Comment by sbarre
5 days ago
I think you're being pedantic to the point of losing all credibility. And you're gatekeeping in the worst possible way.
Your argument that using an LLM means you didn't "make" a thing could just as easily be used to say that if you used a framework or a library, you also didn't "make" a thing, because you didn't write all the code yourself and you didn't understand everything.
Would you say the authors of YT-DLP didn't "make" anything because they are a wrapper over FFMPEG and CURL?
If you produce something useful (even just to yourself), you "made" a thing.. It has a purpose, and it's useful. Who cares how you made it or how long it took?
For example I've made plenty of bash scripts over the years that were effectively thin wrappers that combined other tools, but they did something novel and useful that saved me tons of time, and I've shared those as gists or in other ways.
Some of these scripts took me mere minutes to make. I didn't use an LLM to make them, but the "heavy lifting" definitely wasn't in my script. No one ever showed up to berate me and try to tell me that I didn't actually produce anything useful in any of these cases.
So this "in the past" that you imagine where people were held to some bullshit standard for what is accepted as "making" a thing?
That past doesn't really exist, and if does where you are, it sucks.
People do care - lots of people do. Maybe you don’t, and maybe the argument the other poster made wasn’t fair, but you make just as spurious claims when you say „who cares how you made it or how long it took?”
Really? You care about some stranger's work and how they created it?
Pro tip: you shouldn't.
Care about your work if you want, but "caring" about how someone else makes things and how they talk about it is just being a judgemental busybody and again, gatekeeping.
As for my comment, I stand by it.
If I made something genuinely useful, then it should not matter if it took me 5 minutes or 5 days to make it.
You'll never convince me that more time spent making something (all other factors being equal - yes, quality matters) gives it more value or credibility.
Thanks for the tip haha. I am personally divided on it, but it’s more complicated than just quality or output for me.
I will apologize if I came off combative - was in the backseat of a car so may have been a little direct.
I think people care, all for different reasons. You care too - just when it comes to quality as you mentioned (and I’m sure other factors).
In this case many people correctly pointed out that there were clear indications of a lack of direct cognitive effort on behalf of the operator - including code quality, comment / git history, and including copy that he didn’t write. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean the LLM which did most of the work (or not? How can we know without an auditable prompt history) didn’t produce quality work.
When it comes to something that was made in 5 days AI assisted - the idea may be novel, but without a full prompt history it does become difficult to assess quality of cognitive effort on the operator at least.
In any case - it’s hard for me to know what to call the author. And I do think this applies to traditional media as well, so Im definitely not saying it’s all one sided (Bah! AI!)
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