tanteFeb 23

Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.

You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.

Show threadeuro.divergentFeb 23
@tante I agree. And yet there is this: I have been using small LLMs to help me kick-off coding projects that I conceptually understand but lack the mental ability to learn the programming on my own. I let the model sketch the structure, suggest a stack, and then let it build while I watch and ask questions. Then I tell it to document all steps and explain what does what on a granular level. Last week I was able to generate a simple SSG. (1/5)
Show threadmnl mnl mnl mnl mnlFeb 23

@eurodivergent @tante this is exactly why I stand by #llms democratizing access to software engineering. I know so many people know, from artists to blue collar to family business hustlers to genomics researcher who are now building full fledged software solving problems for them. I assist minimally. They are truly empowered and so much of the alienating side of tech is gone, from replacing photoshop to using local only html gizmos to just knowing that you can get a relay board connected to your music software without spending the whole weekend on arduino frustrations. It cuts off ties to big tech and gets us back to whimsical personal software.

I can’t speak to other domains, but this one is truly real.

Show threadjakob.pxi

@mnl @eurodivergent @tante I think people tend to conflate output with process and semantics confuse us.

If you "commission" an AI as a layperson to write code, you did not code an app or know how the thing works and how to fix issues. Nor did you "create" art by telling a stochastic black box to approximate an output commensurate with what you would have created, if only you had the wherewithal to do so.

Commodification of the output is true, as long as the gatekeeper allows you to afford it.

Feb 24 at 12:22pmWeb
Show threadmnl mnl mnl mnl mnlFeb 24
@jakob @eurodivergent @tante but if I commission a computer to printf(“hello world”), didn’t I just commission an entire tower of abstraction and code and silicon and engineering to print out hello world? Where do you draw the boundary between “print hello world” and “printf(hello world)”
Show threadeuro.divergentFeb 24
@jakob @mnl @tante Nothing done with computers is solely a human thought process. Or to invert the same argument: Every human-computer interaction consists of dialogue. Machine output is the only possible way of feedback. The very reason computers exist is to fold complex actions and free us from doing them manually. I'd draw the line not between process vs. output but rather between understanding and not understanding what the computer does.
Show threadmnl mnl mnl mnl mnlFeb 24

@eurodivergent @jakob @tante while i don't fully subscribe to computers being purely utilitarian, I agree that how much understanding you want to put into what areas is something each person gets to determine for themselves, and doing things with a computer / understanding what a computer does is not just about coding (and even in coding, there are so many layers. I thought that in order to write printf("hello world") you had to learn how to build an OS and device drivers and how to build a CPU and at some realized that it's ok to rely on preexisting software and not understand everything).

It still gets me because I can't for the life of me not take things like "to be a real programmer you have to understand your code does" literally, because as hard as I try it is just absolutely impossible. At this point I don't even have a reasonable mental model of how the smallest microcontroller work anymore, with them coming with 1200 page datasheets. How am I supposed to understand what my javascript actually does?

But I don't think anybody writing javascript actually does so thinking about even something as high level as assembly instructions (except the odd JIT/interpreter implementer, and even then...).

So I do think it's about the output primarily, because a good output (i.e. something of value to humans) usually requires a lot of care, iteration and going beyond code.