Mastodawn

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 7h ago

One reason that it’s hard to take anti-ai discourse seriously here is the underlying assumption that everybody using ai is somehow all-in and uncritical about the technology. Yet the llm for coding discourse on X looks like this… everybody was dunking on Claude code too, for example, except the takes were usually informed and funny.

I can actually have productive discussions there, about labor, about ethics, about technical quality, about novel ideas, about concrete uses, and even have fun and good laughs (do I like that the main timeline is a hellhole? Of course not). There’s a reason most people don’t switch over to bluesky or mastodon, if even mentioning that you use llms just gets you abuse in the comments, or the assumption that you aren’t thinking about the consequences of your actions.

#llms #genai #llm #vibecoding

prom™️7h ago

@mnl i do not understand why you expect a sane conversation, when there is so much threat in the air. this is precisely why we should not have a hype, and as long as there is one i would not expect a sane conversation, because certain proponents make insane threats.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 7h ago

@promovicz because I don’t believe in giving up. Because I think that the best way to counter anxiety and fear is to take action. Shouting at people that are in a similar situation as you could be on your side is not action. You think I don’t experience anxiety and fear, as a software developer that believes that llms can replace pretty much all software development labor, as somehow who left their job over ai slop?

prom™️7h ago

@mnl This sounds perfectly sane, but you will get bunched in with people who act naively, and the political situation around us makes it very hard to dinstinguish your behavior from a stan, because most people are less competent and experienced about these things than you are?

You are a privileged early adopter. Why does it surprise you, that this is not an equal position?

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 7h ago

@promovicz that’s exactly my point lol. The discussion we are having is the ones I want to have. It’s been 3 years now, everybody knows what ChatGPT is, there’s front page articles about Claude code in the nytimes. Yet the discourse here is often still “AI is useless” because people assume that we’re still in the gpt-3.5 times or something. That’s _on them_, honestly. I don’t have some super privileged starting position besides being someone working as an engineer and able to afford a $20 sub. I’m just a dude with a computer. I barely have friends in tech, I’m not in a tech hub, i don’t have a degree, I don’t have a secret network of insiders.

Because taking a knee jerk anti ai stance makes it impossible to discern signal from noise, and thus take meaningful action. All that’s left is diffuse fear.

prom™️7h ago

@mnl No, the fear comes from "we're going to destroy half the tech industry" and "watch us buy all your RAM, even if we don't even promise to pay for it". You really should consider how this acts on other people, who do not share your early-adopter privilege.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 7h ago

@promovicz right, those are real fears, because they are true. You can’t ostrich and shout your way out of them. I’m not sure what your point is here, I am an early adopter for a product that had the biggest MAU growth ever when it was launched. I was an early adopter when 90% of the discourse here seemed to be about AI and LLMs. That’s not privileged, that’s just me actually not shutting off my brain and yelling like the rest of the crowd, but digging in and applying my hacker mindset.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 7h ago

@promovicz I wrote this 3 years ago: https://the.scapegoat.dev/llms-a-paradigm-shift-for-the-pragmatic-programmer/

I was called delusional (still am) and told I have no clue about software engineering. I could more easily forgive it then because models were really difficult to wield. That’s not the case anymore, anybody using even opensource models running on my local i7 (I don’t even own a gpu!) is miles ahead of where things were. And yet the discourse on mastodon doesnt seem to have progressed an inch…

LLMs: a paradigm shift for the pragmatic programmer

the scapegoat dev I have always been a software development aficionado: I love all the tools, I love all the paradigms, I love all the languages, I love...

the scapegoat dev

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 7h ago

@promovicz think about that, models running on my 8 year old computer with no gpu are _miles ahead_ of where things were 3 years ago. !! How is that for independent control !!

@mnl I don't really disagree. Locally run models would be cool, but you don't have the training data - right?

I also think that text-based LLMs may get beaten by token/construct-based approaches? It's not like this whole subject has no interesting angles... :)

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 5h ago

@promovicz I don’t have the source to my wifi firmware either but it’s a compromise I’m willing to make. That’s the type of discussions I would like to have, though. Im definitely an outcomes based person. If gpt5 allows me to reverse engineer iot cameras and open source their firmware, im ok with giving Altman and co some money, for example. I think of it as “I’m perfectly ok with driving a fossil fuel powered car to deliver a batch of junk bicycles to the local bike repair club”. I could disassemble them and awkwardly carry them one by one on my own bike, but that doesn’t really help all that much, because I’ll maybe deliver 5 and not 30 and my back will hurt and I probably won’t do it again all that soon.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 5h ago

@promovicz but that’s very different from “you can’t fit 30 bikes in a car” (true, that’s why we have trailers and vans) or “you fossil fuel industry shill that only wants to cover the planet with asphalt and burn more oil” (not true). I’m just a dude that wants more people to have free bikes and a local bike repair club.

prom™️4h ago

@mnl In politics, this reduction argument does not work. It can work on a personal level. But the discussion you're annoyed about, is a political discussion following political logic ("all politics are about compromise through trading of concerns", "if you argue concerns, you must try to behave consistently with your argument").

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 4h ago

@promovicz so should I by your logic shut up, stop using llms, in fact just stop using cars computers food electricity altogether? Where’s the reductionism? I am annoyed that this seems to be the only acceptable stance.

prom™️4h ago

@mnl Welcome to politics. When I was a teenager, the state had an interest in me, and most people in public thought that hacking is "evil". That wasn't fun, but it was very real.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 4h ago

@promovicz the state is not calling me brainrotten on mastodon though, that's what is so upsetting.

prom™️5h ago

@mnl I see no parallel between fimware and training data. The point is, that your local model is not independent. Most of them are *both* stolen and based on unclear sourcing. And that's a problem, in any case. It's not about copyright/left either - but about powerful entities dictating policy through involuntary means. As long as we carry that, or profit from it, this problem won't go away.

Who pays me, for my contribution to the LLMs? This is not optional. It is a right.

prom™️5h ago

@mnl I might even believe in copyleft (which I really only do partially) - and I would still demand compensation, because it is my right, and tactically useful to enforce it even if I believe differently. It is not your right to negate this law, and certainly not the right of some corp that crowns itself as the next-best-thing...

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 5h ago

@promovicz the firmware being a black box also means it’s outside of one’s control. I personally dgaf about copyright, and while I think companies should be required to at least provide the training corpus metadata to the public and respect “do not train” licenses, in order to actually contribute back to the commons, and it also putting a stick right where it hurts (properly labeled training data is hard in the same that deleting data is hard, vs just harvesting stuff), I am glad to be in the training corpus and I never wrote opensource for compensation or recognition. It might be different for other people, and it’s a valid point. Not one I personally agree with, actually out of moral principles: I’m privileged enough to have the skills and time to write opensource, and everybody should benefit from it, even if they don’t mention my name in some obscure file no one ever reads (speaking of MIT here, which I’ve used since the nineties).

The whole copyright thing is a double edged sword for big tech anyway, as we’ve seen with the Claude code leak _immediately_ being laundered. Now let’s do it for the wifi firmware as well (to circle back 🤣).

prom™️5h ago

@mnl but wi-fi firmware can be reversed and reconstructed. OSS has done that repeatedly, in various forms.

you do not have to care about copyright, to appreciate that other people will not allow having their rights violated. this is where you come off as snobbish and privileged. you may not care - but what about other people’s livelihood? the state has a duty to maintain a minimum balance of rights, and LLMs would tip towards corporate rights. I don’t want that tendency.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 4h ago

@promovicz please read what I wrote. I said I want companies to be regulated when it comes to the training data. I said wanting to have owns copyright respected is valid. I don’t know how to put it in clearer terms.

And models excel at reverse engineering, which is why despite having the skills I have reversed more in the last year than in my entire career, because it made it so much more accessible.

prom™️4h ago

@mnl Let me put it differently:

As a scene hacker and pirate (myself) I can accept your local compromise, but I can not make it non-marginal to the mainstream debate. You are acting ahead of the law and its perceived justice. A public-acting politician cannot do that. They have to argue yesterday's justice, or take their followers along for a transition in zeitgeist - and they can't easily do both at the same time. AI marketing tactics are the cause of this blockage, through disruption.

prom™️4h ago

@mnl There are many problems about LLMs that may not occur in your world. The "war on jobs" is pretty real. In many companies it's not people like you who get booted, but people like me. Some of those companies don't fare well at all. This may not matter to you, but it matters to me.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 4h ago

@promovicz I am unemployed because I left over AI slop... I live in a country without any worker protections, I don't have healthcare. I rejected multiple upper 6 figure offers to work for AI companies. It would be so easy for me to just put my principles aside and take my bag.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 4h ago

@promovicz that is what is so upsetting. there's an assumption that i'm this rich white person without a care in the world, uber privileged and thus entirely dismissable. And people working at google telling me I'm privileged and shouldn't use AI, while I actually am struggling to make ends meet _because_ I didn't want to use AI in a certain fashion, is ... upsetting.

prom™️3h ago

@mnl The privilege I'm talking about, is a different one. And it's not even real - just perceived. But in politics, perception is pretty real sometimes, imo.

Sorry about your job! Those types of things tend to go under in public discourse. I'm not particularly well either, but I do have a reasonable job atm, that's not under immediate threat. I sure wish you good luck, even if I don't quite follow entirely about the LLM thing... 🤜 🤛 💙

prom™️3h ago

@mnl Also, I do understand that's upsetting. I had similar situations about other things, with general society at one time, and with the scene at others. Not sure I have answers about all that. Maybe, in the end, also pragmatism - including moral compromise of my own.... :)

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 3h ago

@promovicz it's certainly deeply upsetting coming from people on the left, under the pretense of caring about people/workers/software quality/education/access to technology. even more so people having the same "perceived privilege".

it would be easier from some right-wing idiot, but you'd expect people here to maybe be more nuanced.

prom™️2h ago

@mnl Yeah... I'm a lead dev atm, for a relatively big company. Some people would consider me a hypocrite, even if I'm not necessary "that well-off". It puts me at a distance too, if I don't compensate. Some leftists don't like any type of leadership, or my slight profit motive, or my business perspective. Open-source management and budgets can appear puny from a corp perspective...

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 2h ago

@promovicz so maybe you understand why the comments about "there are many problems about LLMs that may not occur in your world" is pretty upsetting when coming from a lead dev in a big company in germany, vs an immigrant bottom-rung developer in a small company in the US in the state with the highest living costs. I know you didn't mean it that way, but that doesn't change its impact on me either.

prom™️2h ago

@mnl I'm sorry it feels that way. I get hung up, and I'm certainly not alone - with either good or bad intentions. Politically, this will probably stay tense for a while. Maybe, that hacker/pirate counter-culture argument does make some sense? I wouldn't exaggerate it either.

Wish you good luck, either way. I should run out, to this wondrous city over here.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 3h ago

@promovicz thanks. But also I hope this gives some weight to my other takes on LLMs, in particular regarding their technical capabilities. I am putting my money where my mouth is, probably not all that wisely.

mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl 4h ago

@promovicz if this is about not using the output of llms because it is "illegal", i'm willing to take that risk. I don't think the law is going to protect the interest of the people here. I don't think copyright law has served us well in the last 20 years, for example.