Christine Lemmer-WebberFeb 23

It's demotivating to think that:

- LLMs aren't good at producing original / novel work
- You still need experts to advance that stuff
- It will always be slower to move without using LLMs
- Once an innovation is done though, an innovation can always be scooped up by the LLM users
- "Bro why are you doing all this manually, I just vibe coded that in a weekend"

Will it always be this way? It's depressing in the meanwhile, at least.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-Webber

In a sense, the decision is somewhat made for us in that we're developing next-generation stuff that LLMs don't know how to auto-code at @spritely. We are working on core infrastructure that needs to be carefully thought about and written. LLMs introduce a lot of errors and aren't good at doing this kind of work on their own.

And the goal was always that our work is there to be lifted from, to spread outward, the way people have long drawn from the well of the MIT / Stanford research labs in CS for decades, but for decentralized networking today

But doing it now, in this way, in this environment, it's just really depressing and demotivating.

Feb 23 at 4:21pmWeb
Show threadSwift (will be at EMF)Feb 23
@cwebber @spritely I had the near identical thought earlier - that someone needs to be doing the novel stuff, but we've created an environment that is, broadly speaking, uniquely demotivating to the sort of people that tend to do that sort of thing.
Show threadallisonFeb 23
@swift @cwebber @spritely the two sides of llms being fundamentally conservative—they entrench the past while making a different future more difficult
Show threadQuantum ⊂ AIFeb 23
@aparrish @swift @cwebber @spritely they also appeal to the most mediocre of white men who've never had a creative impulse in their whole entire lives
Show threadHansFeb 23
@pikesley @aparrish @swift @cwebber @spritely what does white have to do with it. Next you want me to feel bad for being german.
Show threadEskild HustvedtFeb 23
@cwebber Agreed. It’s making free and open source software development feel less rewarding. Less meaningful.
Show threadJorge CandeiasFeb 23

@cwebber @spritely We need you guys.

The thing that scares me the most is that in 10 years time there'll be no new people able to code new stuff, to innovate.

And *that* is the main reason why we absolutely need you guys. Regardless of how demotivating it may seem right now.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-WebberFeb 23
@jorgecandeias @spritely 💜
Show threadgemelenFeb 23

@jorgecandeias @cwebber @spritely

It's not demotivation that comes first, but rather a simple survival of those who are out of money, out of funding for the choice of doing things that last and that bridges to the future.

Show threadGnuxie 💜🐝 Feb 23
@jorgecandeias @cwebber @spritely I think it's incredibly alarmist to suggest that people won't take an interest in learning programming even the old "untainted" way. We already had this kind of fear mongering even before LLM's but with high level programming languages and is untrue.
Show threadǝʌɐpFeb 23
@cwebber It's difficult to not think of Anathem. Communities of theorists living an ascetic life away from the rest of society.
Show threadmccFeb 23
@cwebber @spritely I mean the problem as I see it is: The people who primarily benefit from the work aren't paying for it, and there's no way to get them to contribute back ("licenses" no longer exist). So the art can only be extended by individual humans expending their savings or going into personal debt. (In theory basic research could additionally be funded by corporations, but since people who care about the art exist as a resource to be exploited, there is no reason for them to do so.)
Show threadmccFeb 23
@cwebber @spritely This is similar to the problem I have making video games: Some portion of my audience will pirate my work. Technically that doesn't harm me, *but* if *everyone* pirates the game then I don't get any money and I don't get to keep making games. I decide I don't care because not everyone pirates games and *some* of the people playing the game will pay for it. LLMs, for code, sets up the possibility the entire audience will be pirating the work. Which is wild since my code is MIT
Show threadmccFeb 23

@cwebber @spritely This said, I want to give you the flipside to the process you're describing: I am currently creating a small programming language which exists for no purpose except for me to make games for the Game Boy and NES. When I look at my language, I think: *An LLM user could not use this language, because there is not a sufficient corpus to generate code from¹*. And this sparks joy in me

¹ And a significant portion of the corpus is testcases designed to fail

Show threadDaniel V.Feb 23
@mcc @cwebber @spritely a painstakingly pre-poisoned dataset 🥰
Show threadmccFeb 23

@dvandal @cwebber @spritely I think it is important to write test cases and I think it is important your test cases test your failure modes!

:3

Show threadDaniel V.Feb 23

@mcc @cwebber @spritely I work in QA, so my job is to test those failure modes. (Automatically and at scale to boot!)

And you are right! It is important to test those cases

Show threadaevaFeb 23
@mcc @dvandal @cwebber @spritely suddenly i feel an unprecedented desire to write any tests at all
Show threadMichał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Feb 23

@cwebber @spritely  

techbros gonna techbro, sigh

Show threadVissFeb 23

@cwebber @spritely once the honeymoon period is over and the folks who keep getting rm'ed get louder and more often complain than the success stories gush, the scale will tip.

people have realised cloud was way riskier and more expensive and have started brining stuff in house again, the same will happen with llms.

itll just take a critical mass, like anything else.

and the llm horror stories are piling up

Show threadSteveFeb 24

@cwebber @spritely I guess, a valuable motivator in the current LLM mire could be examples from history where clearly articulated technology—developed by small teams has had *huge* impact.

There are so many examples, but say, Sophie Wilson and colleagues and a need for low-cost educational computers resulting in ARM.

And now Sam Battle/LMNC imagining how musical tech can be constructed from scrap—likely about to re-invigorate UK’s entry to Eurovision! ‘Future history’ makers, if you will.