20 years from now we'll look at now the way we look at the early 2000s web2.0 the way at the time we looked at the early '90s geocities era when we looked weird at the earlier Usenet era and so on: a rather quaint but ultimately doomed to be obsoleted way to use this technology. In any case, there's a strong generational component, see the origins of the "Eternal September" meme.
At this point I feel it's all unescapably converging towards the amorphous yet omnipresent hose of semi-worthless data that's the backdrop of most cyberpunk media. But who knows?
Julia Evans
Petru Ratiu