Comment by bigstrat2003
3 days ago
It is completely unreasonable to assume that. Tech people are so hungry for productivity gains that they regularly will defy management forbidding them from using a tool, because the tool is so good they feel they have to have it.
If LLMs truly are as good as their proponents say, engineers will use them even if management outright forbade it. The fact that people aren't using them, and have to be forced, is extremely strong evidence that they are not in fact that useful.
> extremely strong evidence that they are not in fact that useful.
Surely you can't argue in good faith today that LLMs aren't useful? It was a valid argument a year ago, but the latest models are absolutely useful at solving whole classes of problems.
They're not perfect, need to be carefully monitored, can cause weird gambling like dopamine rushes and can cause lazy development habits to creep in. But none of those things negate the fact that, in many situations, they are useful.
Useful = net benefit.
Short-term, sure in some contexts. Long-term? Nobody knows yet.
You can't just redefine useful to mean something it doesn't.
Useful = able to be used for practical purposes.
As an extreme example, most effective weapons are useful to the person using them, but aren't necessarily a net benefit.
Is AI going to make life meaningfully better for most people? That's uncertain. Is it useful for the tasks in front of me today? Yes, definitely.
> extremely strong evidence that they are not in fact that useful
See my other reply in this subthread. For my line of work, they are in fact ridiculously useful.