Rick Ballard

I think of negative LLM impacts by “default outcomes”. A default outcome is high-velocity low-quality PRs. A default outcome is skill atrophy. Etc. I want more people to see that these are *defaults*, not inevitable.

If we approach each of these as a problem to be solved, we can steer the outcomes!

May 10 at 4:51pmIvory for iOS
Show threadRick BallardMay 10

Some of these problems are *very* solvable — even in ways that are better than the pre-LLM baseline.

Some problems are harder; e.g. steering our educational system to handle this new world & student impacts quickly enough is… oof. All the more important we focus energy on the hard problems now!

Show threadRick BallardMay 10
And much of the anti-AI discourse seems focused on the more-easily-solvable problems (e.g. slop code) and not on the harder problems we should be grappling with.
Show threadRick BallardMay 10
The problems that get the most focus also seem like those capital already has a lot of self-interest in solving. Focus more on the societal impacts that don’t have a fast-enough self-correction feedback loop.