Mastodawn

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.

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euro.divergent Feb 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)

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mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl Feb 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.

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jakob.pxi Feb 24

@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.

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mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl

@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)”