gyomu
15 hours ago
Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there.
But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline.
> There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge that vaguely resembles it. That isn’t programming, though.
> I glimpsed someone on Twitter a few days ago, also scoffing at the idea that anyone would decide not to use the Whatever machine. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something like: “I created a whole album, complete with album art, in 3.5 hours. Why wouldn’t I use the make it easier machine?”
When you're a beginner, it's totally normal to not really want to put in the hard work. You try drawing a picture, and it sucks. You try playing the guitar, and you can't even get simple notes right. Of course a machine where you can just say "a picture in the style of Pokémon, but of my cat" and get a perfect result out is much more tempting to a 12 year old kid than the prospect of having to grind for 5 years before being kind of good.
But up until now, you had no choice and to keep making crappy pictures and playing crappy songs until you actually start to develop a taste for the effort, and a few years later you find yourself actually pretty darn competent at the thing. That's a pretty virtuous cycle.
I shudder to think where we'll be if the corporate-media machine keeps hammering the message "you don't have to bother learning how to draw, drawing is hard, just get ChatGPT to draw pictures for you" to young people for years to come.
raincole
14 hours ago
People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. Humans have been looking for easier and lazier ways to do things since the dawn of civilization.
Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so. World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented. World record of how many digits of pi memorized kept improving even when a computer does that indefinitely times better.
It's ridiculous to think drawing will become a lost art because of LLM/Diffusal models when we live in a reality where powerlifting is a thing.
maleno
11 hours ago
I think it's interesting that practically every time this point is made (and it is made so very often), the examples that are used to prove the point are objective and easy to measure. A 100m sprint time or a calculation of Pi is not the same as a work of art, because they can be measured objectively while art cannot. There is no equivalent in art-making to running a 100m sprint. The evaluation of a 100m sprint is not subjective, does not require judgement, does not depend on taste, context, history, and all the other many things the reputation and impact of a work of art depends on.
As ever, the standard defence of LLM and all gen AI tech rests on this reduction of complex subjectivity to something close to objectivity: the picture looks like other pictures, therefore it is a good picture. The sentence looks plausibly like other sentences, therefore it is a good sentence. That this argument is so pervasive tells me only that the audience for 'creative work' is already so inundated with depthless trash, that they can no longer tell the difference between painting and powerlifting.
It is not the artists who are primarily at risk here, but the audience for their work. Artists will continue to disappear for the same reason they always have: because their prospective audience does not understand them.
bsenftner
9 hours ago
There is at least three major art markets: 1) pretty pictures to fill in a void (empty walls, dress up an article...), 2) prestige purchases for those trying to fill that void in their imposter syndrome, and 3) fellow artists who are really philosophers working beyond language. The whole reason art is evaluated with vague notions like taste, context, history and so on is because the work of artists left their audience's understanding several generations ago, but they still need to make a living, so these proxies are used so the general public does not feel left out. Serious art is leading edge philosophy operating in a medium beyond language, and for what it's worth AI will never be there, just like the majority of people.
MichaelZuo
7 hours ago
There’s an even deeper issue, not just for art, for all things.
The majority of artists, and of all other groups, are in fact mediocre with mediocre virtues, so enough incentives would turn most of them into Whatever shillers like the post describes.
So a non expert cannot easily determine, even if they do stumble upon “Serious art” by happenstance, whether it’s just another empty scheme or indeed someting more serious.
Maybe if they spend several hours puzzling over the artist’s background, incentives, network, claims, past works, etc… they can be 99% sure. But almost nobody likes any particular piece of work that much upon first glance, to put in that much effort.
jchanimal
3 hours ago
The opposite. We are all learning to hone our slop detectors now, real art is more valuable and necessary.
Miraltar
8 hours ago
The example might be bad but the argument still stands. Painting hasn't disappeared when photography was invented. Drummers still drum after the invention of drum machines.
globnomulous
5 hours ago
Music is actually a terrific counterexample to your point. It perfectly demonstrates the culturally and artistically destructive power of the steady march of progress in computer technology -- which really has led to fewer drummers.
Far fewer people make their living as musicians than did even thirty years ago, and being a musician is no longer a viable middle-class career. Jaron Lanier, who has written on this, has argued that it's the direct result of the advent of the internet, music piracy, and streaming -- two of which originally were expected or promised to provide more opportunities for artists, not take them away.
So there really are far fewer drummers, and fewer, worse opportunities for those who remain, than there were within the living memory of even most HN users, not because some specific musical technology advanced but because technological advancement provided an easier, cheaper alternative to human labor.
Sound familiar yet?
dingnuts
5 hours ago
> which really has led to fewer drummers.
what's your basis for this claim? please provide some data showing number of drummers over time, or at least musicians, over the last fifty years or so. I tried searching and couldn't find anything but you're so confident, I'm sure you have a source you could link
globnomulous
4 hours ago
Sure, here's a blog post that cites BLS statistics showing a 45% decline in the number of working musicians in the US just between 2002 and 2012: https://thetrichordist.com/2013/05/21/45-fewer-professional-...
jchanimal
3 hours ago
I’m one of those statistics. But I still play. It’s fun to imagine myself with a full time studio career but instead I’m a database startup founder. (I got into databases by building a web crawler to recommend how musicians could promote themselves on mp3 blogs.)
How many musicians or artists are finding their need to explore similarly met by opportunities that simply didn’t exist in 2002? If art is expression than we should expect the people who might have wielded a brush or guitar to be building software instead.
If this is you, I recommend Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. It’s as pure an expression of the way I like to work in music, as it is aligned with how I think about code and product design.
ineedasername
4 hours ago
To the extent this argument holds, it then fails for something like writing code, as well as any visual art style when works are created on a computer if their original aesthetic derived from the material-world limitations of tools and materials under which it arose: no human skill, no countless hours of labor has gone in to producing digital works in styles or colors where their perceived beauty was rooted to the rarity of seeing, ever in one’s life, something like the shade of blue derived from lapis lazuli. Now? Any child with a screen can produce it.
flir
8 hours ago
Better analogy might be all those gloomy Victorian artists wandering around declaring the death of portraiture after photography really got going.
Unearned5161
12 hours ago
Something notable to recognize when comparing LLM's to calculators, is the fact that the skill a calculator is replacing can be learned by any competent adult in about a week. Manual division, addition, even more complicated stuff, it will just take much longer. However, the skills that an LLM is targeting, once atrophied are not replaceable in such short time frames.
Being good at coming up with ideas, at critically reading something, at synthesizing research, at writing and editing, are all things that take years to learn. This is not the same as learning the mechanics that a calculator does for you.
bryanrasmussen
14 hours ago
>LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is.
I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time. Or a microwave oven that told you it grilled the chicken but it didn't and you have to die from Salmonella poisoning.
lan321
13 hours ago
The microwave analogy is good. I still use it, even though it often makes half my food scalding hot while the other half remains fridge cold.
badpun
13 hours ago
You should set the microwave to much lower power and let it heat for much longer, so that the heat gets to transfer evenly across the mass of the food. It even says so in the instruction manual. If you blast with full power, leave the food for at least 2 minutes after it's heated for the heat to balance out across the food (again, it's in the manual).
fhe
11 hours ago
or turn the food over, or move it to a different position inside the microwave -- the way microwave works is that it heats up the food unevenly (there's a wave involved).
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
8 hours ago
I don’t really think repositioning it has a direct effect. An indirect effect of moving it around is that you turn the microwave off for around 30 seconds or more in order to do it. The reason some parts increase in heat faster is that they have higher concentrations of water; allowing the water to stop boiling and all of the heat to spread through is the magic.
(I’ve heard the fans that you hear are there to reflect the micro waves and make them bounce all over the place but I don’t know if that’s true. Regardless, most models have a spinning plate which will constantly reposition the food as it cooks.)
sevensor
3 hours ago
> The reason some parts increase in heat faster is that they have higher concentrations of water;
Composition is part of it, but it isn’t the whole story. A microwave oven is a resonant cavity. There are standing electromagnetic waves in there, in several different modes. They have peaks and nulls. That’s why many microwaves have a rotating plate. It physically moves the food relative to the standing waves.
immibis
6 hours ago
The fan you hear is to keep the microwave generator cool. It's outside the part of the microwave where the microwaves go.
Older microwaves had a fan-like metal stirrer inside the cooking box, that would continuously re-randomize where the waves went. This has been out of fashion for several decades.
lan321
10 hours ago
Yes, my point was that microwaves are advertised as a 'throw your lunch in and get it warm in 1-2 minutes' appliance, but kinda like an LLM, they require some manual effort to do it well (or decently, depending on your standards).
Like:
1- Put it on the edge of the plate, not in the middle
2- Check every X seconds and give it a stir
3- Don't put metal in
4- Don't put sealed things in
5- Adjust time for wetness
6- Probably don't put in dry things? (I believe you needed water for a microwave to really work? Not sure, haven't tried heating a cup of flour or making a caramel in the microwave)
7- Consider that some things heat weirdly, for example bread heats stupid quick and then turns into stone equally as quick once you take it out.
...
CuriouslyC
7 hours ago
I would buy a calculator that could help me break down the problem and show my work though, that's the hardest part. I can always double check the numbers, and I would get partial credit for a miscalculation with the right process, but if I can't figure out how to represent the problem mathematically, I'm cooked.
thayne
6 hours ago
Even if it is wrong half the time, and even when it gives you the right answer the work it shows isn't correct?
analog31
8 hours ago
Just an odd aside that occurred to me: Would you buy a calculator that hallucinates wrong answers part of the time, but gets enough correct answers and "partial credit" to earn you a certificate for being competent in math?
raincole
13 hours ago
Microwave oven does quite unexpected things when you cook a shelled egg or a dish on metal plate.
We teach our kids about microwave oven safety for this reason.
bigstrat2003
12 hours ago
On the contrary, those things are quite predictable. Once you know those issues exist, you can reliably avoid them. But with LLMs you can't reliably avoid hallucinations. The unreliability is baked into the very nature of the tool.
user
11 hours ago
Cthulhu_
12 hours ago
Except that we know that it does that when you put those things in, so they aren't "quite unexpected".
JW_00000
13 hours ago
My grandma did not have a microwave oven because she didn't see the point of it.
Al-Khwarizmi
13 hours ago
I'm in my 40s and don't have a microwave oven because I don't see the point of it... when I lived in a rented apartment, I got gifted one because how could I not have one? I tried it for a few days and just didn't find it useful. When I bought my own apartment and renovated the kitchen, I didn't bother to install one.
Semaphor
12 hours ago
The use is heating up single portions of leftovers.
Al-Khwarizmi
12 hours ago
Which can be done in an induction cooker almost as fast, with the result tasting better, and without the need of a specific appliance that takes up considerable space.
Semaphor
12 hours ago
I guess, if you have one of those. Vastly more expensive and more involved to install, especially when renting. I’ve never used one because I’ve never been at a place with one.
Al-Khwarizmi
11 hours ago
When I rented I had a standard ceramic hob and still didn't see the point... sure, you gain some time, but it's maybe 5 minutes of unattended time where you can often be doing something else, vs. much worse taste. But I understand that with slow cookers it can make sense for other people. With induction I think it's outright pointless.
As an anecdote, in my country there is a very popular brand of supermarket pizzas, Casa Tarradellas. I never buy them but a friend of mine used to eat them really frequently. So once he shows up at my house with one, and I say OK, I'm going to heat it. I serve it, he tries a bite and is totally blown away. He says "What did you do? I've been eating these pizzas for years and they never taste like this, this is amazing, the best Casa Tarradellas pizza I've ever had".
The answer was that he used the microwave and I had heated it in the regular oven...
Semaphor
11 hours ago
> vs. much worse taste
I have never had that issue when heating stuff up. Your pizza example is not reheating (and generally you never want to reheat anything that’s supposed to be crispy in the microwave; though not on the stove top either).
immibis
2 hours ago
Ordinary ovens also do that alright. Takes 20-30 minutes instead of 2-3, but that just trains your delayed reward system a little. Also, don't use a plastic container.
They do a lot more things though, which microwaves don't. Pizza, for example, has to be cooked properly, not with a microwave. If I can only have one, I'll take the mini conventional oven.
kasey_junk
9 hours ago
I don’t own a microwave because I don’t mind the trade offs of other tools that do the same job. But I don’t go around telling people who find microwaves useful that they are bringing about the end of cooking and should feel bad because of it.
teiferer
8 hours ago
[dead]
Daisywh
10 hours ago
Maybe the real question isn’t whether the microwave is useful, but whether she wanted what it offered. That seems to apply to a lot of tech debates today too.
kenjackson
13 hours ago
My microwave regularly doesn’t cool things as the instructions describe. I’ve learned to pay attention.
rob_c
13 hours ago
You would if you were able to do basic mental maths and you learned to engage and run basic sanity checks. That's still much faster than grabbing the slide rule. (And it's not like people are infallible)
Obviously if one product hallucinated and one doesn't it's a no brainer (cough Intel FPUs). But in a world where the only calculators were available hallucinated at the 0.5% level you'd probably have one in your pocket still.
And obviously if the calculator hallucinated at the 90% of the time for a task which could otherwise be automated you'd just use that approach.
eesmith
12 hours ago
I've seen my accountant's fingers flawlessly fly using a calculator to track expenses down to the penny. Few people have those mental skills even in the days before calculators - either mechanical or digital.
Slide rule are good for only a couple of digits of precision. That's why shopkeepers used abacuses not slide rules.
I have a hard time understanding your hypothetical. What does it mean to hallucinate at the 0.5% level? That repeating the same question has a 0.5% chance of giving the wrong answer but otherwise it's precise? In that case you can repeat the calculation a few times to get high certainty. Or that even if you repeat the same calculation 100 times and choose the most frequent response then there's still a 0.5% chance of it being the wrong one?
Or that values can be consistently off by within 0.5% (like you might get from linear interpolation)? In that case you are a bit better than a slide rule for estimating, but not accurate enough for accounting purposes, to name one.
Does this hypothetical calculator handle just plus, minus, multiply, and divide? Or everything that a TI 84 can handle? Or everything that WolframAlpha can handle?
If you had a slide rule and knew how to use it, when would you pay $40/month for that calculator service?
SAI_Peregrinus
6 hours ago
> Slide rule are good for only a couple of digits of precision. That's why shopkeepers used abacuses not slide rules.
Shopkeepers did integer math, not decimal. They had no need for a slide rule, an abacus is faster at integer math, a slide rule is used for dealing with real numbers.
eesmith
an hour ago
Yes ... Isn't that my point? I meant it as an example of how neither "basic mental maths and ... sanity checks" nor is a calculator with a 0.5% error rate are appropriate.
fireflash38
9 hours ago
Slide rules were used in astronomy, engineering, and aviation. You could get them more accurate than 2 decimal places.
eesmith
8 hours ago
"A couple" does not always mean two.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/couple - "(informal) a small number"
FWIW, "Maximum accuracy for standard linear slide rules is about three decimal significant digits" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule
While yes, "Astronomical work also required precise computations, and, in 19th-century Germany, a steel slide rule about two meters long was used at one observatory. It had a microscope attached, giving it accuracy to six decimal places" (same Wikipedia page), remember that this thread is about calculating devices one might carry in one's pocket, have on one's self, or otherwise be able to "grab".
(There's a scene in a pre-WWII SF story where the astrogators on a large interstellar FTL spacecraft use a multi-meter long slide rule with a microscope to read the vernier scale. I can't remember the story.)
My experience is that I can easily get two digits, but while I'm close to the full three digits, I rarely achieve it, so I wouldn't say you get three decimal digits from a slide rule of the sort I thought was relevant.
I'm a novice at slide rules, so to double-check I consulted archive.org and found "The slide rule: a practical manual" at https://archive.org/details/sliderulepractic00pickrich/page/...
> With the ordinary slide rule, the accuracy obtainable will largely depend upon the precision of the scale spacings, the length of the rule, the speed of working, and the aptitude of the operator. With the lower scales it is generally assumed that the readings are accurate to within 0.5 per cent. ; but with a smooth-working slide the practised user can work to within 0.25 per cent
That's between 2 and 3 digits. You wouldn't do your bookkeeping with it.
bigstrat2003
4 hours ago
"a couple" always means two. "A few" always means three. That wiki is wrong.
projektfu
2 hours ago
If someone says, there were a couple [of] people there, I would not expect there to have been two, specifically.
eesmith
39 minutes ago
Feel free to check some print dictionaries.
New Merriam-Webster dictionary, 1989, def. 4 "an indefinite small number" - https://archive.org/details/newmerriamwebste00spri/page/180/...
Pocket Oxford English dictionary, 2005, def. 3 "(informal) an indefinite small number" - https://archive.org/details/pocketoxfordengl0000unse_p5e4/pa...
The Random House college dictionary, 1975, def. 6, "a couple of, (Informal) a small number of, a few"
zpeti
13 hours ago
Do you use a GPS? That sometimes gets the route wrong, but overall gets you to where you want to go in less traffic than if you didn't use it? And occasionally really delights you with new routes?
(thanks Rory Sutherland for this analogy)
8n4vidtmkvmk
12 hours ago
The success rate and failure mode matters. Gps/maps you can look at before driving and confirm it's not completely insane quite easily, and if it takes a suboptimal route you still get to your destination.
If an LLM hallucinates and you don't know better, it can be bad. Hopefully people are double checking things that really matter, but some things are a little harder to fact check.
projektfu
2 hours ago
If the GPS routinely hallucinated the existence of places to go, not just occasionally erroneous or out-of-date data, but literally putting streets where they never existed or taking me to the nearest branch of a bank when that never existed, it would be unreliable enough that I would probably only trust maps made the old fashioned way.
kqr
8 hours ago
Wait, do people generally use GPS routes to go places? I find GPS to be great to locate myself when I can't figure it out from landmarks, but I very rarely use it to select a route – I can just look at the map in the same app and figure out a route on my own.
Muromec
6 hours ago
I used GPS routing today to cycle to from a station to a place I never been to before. Used it before for driving on highways in a weird place. Its very helfull when you dont know the area very well
sfn42
7 hours ago
I can't remember a whole route just from looking at the map once. Also maps generally don't show whether streets are one way and things like that.
I just type the address into Google maps, or place a pin manually, then hit the start button. It'll tell me every step of the way. Keep right at the fork. In a hundred meters, turn left. Turn left. Take the second exit in the roundabout. Your destination is a hundred meters ahead on the right.
It's great and it works almost flawlessly. Even better if you have a passenger able to keep an eye on it for those times when it isn't flawless.
1718627440
4 hours ago
> Also maps generally don't show whether streets are one way and things like that.
Citation needed.
eesmith
13 hours ago
Rarely. I feel lost when I use GPS to get places.
Alec Watson of Technology Connections points out that GPS routing defaults to minimizing time, even when that may not the most logical way to get somewhere.
His commentary, which starts at https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA?t=1804 , is an example of his larger argument about the complacency of letting automation do things for you.
His example is a Google Maps routing which saves one minute by going a long way to use a fast expressway (plus $1 toll), rather than more direct but slower state routes and surface streets. It optimizes one variable - time - of the many variables which might be important to you - wear&tear, toll costs, and the delight of knowing more about what's going on in the neighborhood.
His makes the point that he is not calling for a return to paper maps, but rather to reject automation complacency, which I'll interpret as letting the GPS figure everything out for you.
We've all heard stories of people depending on their GPS too much then ending up stuck on a forest road, or in a lake, or other place which requires rescue - what's the equivalent failure mode with a calculator?
sfn42
7 hours ago
If you drive into a lake or anything like that it's your own fault not the GPS. It doesn't control the car it just tells you directions. And if you know the area well enough to make judgements like the other things you mentioned, you don't need gps. Gps is specifically for when you don't know where to go.
I use it all the time, pretty much zero issues.
zpeti
12 hours ago
OK I don't think I'm going to persuade you if you don't use GPS. Buy 95% of the population do.
eesmith
11 hours ago
Pardon? I said I use GPS.
I'm also aware of the failure modes with GPS complacency, including its incomplete knowledge of the variables that I find important.
And that's with something that makes mistakes far less often than LLMs and related technology.
Which is why I don't think that your mention of GPS use is a strong counter-example to bryanrasmussen's comment against using hallucinating devices.
cess11
12 hours ago
I don't, I use static maps and aerial photos, and sometimes satellite photos. I also don't have a microwave oven, in part because they are highly unreliable depending on where certain molecules ended up in the bucket in the freezer and so on.
However, I do have a pressure cooker and a rice cooker that gets a lot of use. They're extremely reliable and don't use much electricity and I can schedule what they do, which is bulk cooking without me having to care about it while it happens.
KaiserPro
12 hours ago
Up until recently, I could, if I wanted to have a living doing VFX. I could, if I wanted to, craft new worlds, and get paid for it.
In two years, that won't be the case.
Its the same for virtually all other Arts based job. An economy that currently support say 100% of the people now, will at most be able to support 10-30% in a few years time.
> It's ridiculous to think drawing will become a lost art because of LLM/Diffusal
Map reading is pretty much a dead art now (as someone who leads hikes, I've seen it first hand)
Memorising books/oral history is also a long dead art.
Oral story telling is also a dead art, as is folk music, compared to its peak.
Sure _rich_ people will be able to do all the arts they want. Everyone else won't
scripper
12 hours ago
I agree. I am at mid-career. I know many people who dedicated years of their lives learning a craft and building a dignified, somewhat-creative career. I admire these people greatly. The rewards from putting in this effort have disappeared.
For example, I have no knowledge of film editing or what “works” in a sequence, but if I wanted to I could create something more than passable with AI.
scrollaway
12 hours ago
My girlfriend is a ceramist. She makes porcelain pieces (https://malinamore.art/) that are sold for hundreds or even thousands of euros.
Why would someone buy a plate off her, when they could get one from IKEA for 1.50 eur?
Yet ceramics is not a dead art. Beats me?
KaiserPro
11 hours ago
Correct!
but 200 years ago there were loads of ceramic manufactures, employing hundreds of thousands of skilled potters. even 50 years ago, there were thousands of skilled ceramists in the UK. now its single person artisans, like your very talented other half.
Now, that reduction in work force too 200 years and mirrors the industrial revolution. GenAI is looking like its going to speed run that in ~5-7 years
I should be more clear, there is a difference between dead art (memorizing stories) and non viable career for all but 1% of people compared to now. I'm talking about the latter.
tetraodonpuffer
9 hours ago
there will always be a market for exceptional artists, but what about the other 80-90% of people that used to be able to make a living and now can't anymore? What are they going to do? And without the possibility of a particular profession leading to gainful employment, very few people will even start it, making the funnel smaller and smaller until even exceptional artists won't be able to emerge at all.
CuriouslyC
7 hours ago
We still have amazing master blacksmiths who've reached the pinnacle of the craft despite no economic demand for their skills, so clearly the lack of a market doesn't deter curious people looking for a hobby.
KaiserPro
6 hours ago
> doesn't deter curious people looking for a hobby.
curious rich people.
CuriouslyC
3 hours ago
I've met a few master blacksmiths who do fair/con circuits, these are often guys who did stuff in their garage while working a regular job until they were able to build a customer base and online presence.
madmask
an hour ago
The point is what value can the common man reasonably provide in the free market to support a family when most of white collar work is also automated?
The industrial revolution automated a lot of blue collars, AI is starting to seriously automate white collars to the point less people are needed.
They are automating the mind, there’s not much else to compete with to provide value. Which color people should pivot to?
Cthulhu_
12 hours ago
> People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is.
No it's not (like OP's article says). With a calculator you punch in 10 + 9 and get 2 immediately, and this was 50+ years ago. With an LLM you type in "what is 10 + 9" and get three paragraphs of text after a few seconds. (this is false, I just tried it and the response is "10 + 9 = 19" but I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect). With a microwave you yeet in food and press a button and stuff happens the same way, every time.
Sure, if you abstract it to "doing things in an easier and lazier way", LLMs are just the next step, like IDEs with built in error checking and code generation were since 20 years ago. But it's more vague than press button to do a thing.
andreasmetsala
10 hours ago
> No it's not (like OP's article says). With a calculator you punch in 10 + 9 and get 2 immediately, and this was 50+ years ago.
Your calculator is broken.
> With an LLM you type in "what is 10 + 9" and get three paragraphs of text after a few seconds. (this is false, I just tried it and the response is "10 + 9 = 19" but I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect).
So you’re arguing against a strawman?
user
7 hours ago
lloeki
9 hours ago
> World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented.
A very good example! (...although probably not how you think it is ;)
Indeed the world record is achieved by a very limited number of people under stringent conditions.
Meanwhile people by and large† take their cars to go to the bakery which by foot would be 10min away, to disastrous effect on their health.
And by "cars" I mean "technology", which, while a fantastic enabler of things impossible before, has turned more people into couch potatoes than athletes.
† Comparatively to world record holders.
aredox
12 hours ago
>World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented.
Obesity rates keep "improving" since the car was invented, up to becoming a major public health crisis and the main amplifier of complications and mortality when the pandemic stroke.
Oh, and the 100m sprint world record has been set for more than a decade and a half now, which means either we reached human optimum, or progress on anti-doping technology has forced a regression on performance.
andrepd
10 hours ago
> People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is.
Well you sure showed them.
The TFA makes a very concrete point about how the Whatever machine is categorically different from a calculator or a handsaw. A calculator doesn't sometimes hallucinate a wrong result. A saw doesn't sometimes cut wavy lines instead of straight lines. They are predictable and learnable tools. I don't see anyone addressing this criticism, only straw manning.
1718627440
5 hours ago
But you are not allowed to use either until you can already cook and calculate.
dingnuts
4 hours ago
comparing LLMs to microwaves makes me think of the time my grandmother cooked the Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave because it was new and easy and the obvious thing to do!
I guess the analogy isn't that bad! I'd be pretty upset if a professional cook made my steak in a microwave.
tgv
13 hours ago
> Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so
Even though that is a generalization that you cannot prove, you implicitly admit that it will prevent everybody else from gettings any skills. Which is quite a bad outcome.
> powerlifting is a thing
Those people have a different motivation: looks, competition, prestige, power. That doesn't motivate people to learn to draw.
Your easy dismissal is undoubtedly shared by many, but it is hubris.
ineedasername
4 hours ago
The jump from Assembly to Python is an enormous skill difference. But the shift from Python to Python with Copilot? Not as much, and every counter to this sort of comparison that I have heard is strongly in want of a true Scotsman.
It’s time to move on. The history of tech is a steady march of tools that demand less prep, less precision, and less friction from their users.
All this hand-wringing seems to show is that a worforce whose aggregate work ethos usually mocks “get off my lawn” attitudes in others was hiding a significant “but I never thought it would happen to me”, often couched in some variety of “but think of the children”.
Besides, it could be worse: it’s not like when other professions went obsolete practically overnight, like switchboard operators, or cuirassiers.
armchairhacker
8 hours ago
IMO AI isn't like a calculator, it is like a microwave. Another analogy would be like takeout. The difference is that you don't get to choose the details, and usually get worse quality, but sometimes that's OK.
Ygg2
9 hours ago
> People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is.
There are clear differences. First of a calculator and microwave are quite different, but so is LLM. Both are time savers, in the sense of microwave saves time defrosting and calculator saves time calculating vs human.
They save time to achieve a goal. However calculators come with a penalty, by making multiplication easier they make user worse at it.
LLMs are like calculators but worse. They both are effort savers, and thus come with a huge learning penalty and unprecise enough that you need to learn to know better than them.
Caelus9
10 hours ago
Totally agree. Calculators didn’t kill math. Cameras didn’t kill painting. Tools change the baseline, but people still push the edges. The ones who love the craft won’t stop just because it got easier for others.
mystified5016
5 hours ago
AI is the equivalent of going from stone abacuses straight to smartphones, skipping all computer and calculator development in between.
We go from a society where only a very few people are literate in math to one where everyone has a literal supercomputer at all times. What do you think that would do for math literacy in a society? Would everyone suddenly went to learn algebra and calculus? Or would the vast majority of people use the easy machine and accept its answers without question or understanding?
ninetyninenine
13 hours ago
>People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is.
You generally don't need a lengthy explanation because it's common sense. When someone doesn't get it then people have to go into lengthy convoluted explanations because they are trying to elucidate common sense to someone who doesn't get it.
I mean how else do I elucidate it?
LLMs are different from any revolutionary technology that came before it. The first thing is we don't understand it. It's a black box. We understand the learning algorithm that trains the weights, but we don't understand conceptually how an LLM works. They are black boxes and we have limited control over them.
You are talking to a thing that understands what you say to it, yet we don't understand this how this thing works. Nobody in the history of science has created anything similar. And yet we get geniuses like you who can use a simple analogy to reduce the creation of an LLM to something like the invention of a car and think there's utterly no difference.
There is a sort of inflection point here. It hasn't happened yet but a possible future is becoming more tangible. A future where technology surpasses humanity in intelligence. You are talking to something that is talking back and could surpass us.
I know the abundance of AI slop has made everyone numb to the events that happened in the past couple of years. But we need to look past that. Something major has happened, something different then the achievements and milestones humanity has surpassed before.
rob_c
13 hours ago
> You generally don't need a lengthy explanation because it's common sense. When someone doesn't get it then people have to go into lengthy convoluted explanations because they are trying to elucidate common sense to someone who doesn't get it.
Maybe you're new here friend...
pests
13 hours ago
[flagged]
intrasight
11 hours ago
> The first thing is we don't understand it.
Perhaps you do not understand it, but many software engineers do understand.
Of the human brain we can still say that we don't understand it.
Attrecomet
6 hours ago
>Perhaps you do not understand it, but many software engineers do understand.
No, they do not. LLMs are by nature a black box problem solving system. This is not true about all the other machines we have, which may be difficult to understand for specific or even most humans, but allow specialists to understand WHY something is happening. This question is unanswerable for an LLM, no matter how good you are at Python or the math behind neural networks.
ninetyninenine
6 hours ago
Why do we keep getting people who say we understand LLMs.
Let me put it plainly. If we understood LLMs we would understand why hallucinations happen and we would subsequently be able to control and stop hallucinations from happening. But we can’t. We can’t control the LLM because of lack of understanding.
All the code is available on a computer for us to modify every single parameter. We have full access and we can’t control the LLM because we don’t understand or KNOW what to do. This is despite the fact that we have absolute control over the value of every single atomic unit of an LLM
throwawayoldie
4 hours ago
> The first thing is we don't understand it. It's a black box. We understand the learning algorithm that trains the weights, but we don't understand conceptually how an LLM works
Wrong.
> You are talking to a thing that understands what you say to it
Wrong.
zwnow
14 hours ago
My guy its not only about the art its about killing passion and the lifeline of people. Your take is incredibly ignorant to people who value human created work. These things will kill industries. What jobs should people work in, who got their income cut by LLMs? Force them into blue collar work?
worldsayshi
13 hours ago
Your point is very valid. It is the luddite argument. And that is valid. But the problem is never the technology itself but, as you point out, the loss of livelihood and meaning and especially the shifts in power from the many to the few.
We need to learn to make technology truly benefit the many. Also in terms of power.
zwnow
13 hours ago
Yes, fully agree. Can't believe we live in a timeline in which big tech companies steal data from the many, use this data to train models, sell this data while also convincing technological illiterate people their propaganda machines (social media) is useful to them... Now they want to buy nuclear power plants too. Im sure nothing will go wrong there.
worldsayshi
11 hours ago
It's all downstream from the way the economy works, and the economy is (I think) downstream from the tools we use to coordinate effort. If we can evolve the way which we handle resource allocation, trust and effort coordination I emphatically believe there's at least some some hope that we can create an alternative economy. Which it seems that we urgently need as a civilization.
JW_00000
13 hours ago
But isn't that the same as saying: what about all the horse carrier drivers who lost their jobs due to cars? What about all the bank tellers we lost after inventing the automated teller machine?
zwnow
13 hours ago
There is a difference in killing off passion work and mundane work. We are also killing off empathy while we are at it.
dale_glass
13 hours ago
I don't think there's a real difference. Thinking a job is "mundane" IMO is mostly a case of not working that job. Many "mundane" jobs have depth and rewards, even if not in every instance.
I've heard people express that they liked working in retail. By extension somebody must have enjoyed being a bank teller. After all, why not? You get to talk to a lot of people, and every time you solve some problem or answer a question and get thanked for it you get a little rush of endorphins.
Many jobs that suck only suck due to external factors like having a terrible boss or terrible customers, or having to enforce some terrible policy.
zwnow
13 hours ago
This sounds like a strawman tbh, I have worked retail for years and I do not know a single person enjoying retail work. Especially not cashiers. I can understand what you are on about, but do you think this is the majority of people? The issue is being able to support yourself which these mundane jobs hardly are able to. Personally I want these mundane things automated because I don't want to interact with people. I appreciate art though and I want to support human art. I appreciate everything from ancient architecture and stone cutting to renaissance paintings to basement drawings of amateurs. Art used to have character and now its all the same AI slop. Video games will become unplayable for me in the near future. Advertisements will be fully AI slop. Sure there are still artists out there, but they get overshadowed by AI slop.
dale_glass
13 hours ago
I mean, retail has many different instances of it. Yes, I can imagine working in a busy supermarket owned by a giant like Walmart would be unpleasant.
But imagine working in a nice cafe in a quiet small town, or a business that's not too frantically paced, like a clothing store. Add some perks like not always doing the same job and a decent boss, and it shouldn't be too bad. Most any job can be drastically improved by decreasing the workload, cutting hours and adding some variety. I don't think being a cashier is inherently miserable. It's just the way we structure things most of the time makes it suck.
Just like you think a human touch makes art special, a human touch can make a mundane job special. A human serving coffee instead of a machine can tell you about what different options are available, recommend things, offer adjustments a machine might not, chat about stuff while it's brewing... You may end up patronizing a particular cafe because you like the person at the counter.
badpun
13 hours ago
A lot of people who are passionate about creative fields work jobs that are pretty mundane, e.g. painting drab environmental textures every day for the next iteration of Call of Duty, or cutesy barfy crap for the next Candy Crush Saga. The jobs are very rarely alligned with their own taste and interests, plus they're terribly dull because, as a specialist, you're constantly working only one specific kind of assignments.
AnonymousPlanet
13 hours ago
Not exactly. It depends on how many professions get extinct at the same time. If you have ever lived in a place that is in an economic decline because professions have moved abroad and the new professions replacing the old ones just don't provide the scale or only benefit a few in society, you know where things might be headed.
nostrebored
13 hours ago
What do you think happened in the rise of industrial agriculture?
AnonymousPlanet
12 hours ago
We're talking about places that even after decades haven't recovered. What do you think is happening there right now?
There's a common fallacy that tries to argue that it'll be alright over time, no matter what happens. Given enough time, you can also say that about atomic wars. But that won't help the generations that are affected.
sfn42
6 hours ago
If you live in a dead town with no opportunities then you either make your own opportunities or you move to a place with opportunities.
If you just sit on your hands complaining about the lack of opportunities then you won't get any sympathy from me. People aren't entitled to live wherever they want, humanity's entire thing is adaptability. So adapt. Life is what you make it.
AnonymousPlanet
5 hours ago
When I say 'place' that includes entire countries. Adapting then depends on the kindness of strangers towards foreign refugees.
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future something like "Adapt. Life is what you make it" could be read in big bold letters above the entrance of a place like Alligator Alcatraz.
zwnow
6 hours ago
Humans are entitled to live wherever they want. Capitalists destroying rural regions with false promises (prosperous jobs) is a thing since the industrialization. Should all people move to overrun big cities? Small once established markets are getting destroyed by big discounters or stuff like Amazon. Also adapting is and never was a thing for most people. I dont know where you got that from but this isn't the wild west anymore. People are trying to set up a life for themselves without moving every 2 years. Entitled city person viewpoint.
sfn42
5 hours ago
There's plenty of rural areas with plenty of opportunities. Cities are not the only option. If I lived in a dead mining town I'd move elsewhere. You can blame corporations or whatever you want, doesn't matter whose fault it is. Complaining and blaming doesn't solve anything. Finding solutions does. Stop complaining, start finding solutions. I grew up in a beautiful rural place. I'd like to live there, but what I like even more is not having to drive for over an hour to work every day. So I moved. I also went to university in my late 20s and some of my peers were in their 40s and 50s.
People adapt to all kinds of stuff all the time. Saying adapting isn't a thing for most people is ridiculous. Of course it's a thing. It's what you do when your current situation isn't working. You adapt.
eesmith
11 hours ago
The number of bank tellers did not drop after ATMs starting in use. https://conversableeconomist.com/2015/03/03/atms-and-a-risin...
That said, yes, what about them? These are people with real skin the the game - people who spent years learning their craft expecting it will be their life-long career.
Do we simply exclaim "sucks to be you!"?
Do we tell out-of-work coal miners to switch to a career in programming with the promise it will be a lucrative career move? And when employment opportunities in software development collapse, then what?
All while we increasingly gate health care on being employed?
sfn42
6 hours ago
Yeah. If society no longer needs your job then you need to find something else to do. Doesn't have to be software, we mine other things than coal. We need builders, plumbers, electricians, lots of possibilities.
Software dev opportunities won't collapse any time soon, any half decent dev who's tried vibe coding will tell you that much. It's a tool developers can use, it's not a replacement.
eesmith
an hour ago
If society no longer needs my job, society should help.
What's your solution to the miners of West Virginia?
https://www.wvva.com/2025/06/25/coal-miners-face-layoffs-fed...
"As West Virginians face possible cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, they are also being hit hard in the job market."
"“I’m worried for the people that are laid off, and are they going to be able to find another job? You know, are they my age? How are you going to start over? You’ve got to find a job back in what you know, because you can’t start over at my age,” said Ricky Estes, a former Coal Mining Safety Representative, who was laid off. "
"Even before these possible cuts, affordable healthcare can be hard to find currently in the mountain state"
I mention mining -> programming because that was the hyped solution a decade ago, eg, https://www.wtrf.com/community/from-coal-to-coding-new-progr... .
How well did that work out?
I wasn't talking about the recent LLM fad, but rather the decades of mass government funding of STEM[1], and programming training in particular (like Joe Manchin's Mined Minds), with the carrot of a high-paying job at the end, leading to a surplus of coders who, as a result, flood the job market and lower salaries and individual employee power.
[1] STEM government funding doesn't seem to end up in, say, marine biology or sociology or the theory of unbounded operators or other fields of science and math that don't make companies a lot of money.
girvo
12 hours ago
No, this is far far more wide reaching and it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.
It’s why it’s so exciting.
erwincoumans
9 hours ago
Agreed. However, according to the author LLM's mostly produce crap, and he doesn't seem to be able to imagine (or want?) that to improve (beyond crap/hallucination and become very useful to many).
zwnow
9 hours ago
Tell me how is it going to be useful to the many? Even better marketing emails? More precise targeted advertising? Even more automated job application rejections? Mass firings due to AI replacing most office jobs?
Whats the benefit of LLMs to the many who barely can operate a search machine?
I am sorry but thinking this will benefit the many is delusional. It's main use is making rich people richer by saving expenses on people's wages. Tell me, how are these people going to get a job once their skills are made useless?
ctoth
3 hours ago
I'm just a regular developer - not rich, not running a company. I used to maintain accessibility apps for blind users (QRead for ebooks, various Twitter clients back when their site was barely screen-reader compatible). Had to abandon them when I got a day job - no energy left for wrestling with deprecated APIs and broken CI pipelines.
Now with Claude Code, I've cleaned up years of technical debt, added proper test coverage, got everything building in CI again with automated release-on-tag. (Yes, CC will literally debug your GitHub Actions yaml.) My blind users are getting updates again after years of nothing.
I'm nobody special. By basic statistics, if LLMs are this useful to one random developer, they're probably useful to millions of others maintaining their own small projects.
Yes, job displacement is a real concern. But the idea that LLMs [only] help the wealthy get wealthier? I'm living proof that's not true. I'm using them to resurrect accessibility tools that the market wouldn't support. That's not exactly a venture capital use case.
AlexeyBrin
8 hours ago
I'm not an LLM enthusiast, but I can think of at least one example where these are useful to the many: decent/fast translation from one language to another. It won't be perfect, but it is usually good enough when you are visiting a foreign country for a few weeks and you have no time or interest in learning the language.
rolandog
4 hours ago
Exactly... Why is it that every time a science fiction writer comes up with a new dystopian future to warn humanity about something, there's always a bunch of psychopaths that go "ooh, blueprints for a get-rich-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else scheme!"?
immibis
2 hours ago
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
(Original source: https://xcancel.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?... )
teiferer
8 hours ago
[dead]
autumnstwilight
14 hours ago
I learned Japanese by painstakingly translating interviews and blog posts from my favorite artist 15+ years ago, dictionary in hand. I also live and work in Japan now. Today I can click a button under the artist's tweets and get an instant translation that looks coherent (and often is, though it can also be quite wrong maybe 1/10 times).
In terms of the artist being accessible to overseas fans it's a great improvement, but I do wonder if I had grown up with this, would I have had any motivation to learn?
franciscop
14 hours ago
I am learning Japanese (again) now and it's such a stark improvement vs when I first tried. When I don't understand something, LLMs explain it perfectly well, and with a bit of prompting they give me the right practice bits I need for my level.
For a specific example, when 2 grammar points seem to mean the same thing, teachers here in Japan would either not explain the difference, or make a confusing explanation in Japanese.
It's still private-ish/only for myself, but I generated all of this with LLMs and using it to learn (I'm around N4~N3) :
- Grammar: https://practice.cards/grammar
- Stories, with audio (takes a bit to load): https://practice.cards/stories
It's true though that you still need the motivation, but there are 2 sides of AI here and just wanted to give the other side.
jops
13 hours ago
Exactly this. LLMs make learning faster and easier for those who _want_ to learn, but conversely make it harder for those who don’t.
andrepd
10 hours ago
> When I don't understand something, LLMs explain it perfectly well
But my man, how do you know if it explains perfectly well or is just generating plausible-sounding slop? You're learning, so by definition you don't know!
franciscop
9 hours ago
Because at the beginning I didn't trust it and verified it in many different ways. I've got a fairly decent understanding of what LLMs hallucinate regarding language learning and levels, and luckily/unluckily I'm far enough for this to be a concern. e.g. I asked recently differences between 回答 vs 解答 and it was pretty good.
I also checked with some Japanese and my own notes contain more errors than the LLMs output by a large margin.
Tijdreiziger
7 hours ago
Yeah, my experience with AI and Japanese is quite the opposite. I used to use the Drops app for learning vocabulary, until they added genAI explanations, because the explanations were just wrong half the time! I had to uninstall the app!
Similarly, I used the Busuu app for a while. One of its features is that you can speak or type sentences, and ask native speakers to give feedback. But of course, you have to wait for the feedback (especially with time zone differences), so they added genAI feedback.
Like, what’s the point of this? It’s like that old joke: “We have purposely trained him wrong, as a joke”!
ted_bunny
9 hours ago
GPT was dismally, consistently wrong about 101-level French grammar. Isn't that info all over the internet? Shouldn't that be an easy task?
liendolucas
10 hours ago
I absolutely agree with you, it is like having human beings fed constantly whatever their want into their minds for free, effortlessly, without knowing nothing at all. Getting the whatevers ready for consumption. Perhaps this will lead to a new generation where everyone is the "expert novice".
It's killing the accumulative and progressive way of learning that rewards who tries and fail many times before getting it right.
The "learning" is effectively starting to being killed.
I just wonder what would happen to a person after many years using "AI" and suddenly not having access to it. My guess is that you become useless and with a highly diminished capacity to perform even the most basic things by yourself.
This is one of many reasons why I'm so against all the hype that's going on in the "AI" space.
I keep doing things the old school way because I fully comprehend the value of reading real books, trying, failing and repeating the process again and again. There's no other way to truly learn anything.
Does this generation understand the value of it? Will the next one?
maegul
15 hours ago
Agreed!
The only silver lining I can see is that a new perspective may be forced on how well or badly we’ve facilitated learning, usability, generally navigating pain points and maybe even all the dusty presumptions around the education / vocational / professional-development pipeline.
Before, demand for employment/salary pushed people through. Now, if actual and reliable understanding, expertise and quality is desirable, maybe paying attention to how well the broader system cultivates and can harness these attributes can be of value.
Intuitively though, my feeling is that we’re in some cultural turbulence, likely of a truly historical magnitude, in which nothing can be taken for granted and some “battles” were likely lost long ago when we started down this modern-computing path.
bruce511
15 hours ago
To be fair, LLMs are just the most recent step in a long road of doing the same thing.
At any point of progress in history you can look backwards and forwards and the world is different.
Before tractors a man with an ox could plough x field in y time. After tractors he can plough much larger areas. The nature of farming changes. (Fewer people needed to farm more land. )
The car arrives, horses leave. Computers arrive, the typing pool goes away. Typing was a skill, now everyone does it and spell checkers hide imperfections.
So yeah LLMs make "drawing easier". Which means just that. Is that good or bad? Well I can't draw the old fashioned way so for me, good.
Cooking used to be hard. Today cooking is easy, and very accessible. More importantly good food (cooked at home or elsewhere) is accessible to a much higher % of the population. Preparing the evening meal no longer starts with "pluck 2 chickens" and grinding a kilo of dried corn.
So yeah, LLMs are here. And yes things will change. Some old jobs will become obsolete. Some new ones will appear. This is normal, it's been happening forever.
thankyoufriend
14 hours ago
The difference between GenAI and your examples is a theft component. They stole our data - your data - and used it to build a machine that diverts wealth to the rich. The only equitable way for GenAI to move forward is if we all own a share of it, since it would not exist in its current form without our data. GenAI should be a Universal Basic Asset.
CuriouslyC
7 hours ago
There isn't any more theft in this than in artists copying the styles and techniques of popular artists to improve their craft.
This is 100% just the mechanization of a cultural refinement process that has been going on since the dawn of civilization.
I agree with you regarding how the bounty of GenAI is distributed. The value of these GenAI systems is derived far more from the culture they consume than the craft involved in building them. The problem isn't theft of data, but a capitalist culture that normalizes distribution of benefit in society towards those that are already well off. If the income of those billionaires and the profits of their corporations were more equitably taxed, it would solve a larger class of problems, of which this problem is an instance.
bruce511
14 hours ago
I appreciate the idealism but your argument has some flaws.
Firstly the "theft component" isn't exactly new. There have always been rich and poor.
Secondly everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants. The Beatles were influenced by the works of others. Paul and John learned to write by mimicking other writers.
That code you right is the pinicle of endless work dine by others. By Ada Lovelace, and Charles Babbage, and Alan Turing and Brian Kernigan and Denis Ritchie and Doug Englebart and thousands and thousands more.
By your logic the entire output of all industries for all foreseeable generations should be universally owned. [1]
But that's not the direction we have built society on. Rather society has evolved in the US to reward those who create value out of the common space. The oil in Texas doesn't belong to all Texans, it doesn't belong to the pump maker, it belongs to the company that pumps the oil.
Equally there's no such thing as 'your data'. It's your choice to publish or not. Information cannot be 'owned'. Works can be copyrighted, but frankly you have a bigger argument on that front going after Google (and Google Books, not to mention the Internet Archive) than AI. AI may train on data you produced, but it does not copy it.
[1] I'm actually for a basic income model, we don't need everyone working all day like it's 1900 anymore. That means more taxes on companies and the ultra wealthy. Apparently voters disagree as they continue to vote for people who prefer the opposite.
sirwhinesalot
13 hours ago
I think your last point is very reductionist. Nearly every country ends up in a voting situation where only 2 parties can realistically win. A diverse parlament results in paralysis and the fall of government (happened in my home country multiple times).
The two parties that end up viable tend to be financed quite heavily by said wealthy, including being proped by the media said wealthy control.
The more right wing side will promise tax cuts (also for the poor that don't seem to materialize) while the more left wing side will promise to tax the rich (but in an easily dodgeable way that only ends up affecting the middle class).
Many people understand this and it is barely part of the consideration in their vote. The last election in the US was a social battle, not really an economic one. And I think the wealthy backers wanted it that way.
bruce511
11 hours ago
Im not sure why you are being downvoted. You make a reasonable argument.
I would contest some of your points though.
Firstly, not every country votes, not all that vote have 2 viable parties, so that's a flaw in your argument.
Equally most elections produce a winner. That winner can, and does, get stuff done. The US is paralyzed because it takes 60% to win the senate, which hasn't happened for a while. So US elections are set up so "no one wins". Which of course leads to overreach etc that we're seeing currently.
There's a danger when living inside a system that you assume everywhere else is the same. There's a danger when you live in a system that heavily propagandizes its own superiority, that you start to feel like everywhere else is worse.
If we are the best, and this system is the best, and it's terrible, then clearly all hope is lost.
But what I maybe, just maybe, all those things you absolutely, positively, know to be true, are not true? Is that even worth thinking about?
sirwhinesalot
10 hours ago
Just to be clear, I'm not a US citizen.
But I know people whose preference would be something like Ron Paul > Bernie Sanders > Trump > Kamala, which might sound utterly bizarre until you realize that there are multiple factors at play and "we want tax cuts for the rich" is not one of them.
bruce511
7 hours ago
When you vote for a guy who plans to raise prices, when you vote for a guy who already tried to remove Healthcare, when you vote for a guy who gives tax breaks to the rich, when you vote for a guy who is a grifter, then don't complain when you get what you voted for.
People are welcome to whatever preference they like. Democracy let's them choose. But US democracy is deliberately planned to prefer the "no one wins" scenario. That's not the democracy most of the world uses.
ako
14 hours ago
The scare for most people is that AI isn't better tools, but outsourced work. In the past we would create our own products, now other countries do this. In the past we did our own thinking and creative activities, now LLMs will.
If we don't have something better to do we'll all be at home doing nothing. We all need jobs to afford living, and already today many have bullshit jobs. Are we going to a world where 99.9% of the people need a bullshit job just to survive?
bruce511
13 hours ago
Personally I think your basic premise is false, hence your conclusion is false.
>> We all need jobs to afford living
In many countries this is already not true. There is already enough wealth that there is enough for everyone.
Yes, the western mindset is kinda "you don't work, you don't get paid". The idea that people can "free load" on the system is offensive at a really deep emotional level. If I suggest that a third of the people can work, and the other 2 thirds do nothing, but get supported, most will get distressed [1]. The very essence of US society is that we are defined by our work.
And yet if 2% of the work force is in agriculture, and produce enough food for all, why is hunger a thing?
As jobs become ever more productive, perhaps just -considering- a world where worth is not linked to output is a useful thought exercise.
No country has figured this out perfectly yet. Norway is pretty close. Lots of Europe has endless unemployment benefits. Yes, there's still progress to be made there.
[1] of course, even in the US, already it's OK for only a 3rd to work. Children don't work. Neither do retirees. Both essentially live off the labor of those in-between. But imagine if we keep raising the start-working age, while reducing retirement benefits age....
ako
12 hours ago
Sounds great in theory, but doesn't seem very realistic. There will always be people that want power over other people, and having more than others will give them that power.
And universally, if you have nothing, you lead a very poor life. You life in a minimal house (trailer park, slums, or housing without running water nor working sewage). You don't have a car, you can't travel, education opportunities are limited.
Most kids want to become independent, so they have control over their spending and power over their own lives. Poor retirees are unhappy, sometimes even have to keep working to afford living.
Norway is close because they have oil to sell, but if no one can afford to buy oil, and they can't afford to buy cars, nor products made with oil, Norway will soon run out of money.
You can wonder, why is Russia attacking Ukraine, russia has enough land, doesn't need more. But in the end there will always be people motivated by more power and money, which makes it impossible to create this communism 2.0 that you're describing.
bruce511
11 hours ago
You have equated a basic income with equality. That's a misunderstanding.
I'm not suggesting equality or communism. I'm suggesting a bottom threshold where you get enough even if you don't work.
Actually Norway gets most of that from investments, not oil. They did sell oil, but invested that income into other things. The sovereign wealth fund now pays out to all citizens in a sustainable way.
Equally your understanding of dole living in Europe is incomplete. A person on the dole in the UK is perfectly able yo live in a house with running water etc. I know people who are.
Creating a base does not mean "no one works". Lots of people in Europe have a job despite unemployment money. And yes most-all jobs pay better than unemployment. And yes lifestyles are not equal. It's not really communism (as you understand it.)
This is not about equal power or equal wealth. It's about the idea that a job should not be linked to survival.
Why is 60 the retirement age? Why not 25? That sounds like a daft question, but understanding it can help understand how dome things that seem cast in stone, really aren't.
ako
11 hours ago
In live in europe, so understand some of it, part of my family comes from eastern europe, so have also seen that form of communism in the past.
Living on welfare in the Netherlands is not a good life, and definitely not something we should accept for the majority of the people.
Being retired on only a state pension is a bad life, you need to save for retirement to have a good life. And saving takes time, that's why you can't retire at 25.
bruce511
7 hours ago
I am not saying that the reality exists.
I'm saying that the blind acceptance of the status quo does not allow for that status to be questioned.
You see the welfare amounts, or retirement amounts as limited. Well then, what would it take to increase them? How could a society increase productivity such that more could be produced in less time?
Are some of our mindsets preventing us from seeing alternatives?
Given that society has reinvented itself many times through history, are more reinvention possible?
ako
5 hours ago
I hope you're right, but considering human nature, it's not something i would bet my money on. It's not how humans are wired.
user
14 hours ago
ako
14 hours ago
Agreed, it'll be a big problem if we don't keep our skills and rely on AI too much. Same with outsourcing manufacturing, at some point you loose the skill to produce products completely and are dependent on other countries.
With the WWW we thought everyone having access to all information would enlighten them, but without knowledge people do not recognize the right information, and are more likely to trust (mis)information that they think they understand.
What if LLMs give us all the answers that we need to solve all problems, but we are too uninformed and unskilled to recognize these answers? People will turn away from AI, and return to information that they can understand and trust, even if it's false.
Anyway, nothing new actually, we've seen this with science for some time now. It's too advanced for most people to understand and validate, so people distrust it and turn to other sources of information.
uh_uh
13 hours ago
What other sources of information will people turn to? Kids are growing up asking ChatGPT in school. I just can't see a mass exodus happening.
ako
12 hours ago
Misinformation, lies and populism, see for example discussions around vaccines where people no longer bother to understand the science, climate change, or religion where people randomly choose 1 out of 3000 available gods and then pretend like their choice is the only correct one.
PeterStuer
13 hours ago
The first time I had the "beginner" reflex was when I got an always on computer with an editor and storage.
Before that, I had an TI-99 4A at home without a tape drive and the family tv as a display. I mainly was into creating games for my friends. I did all my programming on paper, as the "screen time" needed to be maximized for actually playing the games after typing it in from the paper notebook. Believe it or not, but bugs were very rare.
Much later at uni there were computer rooms with Mac's with a floppy drive. You could actually just program at the keyboard, and the IDE even had a debugger!
I remember observing my fellow students endlessly type-run-bug-repeat until it "worked" and thinking "these guys never learned to reason through their program before running it. This is just trial and error. Beginners should start on paper".
Fortunately I immediately caught myself and thought, no, this is genuine progress. Those that "abuse" it would more than likely not have programmed 'ye old way' anyways, and some others will genuinely become very good regardless.
A second thing: in the early home computer year(s) you had to program. The computer just booted into the (most often BASIC) prompt, and there was no network or packaged software. So anyone that got a computer programmed.
Pretty soon, with systems like the Vic-20, C64 and ZX Spectrum there was a huge market in off the shelf game cassettes. These systems became hugely popular because they allowed anyone to play games at home without learning to program. So only those that liked programming did. Did that lose beginner programmers? Maybe some, for sure.
worldsayshi
13 hours ago
> I shudder to think where we'll be if the corporate-media machine keeps hammering the message "you don't have to bother learning how to draw, drawing is hard, just get ChatGPT to draw pictures for you" to young people for years to come.
This should be comparable to how much fewer people in the west today know how to work a farm or build machinery. Each technological shift comes at a cost of population competence.
I do have a feeling that this time it could be different. Because this shift has this meta-quality to it. It has never been easier to acquire, at least theoretical, knowledge. But the incentives for learning are shifting in strange directions.
Cthulhu_
12 hours ago
> When you're a beginner, it's totally normal to not really want to put in the hard work. You try drawing a picture, and it sucks. You try playing the guitar, and you can't even get simple notes right. Of course a machine where you can just say "a picture in the style of Pokémon, but of my cat" and get a perfect result out is much more tempting to a 12 year old kid than the prospect of having to grind for 5 years before being kind of good.
Fair point; I think this feeling is exacerbated by all the social media being full of people looking like they're good at what they do already, but it rarely shows the years of work they put in beforehand. But that's not new, compare with athletes, famous people, fictional characters, etc. There's just more of it and it's on a constant feed.
It does feel like people will just stop trying though. And when there's a shortcut in the form of an LLM, that's easy. I've used ChatGPT to write silly stories or poems a few times; I look at it and think "you know, if I were to sit down with it proper I could've written that myself". But that'd be a time and effort investment, and for a quick gag that will be pushed down the Discord chat within a few minutes anyway, it's not worth it.
CuriouslyC
7 hours ago
The transformation is to aesthetic awareness over raw technical facility, and to "freshness" over skillful adherence to norms.
The best artists will spot holes in the culture, and present them to us in a way that's expertly composed, artful and meticulously polished. The tools will let them do it faster, and to reach a higher peak of polish than in the past, but the artfulness will still be the artist's.
Futuristic tools aren't replacing art, they're creating a substrate for a higher order of art. Collages are art, and at its most crude, this higher order art reduces to digital collages of high quality generated assets with human intention. With futuristic tools, art becomes reductive rather than constructive. To quote Michelangelo's response to how he made David: "It is simple, I just removed everything that wasn't David"
pjc50
14 hours ago
More fundamental question: if everyone can generate an album in an afternoon, why would anyone else listen to any of those? It turns into dust in the long tail.
dale_glass
13 hours ago
Anyone can write a comment here in less than a minute. Why should anyone read it?
IMO, because it's good in a way or another. I'm not reading your writing because I imagine you toiled over every word of it, but simply because I started reading and it seemed worthwhile to read the rest.
Attrecomet
6 hours ago
What's implied in the previous comment is that reading a comment takes a few seconds, while listening to an album, or even really enjoying it, takes a higher investment.
Or, to use a different metaphor, these comments are mentally nutritional Doritos, not a nicely prepared restaurant meal. If your restaurant only serves Dorito-level food, I won't go there even if I do consume chips quite often at home.
dvaun
14 hours ago
All we are is dust in the wind.
ninetyninenine
13 hours ago
The things that were revolutionary in the past all eventually become common place and boring. It's happened to almost everything and continues to happen to anything new that comes out.
LLMs will accelerate the pace of this assimilation. New trends and new things will become popular and generic so fast that we'll have to get really inventive to stay ahead of the curve.
this15testingg
13 hours ago
ahead of what curve? intrinsically human endeavors are drowned in noise. what is the point? if even drawing/writing/singing are not worth doing anymore both because effort and the experience itself is worthless, I might as well step in front of a tesla taxi so I can escape this world. human ingenuity is amazing, but this whole mess is embarrassing
safety1st
11 hours ago
I don't DISAGREE with anything he said, particularly.
But personally, I don't feel as upset over all this as he does. It seems that all my tech curmudgeonliness over the years is paying off these days, in spades.
Humbly, I suggest that he and many others simply need to disconnect more from The Current Thing or The Popular Thing.
Let's look at what he complains about:
* Bitcoin. Massive hype, never went anywhere. He's totally right. That's why I never used it and barely even read about it. I have no complaints because I don't care. I told myself I'd care if someone ever built something useful with Bitcoin. 10 years later they haven't. I'm going back to bed.
* Windows. Man I'm glad I dodged that bullet and became a Linux user almost 15 years ago. Just do it. Stuff will irk you either way but Linux irks don't make you feel like your dignity as a human being is being violated. Again, he's right that Windows sucks; I just don't have to care, because I walked away.
* Bluesky, Twitter, various dumb things being said on social media. Those bother him too. Fortunately, these products are optional. I haven't logged into my Twitter account for three years. I'll certainly never create a Bluesky one. On some of my devices I straight up block many of these crapo social sites like Reddit etc. in /etc/hosts. I follow some RSS feeds of a few blogs, one of the local timeline for a Mastodon instance. Takes ten minutes and then I go READ BOOKS in my spare time. That's it. He is yet again right, social media sucks, it's the place where you hear about all this dumb stuff like Bitcoin; I just am not reading it.
I'm not trying to toot my own horn here it's just that when you disconnect from all the trash, you never look back, and the frustrations of people who haven't seem a little silly. You can just turn all of this stuff off. Why don't you? Is it an addiction? Treat it like one if so. I used to spend 6 hours a day on my phone and now it's 1 hour, mainly at lunch, because the rest of the time it's on silent, in a bag, or turned off, just like a meth addict trying to quit shouldn't leave meth lying around.
Listen to Stallman. Listen to Doctorow. These guys are right. They were always right. The free alternatives that respect you exist. Just make the leap and use them.
ramon156
13 hours ago
My friend actually went to "yeah well I don't like it enough to hobby program in my free time, otherwise I might lose the enjoyment"
2 years later and he thought of a project he really wanted to make. He didn't succeed, but its very clear he changes his mind
pier25
9 hours ago
Something rather new in the history of civilization is the gamification of everything. It has created the expectation of receiving (fake) constant results for very little effort.
guicen
10 hours ago
Maybe the point isn’t whether LLMs replace skills, but whether they help more people reach those skills. Lifting the floor is not the same as lowering the ceiling.
lloeki
9 hours ago
> You try drawing a picture, and it sucks. You try playing the guitar, and you can't even get simple notes right.
> up until now, you had no choice and to keep making crappy pictures and playing crappy songs until you actually start to develop a taste for the effort, and a few years later you find yourself actually pretty darn competent at the thing. That's a pretty virtuous cycle.
https://www.deviantart.com/scotchi/art/keep-tryin-690533685
Exactly.
Only putting the work is going to get anyone places. And yes it takes _time_, like, tons, and there's no shortcut.
And I can explain in excruciating detail how to do an ollie or a kickflip even and from a physics point of view you would totally get it but to land the damn thing you simply have to put a shitload of time on the board and fail over and over and over again.
We come from a place where we've been trained as engineers or whatever to do this or that and - somewhat - critically think about things. Instead picture yourself in the shoes of a beginner: how would you, a beginner who has not built their own mental model of discipline $foo, even begin to be critical of AI output?
But we're being advertised magic powder and sweating overalls and whathaveyou that makes you lose weight a) instantly† and b) without going to the gym and well putting in the effort††.
LLMs are the speed diet of the mind.
† comparatively
†† not that putting any arbitrary amount of effort is going to get you places, there _is_ a thing such as wasteful effort; but NOT putting the effort is a solid guarantee that you won't.
ninetyninenine
14 hours ago
age-ism will disappear.