←back to thread

196 points yuedongze | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.399s | source
Show context
delis-thumbs-7e ◴[] No.46203283[source]
> A very good example of the first category is image (and video) generation. Drawing/rendering a realistic looking image is a crazily hard task. Have you tried to make a slide look nicer? It will take me literally hours to center the text boxes to make it look “good”. However, you really just need to take a look at the output of Nano Banana and you can tell if it’s a good render or a bad one based on how you feel.

The writer could be very accomplished when it comes to developing - I don’t know - but they clearly don’t understand a single thing about visual arts or culture. I probably could center those text boxes after fiddling with them maybe ten seconds - I have studied art since I was a kid. My bf could do it instantly without thinking a second, he is a graphic designer. You might think that you are able to see what « looks good » since, hey you have eyes, but no you can’t. There’s million details you will miss, or maybe feel something is off, but cannot quite say why. This is why you have graphic designers, who are trained to do that to do it. They can also use generative tools to make something genuinely stunning, unlike most of us. Why? Skills.

This is the same difference why the guy in the story who can’t code can’t code even with LLM, whereas the guy who cans is able to code even faster with these new tools. If use LLM’s for basically auto-completion (what transformer models really are for) you can work with familiar codebase very quickly I’m sure. I’ve used it to gen SQL call statements, which I can’t be bothered to type myself and it was perfect. If I try to generate something I don’t really understand or know how to do, I’m lost staring at sole horrible gobbledygoo that is never going to work. Why? Skills.

There is no verification engineering. There is just people who know how to do things, who have studied their whole life to get those skills. And no, you will not replace a real hardcore professional with an LLM. LLM’s are just tools, nothing else. A tractor replaced a horse in turning the field, bit you still need a farmer to drive it.

replies(6): >>46203457 #>>46203669 #>>46204274 #>>46204437 #>>46205784 #>>46208707 #
1. vbezhenar ◴[] No.46204274[source]
> A tractor replaced a horse in turning the field, bit you still need a farmer to drive it.

Before mechanisation, like 50x more people worked in the agricultural sector, compared to today. So tractors certainly left without work a huge number of people. Our society adapted to this change and sucked these people into industrial sector.

If LLM would work like a tractor, it would force 49 out of 50 programmers (or, more generically, blue-collar workers) to left their industry. Is there a place for them to work instead? I don't know.

replies(1): >>46225268 #
2. delis-thumbs-7e ◴[] No.46225268[source]
Fair point. The farms also begun to produce exponentially more food. If LLM’s would prove as revolutionary as Spinning Jenny and mechanisation of farm labour (which I don’t believe for a second), we could provide a easier life for billions of people, cure illnesses and poverty, provide education for countless children… The farm hands and their families moved to cities into factory work, which at least in England was dickensian horror of poverty and slums, but in many other countries (Nordic for instance) created urbanisation and new meaning of life as well as upwards social mobility. Many computer scientis here had a farmer as a grand-father or great-grandfather.

But none of this chamged how food grows and that you need somebody who bloody well knows what they are doing to produce it. Especially how machinised it is today.

However, I do not believe LLM to be a tractor. More like a slightly different hammer. You still need to hit the nail.