Comment by NoboruWataya
13 hours ago
One of the great things about hobbies is that you can enjoy them whatever way you want. But honestly is it not more accurate to say that you are now a hobbyist prompter, rather than a hobbyist programmer? I get the "its just a tool" mentality and I guess LLMs can be used that way, but if you are not touching a line of code yourself then it seems less analogous to using power steering and more analogous to just taking a taxi.
What I really don't understand how differently it seems that AI for programming and for anything else is treated.
I don't think there is insignificant group who would say that using LLM to write a book does not make you an author. Or make a song musician. Or draw a picture a painter or artist.
This just somewhat baffles me... Or maybe the LLM for programming people all believe that you are as much artist if you use AI in those fields and the product generates as such is as if not more valuable than one by more traditional means.
I've seen people here insist that LLMs enable everyone to make music or art. It's diametrically opposed from my own view that making something is the process of making something, neither the result of nor the motivation for that process.
My retort is usually a variation of one I've already posted in this thread: they do that to the same extent that taxis enable everyone to drive, which is something most people will intuitively understand as nonsense, even if they've given clear instructions to the driver and even though they've arrived at the intended destination. If you aren't driving, you aren't driving. If anything, the taxi service enables more people not to drive.
isn't this clearly a misunderstanding between you and hypothetical AI art approver?
They're talking about the result, one must think. The idea that people who could not have approximate pictures of ideas that lived in their head can now have those things. They didn't create them by an in depth process, of course, and would be wrong to pass it off as though they did. But there is some value to the enjoyment gained from that existing (whether that relatively trival enjoyment is offset by other harms is for the reader to decide).
You're talking about the process and/or the developing of the skill of crafting and thinking about images better.
We also lack words to talk clearly about the distinction here around "make". Did I make a piece of art if I created a file on a computer in photoshop and then printed it? or did the printer make it? Did photoshop make it? (imo, all are true, but in differing senses of the word make). It seems to me that there is a sense that, no matter how trivial their involvement, a user of some AI art app is "making" something, in the same sense that steve jobs "made" the iPhone. In both cases, an engineer that literally designed the iPhone or an artist that spent years would perhaps rightfully feel upset by such characterization, but to get across the point cleanly is harder.
It's the same for the taxi. If I can't drive (perhaps I never learned, or some flaw with my body doesn't let me), a taxi does enable some things I could never do before. I am, of course, not literally the one driving. But if I can get to the shop myself now, there is something there.
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A renowned author would still write. They don't suddenly start managing a team of junior writers and instructs them how to write.
A programmer that has climbed up the ladder in their field, on the other hand, often stopped coding themselves. Instead, they manage others who code, or provide vision/direction on the project.
I think it really depends on what people on the senior level of your field do. If they mostly move to managerial roles, then it's much more likely they'd embrace LLM.
Ironically I observe this in academia too. Professors (who often stopped doing hands-on research, but only provide guidance to postdocs and grad students in their research) tend to embrace LLM more than the fields you mentioned.
Sure, I’m both a professional and hobbyist prompter. But then, that’s been true for decades, since I made the switch from engineering to product.
Only difference is I’m prompting LLMs rather than engineering teams. But honestly it’s not all that different, except that in the hobby flavor I can write specs that would take tens or hundreds of engineers to implement.
Maybe it all comes down to semantics: does “programming” mean typing in code, designing app architecture, or producing software? When I was young I was probably 75 / 5 / 20 between those. Now I’m 5 / 20 / 75. Maybe it merits a different word?
"Developer" became popular to mean all three to distinguish from "programmer", only the first one.