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People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it r

• zwnow 1y ago
  My guy its not only about the art its about killing passion and the lifeline of people. Your take is incredibly ignorant to people who value human created work. These things will kill industries. What jobs should people work in, who got their income cut by LLMs? Force them into blue collar work?
  • worldsayshi 1y ago
    Your point is very valid. It is the luddite argument. And that is valid. But the problem is never the technology itself but, as you point out, the loss of livelihood and meaning and especially the shifts in power from the many to the few. We need to learn to make technology truly benefit the many. Also in terms of power.
    • zwnow 1y ago
      Yes, fully agree. Can't believe we live in a timeline in which big tech companies steal data from the many, use this data to train models, sell this data while also convincing technological illiterate people their propaganda machines (social media) is useful to them... Now they want to buy nuclear power plants too. Im sure nothing will go wrong there.
      • worldsayshi 1y ago
        It's all downstream from the way the economy works, and the economy is (I think) downstream from the tools we use to coordinate effort. If we can evolve the way which we handle resource allocation, trust and effort coordination I emphatically believe there's at least some some hope that we can create an alternative economy. Which it seems that we urgently need as a civilization.
  • JW_00000 1y ago
    But isn't that the same as saying: what about all the horse carrier drivers who lost their jobs due to cars? What about all the bank tellers we lost after inventing the automated teller machine?
    • girvo 1y ago
      No, this is far far more wide reaching and it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. It’s why it’s so exciting.
      • erwincoumans 1y ago
        Agreed. However, according to the author LLM's mostly produce crap, and he doesn't seem to be able to imagine (or want?) that to improve (beyond crap/hallucination and become very useful to many).
        • zwnow 1y ago
          Tell me how is it going to be useful to the many? Even better marketing emails? More precise targeted advertising? Even more automated job application rejections? Mass firings due to AI replacing most office jobs? Whats the benefit of LLMs to the many who barely can operate a search machine? I am sorry but thinking this will benefit the many is delusional. It's main use is making rich people richer by saving expenses on people's wages. Tell me, how are these people going to get a job once their skills are made useless?
          • AlexeyBrin 1y ago
            I'm not an LLM enthusiast, but I can think of at least one example where these are useful to the many: decent/fast translation from one language to another. It won't be perfect, but it is usually good enough when you are visiting a foreign country for a few weeks and you have no time or interest in learning the language.
          • rolandog 1y ago
            Exactly... Why is it that every time a science fiction writer comes up with a new dystopian future to warn humanity about something, there's always a bunch of psychopaths that go "ooh, blueprints for a get-rich-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else scheme!"?
• bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  >LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time. Or a microwave oven that told you it grilled the chicken but it didn't and you have to die from Salmonella poisoning.
  • kenjackson 1y ago
    My microwave regularly doesn’t cool things as the instructions describe. I’ve learned to pay attention.
  • JW_00000 1y ago
    My grandma did not have a microwave oven because she didn't see the point of it.
    • Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
      I'm in my 40s and don't have a microwave oven because I don't see the point of it... when I lived in a rented apartment, I got gifted one because how could I not have one? I tried it for a few days and just didn't find it useful. When I bought my own apartment and renovated the kitchen, I didn't bother to install one.
      • Semaphor 1y ago
        The use is heating up single portions of leftovers.
        • Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
          Which can be done in an induction cooker almost as fast, with the result tasting better, and without the need of a specific appliance that takes up considerable space.
          • Semaphor 1y ago
• tgv 1y ago
  > Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so Even though that is a generalization that you cannot prove, you implicitly admit that it will prevent everybody else from gettings any skills. Which is quite a bad outcome. > powerlifting is a thing Those people have a different motivation: looks, competition, prestige, power. That doesn't motivate people to learn to draw. Your easy dismissal is undoubtedly shared by many, but it is hubris.
• ninetyninenine 1y ago
  >People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. You generally don't need a lengthy explanation because it's common sense. When someone doesn't get it then people have to go into lengthy convoluted explanations because they are trying to elucidate common sense to someone who doesn't get it. I mean how else do I elucidate it? LLMs are different from any revolutionary technology that came before it. The first thing is we don't understand it. It's a black box. We understand the learning algorithm that trains the weights, but we don't understand conceptually how an LLM works. They are black boxes and we have limited control over them. You are talking to a thing that understands what you say to it, yet we don't understand this how this thing works. Nobody in the history of science has created anything similar. And yet we get geniuses like you who can use a simple analogy to reduce the creation of an LLM to something like the invention of a car and think there's utterly no difference. There is a sort of inflection point here. It hasn't happened yet but a possible future is becoming more tangible. A future where technology surpasses humanity in intelligence. You are talking to something that is talking back and could surpass us. I know the abundance of AI slop has made everyone numb to the events that happened in the past couple of years. But we need to look past that. Something major has happened, something different then the achievements and milestones humanity has surpassed before.
  • rob_c 1y ago
    > You generally don't need a lengthy explanation because it's common sense. When someone doesn't get it then people have to go into lengthy convoluted explanations because they are trying to elucidate common sense to someone who doesn't get it. Maybe you're new here friend...
  • pests 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • intrasight 1y ago
    > The first thing is we don't understand it. Perhaps you do not understand it, but many software engineers do understand. Of the human brain we can still say that we don't understand it.
• Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  > People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. No it's not (like OP's article says). With a calculator you punch in 10 + 9 and get 2 immediately, and this was 50+ years ago. With an LLM you type in "what is 10 + 9" and get three paragraphs of text after a few seconds. (this is false, I just tried it and the response is "10 + 9 = 19" but I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect). With a microwave you yeet in food and press a button and stuff happens the same way, every time. Sure, if you abstract it to "doing things in an easier and lazier way", LLMs are just the next step, like IDEs with built in error checking and code generation were since 20 years ago. But it's more vague than press button to do a thing.
  • _w1tm 1y ago
    > No it's not (like OP's article says). With a calculator you punch in 10 + 9 and get 2 immediately, and this was 50+ years ago. Your calculator is broken. > With an LLM you type in "what is 10 + 9" and get three paragraphs of text after a few seconds. (this is false, I just tried it and the response is "10 + 9 = 19" but I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect). So you’re arguing against a strawman?
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• KaiserPro 1y ago
  Up until recently, I could, if I wanted to have a living doing VFX. I could, if I wanted to, craft new worlds, and get paid for it. In two years, that won't be the case. Its the same for virtually all other Arts based job. An economy that currently support say 100% of the people now, will at most be able to support 10-30% in a few years time. > It's ridiculous to think drawing will become a lost art because of LLM/Diffusal Map reading is pretty much a dead art now (as someone who leads hikes, I've seen it first hand) Memorising books/oral history is also a long dead art. Oral story telling is also a dead art, as is folk music, compared to its peak. Sure _rich_ people will be able to do all the arts they want. Everyone else won't
  • scripper 1y ago
    I agree. I am at mid-career. I know many people who dedicated years of their lives learning a craft and building a dignified, somewhat-creative career. I admire these people greatly. The rewards from putting in this effort have disappeared. For example, I have no knowledge of film editing or what “works” in a sequence, but if I wanted to I could create something more than passable with AI.
  • scrollaway 1y ago
    My girlfriend is a ceramist. She makes porcelain pieces (https://malinamore.art/ https://malinamore.art/) that are sold for hundreds or even thousands of euros. Why would someone buy a plate off her, when they could get one from IKEA for 1.50 eur? Yet ceramics is not a dead art. Beats me?
    • KaiserPro 1y ago
      Correct! but 200 years ago there were loads of ceramic manufactures, employing hundreds of thousands of skilled potters. even 50 years ago, there were thousands of skilled ceramists in the UK. now its single person artisans, like your very talented other half. Now, that reduction in work force too 200 years and mirrors the industrial revolution. GenAI is looking like its going to speed run that in ~5-7 years I should be more clear, there is a difference between dead art (memorizing stories) and non viable career for all but 1% of people compared to now. I'm talking about the latter.
• Unearned5161 1y ago
  Something notable to recognize when comparing LLM's to calculators, is the fact that the skill a calculator is replacing can be learned by any competent adult in about a week. Manual division, addition, even more complicated stuff, it will just take much longer. However, the skills that an LLM is targeting, once atrophied are not replaceable in such short time frames. Being good at coming up with ideas, at critically reading something, at synthesizing research, at writing and editing, are all things that take years to learn. This is not the same as learning the mechanics that a calculator does for you.
• aredox 1y ago
  >World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented. Obesity rates keep "improving" since the car was invented, up to becoming a major public health crisis and the main amplifier of complications and mortality when the pandemic stroke. Oh, and the 100m sprint world record has been set for more than a decade and a half now, which means either we reached human optimum, or progress on anti-doping technology has forced a regression on performance.
• maleno 1y ago
  I think it's interesting that practically every time this point is made (and it is made so very often), the examples that are used to prove the point are objective and easy to measure. A 100m sprint time or a calculation of Pi is not the same as a work of art, because they can be measured objectively while art cannot. There is no equivalent in art-making to running a 100m sprint. The evaluation of a 100m sprint is not subjective, does not require judgement, does not depend on taste, context, history, and all the other many things the reputation and impact of a work of art depends on. As ever, the standard defence of LLM and all gen AI tech rests on this reduction of complex subjectivity to something close to objectivity: the picture looks like other pictures, therefore it is a good picture. The sentence looks plausibly like other sentences, therefore it is a good sentence. That this argument is so pervasive tells me only that the audience for 'creative work' is already so inundated with depthless trash, that they can no longer tell the difference between painting and powerlifting. It is not the artists who are primarily at risk here, but the audience for their work. Artists will continue to disappear for the same reason they always have: because their prospective audience does not understand them.
  • bsenftner 1y ago
    There is at least three major art markets: 1) pretty pictures to fill in a void (empty walls, dress up an article...), 2) prestige purchases for those trying to fill that void in their imposter syndrome, and 3) fellow artists who are really philosophers working beyond language. The whole reason art is evaluated with vague notions like taste, context, history and so on is because the work of artists left their audience's understanding several generations ago, but they still need to make a living, so these proxies are used so the general public does not feel left out. Serious art is leading edge philosophy operating in a medium beyond language, and for what it's worth AI will never be there, just like the majority of people.
    • MichaelZuo 1y ago
      There’s an even deeper issue, not just for art, for all things. The majority of artists, and of all other groups, are in fact mediocre with mediocre virtues, so enough incentives would turn most of them into Whatever shillers like the post describes. So a non expert cannot easily determine, even if they do stumble upon “Serious art” by happenstance, whether it’s just another empty scheme or indeed someting more serious. Maybe if they spend several hours puzzling over the artist’s background, incentives, network, claims, past works, etc… they can be 99% sure. But almost nobody likes any particular piece of work that much upon first glance, to put in that much effort.
• Caelus9 1y ago
  Totally agree. Calculators didn’t kill math. Cameras didn’t kill painting. Tools change the baseline, but people still push the edges. The ones who love the craft won’t stop just because it got easier for others.
• andrepd 1y ago
  > People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. Well you sure showed them. The TFA makes a very concrete point about how the Whatever machine is categorically different from a calculator or a handsaw. A calculator doesn't sometimes hallucinate a wrong result. A saw doesn't sometimes cut wavy lines instead of straight lines. They are predictable and learnable tools. I don't see anyone addressing this criticism, only straw manning.
• Ygg2 1y ago
  > People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. There are clear differences. First of a calculator and microwave are quite different, but so is LLM. Both are time savers, in the sense of microwave saves time defrosting and calculator saves time calculating vs human. They save time to achieve a goal. However calculators come with a penalty, by making multiplication easier they make user worse at it. LLMs are like calculators but worse. They both are effort savers, and thus come with a huge learning penalty and unprecise enough that you need to learn to know better than them.
• lloeki 1y ago
  > World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented. A very good example! (...although probably not how you think it is ;) Indeed the world record is achieved by a very limited number of people under stringent conditions. Meanwhile people by and large† take their cars to go to the bakery which by foot would be 10min away, to disastrous effect on their health. And by "cars" I mean "technology", which, while a fantastic enabler of things impossible before, has turned more people into couch potatoes than athletes. † Comparatively to world record holders.
• teiferer 1y ago
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• armchairhacker 1y ago
  IMO AI isn't like a calculator, it is like a microwave. Another analogy would be like takeout. The difference is that you don't get to choose the details, and usually get worse quality, but sometimes that's OK.
• mystified5016 1y ago
  AI is the equivalent of going from stone abacuses straight to smartphones, skipping all computer and calculator development in between. We go from a society where only a very few people are literate in math to one where everyone has a literal supercomputer at all times. What do you think that would do for math literacy in a society? Would everyone suddenly went to learn algebra and calculus? Or would the vast majority of people use the easy machine and accept its answers without question or understanding?
• 1718627440 1y ago
  But you are not allowed to use either until you can already cook and calculate.
  • dingnuts 1y ago
    comparing LLMs to microwaves makes me think of the time my grandmother cooked the Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave because it was new and easy and the obvious thing to do! I guess the analogy isn't that bad! I'd be pretty upset if a professional cook made my steak in a microwave.
• ineedasername 1y ago
  The jump from Assembly to Python is an enormous skill difference. But the shift from Python to Python with Copilot? Not as much, and every counter to this sort of comparison that I have heard is strongly in want of a true Scotsman. It’s time to move on. The history of tech is a steady march of tools that demand less prep, less precision, and less friction from their users. All this hand-wringing seems to show is that a worforce whose aggregate work ethos usually mocks “get off my lawn” attitudes in others was hiding a significant “but I never thought it would happen to me”, often couched in some variety of “but think of the children”. Besides, it could be worse: it’s not like when other professions went obsolete practically overnight, like switchboard operators, or cuirassiers.
• madmask 1y ago
  The point is what value can the common man reasonably provide in the free market to support a family when most of white collar work is also automated? The industrial revolution automated a lot of blue collars, AI is starting to seriously automate white collars to the point less people are needed. They are automating the mind, there’s not much else to compete with to provide value. Which color people should pivot to?
  • johnnyanmac 1y ago
    >Which color people should pivot to? At this rate: red.
• johnnyanmac 1y ago
  >But it really is. it really isn't. Calculators don't steal from acuators. Actuators and calculators grabbed from nature. Microwaves didn't take from the fireplace. People really want to pretend that LLM's aren't just storing massive amounts of other people's data with reckless abandon and pretend instead that it's like the car to a horse. Cars didn't need literal horsepower. >It's ridiculous to think drawing will become a lost art because of LLM/Diffusal models when we live in a reality where powerlifting is a thing. I agree that athletes are the last thing to be replaced by our robot overlords. If there's one cheatcode to the human element, it's charisma. And people bouncing balls real good is a trillion dollar industry that warps out entire civlization, from forming hobbies, to shaping what we find as "attractive". That's more of a cultural thing than a practicality thing, though. People respect athletes. They do not apparently respect artists nor engineers, let alone blue collar work that turns out to be way more expensive to automate.
• kenny239 1y ago
  Yeah at least at its current stage it still is. but a calculator boosts productivity just like a microwave. A lot of experiments and boilerplate code with low entropy is made a lot easier with LLMs.