LLM Inevitabilism

(tomrenner.com)

Show context

mg ◴[15 Jul 25 05:41 UTC] No.44568158[source]▶

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipping, no waiting. This was the future. It was inevitable.

Yesterday I wanted to rewrite a program to use a large library that would have required me to dive deep down into the documentation or read its code to tackle my use case. As a first try, I just copy+pasted the whole library and my whole program into GPT 4.1 and told it to rewrite it using the library. It succeeded at the first attempt. The rewrite itself was small enough that I could read all code changes in 15 minutes and make a few stylistic changes. Done. Hours of time saved. This is the future. It is inevitable.

PS: Most replies seem to compare my experience to experiences that the responders have with agentic coding, where the developer is iteratively changing the code by chatting with an LLM. I am not doing that. I use a "One prompt one file. No code edits." approach, which I describe here:

https://www.gibney.org/prompt_coding

replies(58): >>44568182 #>>44568188 #>>44568190 #>>44568192 #>>44568320 #>>44568350 #>>44568360 #>>44568380 #>>44568449 #>>44568468 #>>44568473 #>>44568515 #>>44568537 #>>44568578 #>>44568699 #>>44568746 #>>44568760 #>>44568767 #>>44568791 #>>44568805 #>>44568823 #>>44568844 #>>44568871 #>>44568887 #>>44568901 #>>44568927 #>>44569007 #>>44569010 #>>44569128 #>>44569134 #>>44569145 #>>44569203 #>>44569303 #>>44569320 #>>44569347 #>>44569391 #>>44569396 #>>44569574 #>>44569581 #>>44569584 #>>44569621 #>>44569732 #>>44569761 #>>44569803 #>>44569903 #>>44570005 #>>44570024 #>>44570069 #>>44570120 #>>44570129 #>>44570365 #>>44570482 #>>44570537 #>>44570585 #>>44570642 #>>44570674 #>>44572113 #>>44574176 #

shaky-carrousel ◴[15 Jul 25 10:28 UTC] No.44569732[source]▶

>>44568158 #

Hours of time saved, and you learned nothing in the process. You are slowly becoming a cog in the LLM process instead of an autonomous programmer. You are losing autonomy and depending more and more on external companies. And one day will come that, with all that power, they'll set whatever price or conditions they want. And you will accept. That's the future. And it's not inevitable.

replies(4): >>44569772 #>>44569796 #>>44569813 #>>44569871 #

1. chii ◴[15 Jul 25 10:38 UTC] No.44569772{3}[source]▶

>>44569732 #

> and you learned nothing in the process.

why do you presume the person wanted to learn something, rather than to get the work done asap? May be they're not interested in learning, or may be they have something more important to do, and saving this time is a life saver?

> You are losing autonomy and depending more and more on external companies

do you also autonomously produce your own clean water, electricity, gas and food? Or do you rely on external companies to provision all of those things?

replies(1): >>44569963 #

2. shaky-carrousel ◴[15 Jul 25 11:16 UTC] No.44569963[source]▶

>>44569772 (TP) #

The pretty big difference is that I'm not easily able to produce my electricity or food. But I'm easily able to produce my code. We are losing autonomy we already have, just for pure laziness, and it will bite us.

replies(1): >>44570348 #

3. hackinthebochs ◴[15 Jul 25 12:16 UTC] No.44570348[source]▶

>>44569963 #

Reducing friction, increasing the scope of what is possible given a unit of effort, that is just increasing autonomy.

replies(2): >>44570731 #>>44570941 #

4. shaky-carrousel ◴[15 Jul 25 13:07 UTC] No.44570731{3}[source]▶

>>44570348 #

I'm afraid that "friction" is your brain learning. Depending on a few AI companies to save you the effort of learning is not increasing autonomy.

replies(1): >>44572324 #

5. jplusequalt ◴[15 Jul 25 13:30 UTC] No.44570941{3}[source]▶

>>44570348 #

>Reducing friction, increasing the scope of what is possible given a unit of effort, that is just increasing autonomy

I, with a car, can drive to other side of the US and back. I am able to travel to and from to places in a way my ancestors never could.

However, the price our society had to pay for this newfound autonomy was that we needed to sacrifice land for highways, move further away from our workplaces, deal with traffic, poison our breathing air with smog, decrease investments into public transportation, etc.

I think people are too gung-ho on new technologies in the tech space without considering the negatives--in part because software developers are egotistical and like to think they know what's best for society. But I wish for once they'd consider the sacrifices we'll have to make as a society by adopting the shiny new toy.

6. hackinthebochs ◴[15 Jul 25 15:42 UTC] No.44572324{4}[source]▶

>>44570731 #

Learning != autonomy. Increasing one's action-space increases autonomy. Learning is only indirectly related. Depending on private companies is limiting, but using LLMs isn't inherently tied to private companies.

replies(1): >>44574953 #

7. shaky-carrousel ◴[15 Jul 25 19:31 UTC] No.44574953{5}[source]▶

>>44572324 #

Ah, learning == autonomy, and using competitive LLMs is very much tied to private companies.

↑