Comment by bko
1 year ago
The author betrays himself early with this line:
> a cynical bubble inflated by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman built to sell into an economy run by people that have no concept of labor other than their desperation to exploit or replace it.
He brings up the concept of labor and applies a moral judgement about "replacing" and "exploiting" labor.
And then he throws the kitchen sink at the technology. People use it sure, but it's because journalists write about it. How it's expensive to train. Throw a bunch of explicits and call it a hot take.
It's the equivalent of a vegan trying to convince you that eating meat is morally wrong, and will give you cancer, and make you fat, and give you ED, and ...
This doesn't work primarily due to the fact that most people reading this got real value from an LLM. And I'm sure the author did as well. Claiming otherwise is dishonest. So what is his problem?
How are you able to make the inference that "most people reading this got real value from an LLM. And I'm sure the author did as well." How are you so sure of that?
Speaking for myself, I've never gotten any real value from an LLM and their disappearance would not affect me in the slightest.
It sounds more like you were upset about his assertion because YOU derive value from an LLM, and are projecting that as some sort of dishonesty on the author's part.
Also, it was his intention to throw "the kitchen sink at the technology" as a means of showing its lack of value. In the same way a vegan would do exactly as you mention to show all the arguments AGAINST eating meat. It is meant to strengthen the intended argument through overwhelming evidence.
Chatgpt was the 6th (and climbing) most visited site in the world in January. Cursor is the fastest growing Saas of all time.
So yeah, most people get real value from LLMs. It's pretty plain to see, for anyone actually interested in seeing it.
As the article mentions, the number of users is wholly irrelevant to the discussion of how much positive value a tool brings to society (also factoring in the costs and negative impacts of the tool). This is a weak argument.
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Very few people get real value from an LLM. They're useful for minor grammatical checks, and idiot-level summaries. Maybe for entry-level coding. Outside of that, they're basically just gimmicks. You can't trust the output at all; literally everything an LLM outputs must be verified before it can be used for anything important, so you end up doing all of the work you thought you would have avoided by using an LLM.
> literally everything an LLM outputs must be verified
Until you prove P=NP I’ll take that as a win
Honestly can not understand this take. I put literally everything I write for work into an LLM. 80% of the time it has good suggestions to improve it. It is by far the best grammar checker I have found. Obviously dont ask for facts but it is incredible with language. Claude is far more useful to me than google search ever was.
> So what is his problem?
My guess: He's just posting a hot-take to farm for engagement.
I'm not saying he's wrong about everything. I'm just pointing out that he has a small incentive to be engaging.