I just proofread the American Astronomical Society response to SpaceX's response to AAS's petition to deny on SpaceX's million sat filing. It's a great document, but the fact that we need to say any of this (and spend volunteer time fighting SpaceX's highly paid lawyers) is completely infuriating.

I need to go outside now, really tough that I'm in a city and don't have a hay field available for easy rage-screaming.

My biggest problem with the concept of LLMs, even if they weren’t a giant plagiarism laundering machine and disaster for the environment, is that they introduce so much unpredictability into computing. I became a professional computer toucher because they do exactly what you tell them to. Not always what you wanted, but exactly what you asked for.

LLMs turn that upside down. They turn a very autistic do-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean commmunication style with the machine into a neurotypical conversation talking around the issue, but never directly addressing the substance of problem.

In any conversation I have with a person, I’m modeling their understanding of the topic at hand, trying to tailor my communication style to their needs. The same applies to programming languages and frameworks. If you work with a language the way its author intended it goes a lot easier.

But LLMs don’t have an understanding of the conversation. There is no intent. It’s just a mostly-likely-next-word generator on steroids. You’re trying to give directions to a lossily compressed copy of the entire works of human writing. There is no mind to model, and no predictability to the output.

If I wanted to spend my time communicating in a superficial, neurotypical style my autistic ass certainly wouldn’t have gone into computering. LLMs are the final act of the finance bros and capitalists wrestling modern technology away from the technically literate proletariat who built it.

This isn't your normal "looking for work" post.

I've decided to shut my business and do more volunteer / community work.

If you know of an organisation which could use a board member with strong digital skills, extensive experience in open source and open standards, or cybersecurity please let me know.

Nothing full time. Personal recommendations preferred. Feel free to share.

Got my performance review today.
Positive feedback: literally every member of my team says I'm the best manager they have ever had. I solved multiple long-standing problems the team has been dealing with for years. Team members feel safe to share their struggles, everyone feels empowered, everyone receives valuable feedback.
Negative feedback: I am not enthusiastic enough about AI.
Overall ranking: 3/5.

Anyone hiring for a fully remote team lead?

#GenAI #LLM #GetFediHired #FediHire