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How does this help the students with their use of these tools in the now, to not be left worse off? Most of the points you list seem like defending against crit

How does this help the students with their use of these tools in the now, to not be left worse off? Most of the points you list seem like defending against criticism rather than helping address the harm.

habinero 2y ago
Agree. It's also a virtue to point out the emperor has no clothes and the tailor peddling them is a bullshit artist. This is no different than the crypto people who insisted the blockchain would soon be revolutionary and used for everything, when in reality the only real use case for a blockchain is cryptocoins, and the only real use case for cryptocoins is crime. The only really good use case for LLMs is spam, because it's the only use case for generating a lot of human-like speech without meaning.
- radlad 2y ago
  > The only really good use case for LLMs is spam, because it's the only use case for generating a lot of human-like speech without meaning. As someone who's been writing code for nearly 20 years now, and who spent a few weeks rewriting a Flutter app in Jetpack Compose with some help from Claude (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.johnmaguire.eureka https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.johnmaguire...), I have to say I don't agree with this at all.
  - habinero 2y ago
    Ok? I too have been coding for over a decade and use Copilot as fancy autocomplete. I like it. It's not amazing.
    - radlad 2y ago
      Claude isn't Copilot, and I wasn't using it as autocomplete. I was using it to do things such as: - Creating a migration from the old DB to the new DB, no modifications of the generated code necessary - Refactoring state in a component out into a ViewModel, again no modifications necessary - Creating all the classes necessary for interacting with a Room database (i.e. the data class, dao, and DI module) given a schema - Creating the first iteration of a download worker, which I modified Check out plugins like ClaudeMind for JetBrains! They can even intelligently (automatically) feed information from your current tab or other unopened but relevant-sounding files to the AI. It was an eye-opening experience.
      - habinero 2y ago
        I would consider all of that fancy autocomplete. If it's just helping you type boring boilerplate things you would have typed anyway, that's autocomplete. It's neat, but it's not the paradigm shift people seem to think it is. Copilot mostly just replaces StackOverflow searches for me.
        gravatron 2y ago
        I was a little too young to really remember the early internet era and the skeptics, but looking back at that era in hindsight, it's interesting to see the commentary from those who thought it was a fad, or not impressive, or did everything to downplay what was so obviously one of the biggest technological advances in human history. I can't help but feel I am witnessing these same type of comments and viewpoints in real time from people like you on the subject of AI. It's a funny feeling, like watching a slow moving train wreck about to happen. There are going to be people left behind in the world because of their failure to adapt to the new tech, just like there was during the advent of the internet age, and it just seems so obvious already as to who those people are going to be. "I just don't get what is so great about websites, they are just fancy books! It mostly just replaces going to the book store for me." - you of yesteryear
        habinero 2y ago
        I do remember those days, and the idea that people thought the internet was a fad is wildly overblown. The reason was: (1) it wasn't new, wide access to it was new and (2) there was clear value to it that could be explained to others and used immediately Neither of those are true for LLMs. It just has a lot of weird hype men who get huffy and DARVO if you say what you honestly think lol
        radlad 2y ago
        I would've said the same thing a few weeks ago.

habinero 2y ago

Agree. It's also a virtue to point out the emperor has no clothes and the tailor peddling them is a bullshit artist. This is no different than the crypto people who insisted the blockchain would soon be revolutionary and used for everything, when in reality the only real use case for a blockchain is cryptocoins, and the only real use case for cryptocoins is crime. The only really good use case for LLMs is spam, because it's the only use case for generating a lot of human-like speech without meaning.

radlad 2y ago
> The only really good use case for LLMs is spam, because it's the only use case for generating a lot of human-like speech without meaning. As someone who's been writing code for nearly 20 years now, and who spent a few weeks rewriting a Flutter app in Jetpack Compose with some help from Claude (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.johnmaguire.eureka https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.johnmaguire...), I have to say I don't agree with this at all.
- habinero 2y ago
  Ok? I too have been coding for over a decade and use Copilot as fancy autocomplete. I like it. It's not amazing.
  - radlad 2y ago
    Claude isn't Copilot, and I wasn't using it as autocomplete. I was using it to do things such as: - Creating a migration from the old DB to the new DB, no modifications of the generated code necessary - Refactoring state in a component out into a ViewModel, again no modifications necessary - Creating all the classes necessary for interacting with a Room database (i.e. the data class, dao, and DI module) given a schema - Creating the first iteration of a download worker, which I modified Check out plugins like ClaudeMind for JetBrains! They can even intelligently (automatically) feed information from your current tab or other unopened but relevant-sounding files to the AI. It was an eye-opening experience.
    - habinero 2y ago
      I would consider all of that fancy autocomplete. If it's just helping you type boring boilerplate things you would have typed anyway, that's autocomplete. It's neat, but it's not the paradigm shift people seem to think it is. Copilot mostly just replaces StackOverflow searches for me.
      - gravatron 2y ago
        I was a little too young to really remember the early internet era and the skeptics, but looking back at that era in hindsight, it's interesting to see the commentary from those who thought it was a fad, or not impressive, or did everything to downplay what was so obviously one of the biggest technological advances in human history. I can't help but feel I am witnessing these same type of comments and viewpoints in real time from people like you on the subject of AI. It's a funny feeling, like watching a slow moving train wreck about to happen. There are going to be people left behind in the world because of their failure to adapt to the new tech, just like there was during the advent of the internet age, and it just seems so obvious already as to who those people are going to be. "I just don't get what is so great about websites, they are just fancy books! It mostly just replaces going to the book store for me." - you of yesteryear
        habinero 2y ago
        I do remember those days, and the idea that people thought the internet was a fad is wildly overblown. The reason was: (1) it wasn't new, wide access to it was new and (2) there was clear value to it that could be explained to others and used immediately Neither of those are true for LLMs. It just has a lot of weird hype men who get huffy and DARVO if you say what you honestly think lol
      - radlad 2y ago
        I would've said the same thing a few weeks ago.