5 ms·

> And LLM's already have tons of productive uses. I disagree strongly with that. Right now they are fun toys to play with, but not useful tools, because they a

by bigstrat2003 2y ago

> And LLM's already have tons of productive uses. I disagree strongly with that. Right now they are fun toys to play with, but not useful tools, because they are not reliable. If and when that gets fixed, maybe they will have productive uses. But for right now, not so much.

gjs4786 2y ago
"it only needs to be good enough" there are tons of productive uses for them. Reliable, much less. But productive? Tons
fionic 2y ago
Hello? Do you have a pulse? LLMs accomplish like 90% of everything I do now so I don’t have to do it… Explain what this code syntax means… Explain what this function does… Write a function to do X… Respond to my teammates in a Jira ticket explaining why it’s a bad idea to create a repo for every dockerfile… My teammate responded with X write a rebuttal… … and the list goes on … like forever
- xrisk 2y ago
  It’s not that the LLM is doing something productive, it’s that you were doing things that were unproductive in the first place, and it’s sad that we live in a society where such things are considered productive (because of course they create monetary value). As an aside, I sincerely hope our “human” conversations don’t devolve into agents talking to each other. It’s just an insult to humanity.
- nunez 2y ago
  Exactly what management wants to hear so they can lay off hundreds and push salaries down.
dwaltrip 2y ago
Who do you speak for? Other people have gotten value from them. Maybe you meant to say “in my experience” or something like that. To me, your comment reads as you making a definitive judgment on their usefulness for everyone. I use it most days when coding. Not all the time, but I’ve gotten a lot of value out of them. And yes I'm quite aware of their pitfalls.
MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
They are pretty useful tools. Do yourself a favor and get a $100 free trial for Claude, hook it up to Aider, and give it a shot. It makes mistakes, it gets things wrong, and it still saves a bunch of time. A 10 minute refactoring turns into 30 seconds of making a request, 15 seconds of waiting, and a minute of reviewing and fixing up the output. It can give you decent insights into potential problems and error messages. The more precise your instructions, the better they perform. Being unreliable isn't being useless. It's like a very fast, very cheap intern. If you are good at code review and know exactly what change you want to make ahead of time, that can save you a ton of time without needing to be perfect.
- kgwgk 2y ago
  > a $100 free trial What?
  - jdiff 2y ago
    A free trial of an amount of credits that would otherwise cost $100, I'm assuming.
    - kgwgk 2y ago
      Could be. Does such a thing exist?
      - jdiff 2y ago
        Not outwardly/visibly/readily from a quick scan of their site and a short list of search results.
  - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
    I misremembered, because I was checking out all the various trials available. I think I was thinking of Google Cloud's $300 in credits, since I'm using Claude through their VertexAI.
- nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
alvah 2y ago
This is a classic fallacy - you can't find a productive use for it, therefore nobody can find a productive use for it. That's not how the world works.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
I use LLMs everyday to proofread and edit my emails. They’re incredible at it, as good as anyone I’ve ever met. Tasks that involve language and not facts tend to be done well by LLMs.
- matwood 2y ago
  > I use LLMs everyday to proofread and edit my emails. This right here. I used to spend tons of time making sure my emails were perfect. Is it professional enough, am I being too terse, etc…
  - hadlock 2y ago
    The first profitable AI product I ever heard about (2 years ago) was an exec using a product to draft emails for them, for exactly the reasons you mention.

gjs4786 2y ago

"it only needs to be good enough" there are tons of productive uses for them. Reliable, much less. But productive? Tons

fionic 2y ago

Hello? Do you have a pulse? LLMs accomplish like 90% of everything I do now so I don’t have to do it… Explain what this code syntax means… Explain what this function does… Write a function to do X… Respond to my teammates in a Jira ticket explaining why it’s a bad idea to create a repo for every dockerfile… My teammate responded with X write a rebuttal… … and the list goes on … like forever

xrisk 2y ago
It’s not that the LLM is doing something productive, it’s that you were doing things that were unproductive in the first place, and it’s sad that we live in a society where such things are considered productive (because of course they create monetary value). As an aside, I sincerely hope our “human” conversations don’t devolve into agents talking to each other. It’s just an insult to humanity.
nunez 2y ago
Exactly what management wants to hear so they can lay off hundreds and push salaries down.

dwaltrip 2y ago

Who do you speak for? Other people have gotten value from them. Maybe you meant to say “in my experience” or something like that. To me, your comment reads as you making a definitive judgment on their usefulness for everyone. I use it most days when coding. Not all the time, but I’ve gotten a lot of value out of them. And yes I'm quite aware of their pitfalls.

MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago

They are pretty useful tools. Do yourself a favor and get a $100 free trial for Claude, hook it up to Aider, and give it a shot. It makes mistakes, it gets things wrong, and it still saves a bunch of time. A 10 minute refactoring turns into 30 seconds of making a request, 15 seconds of waiting, and a minute of reviewing and fixing up the output. It can give you decent insights into potential problems and error messages. The more precise your instructions, the better they perform. Being unreliable isn't being useless. It's like a very fast, very cheap intern. If you are good at code review and know exactly what change you want to make ahead of time, that can save you a ton of time without needing to be perfect.

kgwgk 2y ago
> a $100 free trial What?
- jdiff 2y ago
  A free trial of an amount of credits that would otherwise cost $100, I'm assuming.
  - kgwgk 2y ago
    Could be. Does such a thing exist?
    - jdiff 2y ago
      Not outwardly/visibly/readily from a quick scan of their site and a short list of search results.
- MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
  I misremembered, because I was checking out all the various trials available. I think I was thinking of Google Cloud's $300 in credits, since I'm using Claude through their VertexAI.
nyarlathotep_ 2y ago

alvah 2y ago

This is a classic fallacy - you can't find a productive use for it, therefore nobody can find a productive use for it. That's not how the world works.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

I use LLMs everyday to proofread and edit my emails. They’re incredible at it, as good as anyone I’ve ever met. Tasks that involve language and not facts tend to be done well by LLMs.

matwood 2y ago
> I use LLMs everyday to proofread and edit my emails. This right here. I used to spend tons of time making sure my emails were perfect. Is it professional enough, am I being too terse, etc…
- hadlock 2y ago
  The first profitable AI product I ever heard about (2 years ago) was an exec using a product to draft emails for them, for exactly the reasons you mention.