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 my workplace provides my department with licenses for Copilot and chatgpte. We're encouraged to use it as much as possible. (If the business data in my presentation is falsified by the LLM, though, who gets the blame, me or openai?)
Amusingly, we had to take training classes on using it. It's a conversational chatbot. Why provide training on talking to a robot when they never provided training on talking to my human coworkers? Lol
Julia Evans
Adam