Comment by kstenerud
3 hours ago
> If AI had existed in the early aughts, we could not have accelerated Zotero’s conception, because we did not know exactly what we wanted, and so could not have written coherent prompts for an LLM. Instead, it took a great deal of time and collaboration to develop a clear vision for what Zotero should be.
AI doesn't preclude this. In fact, it can help accelerate parts of it.
He's describing the typical big project lifecycle:
- Examine the landscape
- User research (how they use existing software, what their frustrations are, etc)
- Brainstorming
- Early ideas and prototypes
- Refinement, user feedback
- Solidify the vision and high level process design
- Choose technologies
- Design & architecture
- Plan out phases
- Build phases, then test them with users
LLMs are great at research, and great at prototypes. Once you have your design, they're good at coding as well. They're also good at distilling user feedback.
> AI doesn't preclude this. In fact, it can help accelerate parts of it.
It can also slow it down as people get distracted experimenting with features they can build quickly.
The problem is that in the future, LLMs will change society so much that we won't even want to go after these things any more because the world will live and die on cheap prototypes and trends.
It's like all the food being replaced by MacDonalds food that is served from a replicator (from Star Trek). Sure, we can survive on it, sort of, but if all we ever know is this food and we're too busy to cook (or no one knows how to manufacture a stove) then we'll never know anything else. Maybe someone will learn how to tweak the recipe a little but our minds will be conditioned to context-switch so much that we'll never even think of learning to cook great meals.
That's what LLMs do. They're shit.
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