3 ms·

As pessimistic about it as I am, I do think LLMs have a place in helping people turn their text description into formal directives. (Search terms, command-line,

by Terr_ 10mo ago

As pessimistic about it as I am, I do think LLMs have a place in helping people turn their text description into formal directives. (Search terms, command-line, SQL, etc.) ... Provided that the user sees what's being made for them and can confirm it and (hopefully) learn the target "language." Tutor, not a do-for-you assistant.

eviks 10mo ago
The "provided" isn't provided, of course, especially the learning part, that's not what you'd turn to AI for vs more reliable tutoring alternatives
left-struck 10mo ago
I agree apart from the learning part. The thing is unless you have some very specific needs where you need to use ffmpeg a lot, there’s just no need to learn this stuff. If I have to touch it once a year I have much better things to spend my time learning than ffmpeg command
- serial_dev 10mo ago
  There is no universe where I would like to spend brain power on learning ffmpeg commands by heart.
  - skydhash 10mo ago
    No one learns those. What people do is just learning the UX of the cli and the terminology (codec, opus, bitrate, sampling,…)
- rolfus 10mo ago
  Agreed. I have a bunch of little command-line apps that I use 0.3 to 3 times a year* and I'm never going to memorize the commands or syntax for those. I'll be happy to remember the names of these tools, so I can actually find them on my own computer. * - Just a few days ago I used ImageMagick for the first time in at least three years. I downloaded it just to find that I already had it installed.
- lukeschlather 10mo ago
  The thing about ffmpeg is there's no substitute for learning. It's pretty common that something simple like "ff convert" simply doesn't work and you have to learn about resolution, color space, profiles, or container formats. An LLM can help but earlier this year I spent a lot of time looking at these sorts of edge cases, and I can easily make any LLM wildly hallucinate by asking questions about how to use ffmpeg to handle particular files.
xattt 10mo ago
It you stretch it little further, those formal directives also include language and vocabulary of a particular domain (legalese, etc…).
famahar 10mo ago
Do most devs even look at the source code for packages they install? Or the compiled machine code? I think of this as just a higher level of abstraction. Confirm it works and not worry about the details of how it works
- skydhash 10mo ago
  I don’t because I trust the process to get the artifacts. Why? Because it’s easy to replicate and verify. Just like how proof works in math. You can’t verify LLM’s output. And thus, any form of trust is faith, not rational logic.
  - ben_w 10mo ago
    I don't install 3rd party dependencies if I can avoid them. Why? Because although someone could have verified them, there's no guarantee that anybody actually did, and this difference has been exploited by attackers often enough to get its own name, a "supply-chain attack". With an LLM’s output, it is short enough that I can* put in the effort to make sure it's not obliviously malicious. Then I save the output as an artefact. * and I do put in this effort, unless I'm deliberately experimenting with vibe coding to see what the SOTA is.
    - skydhash 10mo ago
      > Because although someone could have verified them, there's no guarantee that anybody actually did In the case of npm and the like, I don't trust them because they are actually using insecure procedures, which is proven to be so. And the vectors of attacks are well known. But I do trust Debian and the binaries they provide as the risks are for the Debian infrastructure to be compromised, malicious code in in the original source, and cryptographic failures. All threes are possibles, but there's more risk of bodily harm to myself that them happening.
  - josephg 10mo ago
    > You can’t verify LLM’s output. And thus, any form of trust is faith, not rational logic. Well, you can verify an LLM's output all sorts of ways. But even if you couldn't, its still very rational to be judicious with how you use your time and attention. If I spent a few hours going through the ffmpeg documentation I could probably learn it better than chatgpt. But, its a judgement call whether its better to spend 5 minutes getting chatgpt to generate an ffmpeg command (with some error rate) or spend 2 hours doing it myself (with maybe a lower error rate). Which is a better use of my time depends on lots of factors. How much I care. How important it is. How often that knowledge will be useful in the future. And so on. If I worked in a hollywood production studio, I'd probably spend the 2 hours (and many more). But if I just reach for ffmpeg once a year, the small% error rate from chatgpt's invocations might be fine. Your time and attention are incredibly limited resources. Its very rational to spend them sparingly.

by Terr_ 10mo ago

eviks 10mo ago

The "provided" isn't provided, of course, especially the learning part, that's not what you'd turn to AI for vs more reliable tutoring alternatives

left-struck 10mo ago

I agree apart from the learning part. The thing is unless you have some very specific needs where you need to use ffmpeg a lot, there’s just no need to learn this stuff. If I have to touch it once a year I have much better things to spend my time learning than ffmpeg command

serial_dev 10mo ago
There is no universe where I would like to spend brain power on learning ffmpeg commands by heart.
- skydhash 10mo ago
  No one learns those. What people do is just learning the UX of the cli and the terminology (codec, opus, bitrate, sampling,…)
rolfus 10mo ago
Agreed. I have a bunch of little command-line apps that I use 0.3 to 3 times a year* and I'm never going to memorize the commands or syntax for those. I'll be happy to remember the names of these tools, so I can actually find them on my own computer. * - Just a few days ago I used ImageMagick for the first time in at least three years. I downloaded it just to find that I already had it installed.
lukeschlather 10mo ago
The thing about ffmpeg is there's no substitute for learning. It's pretty common that something simple like "ff convert" simply doesn't work and you have to learn about resolution, color space, profiles, or container formats. An LLM can help but earlier this year I spent a lot of time looking at these sorts of edge cases, and I can easily make any LLM wildly hallucinate by asking questions about how to use ffmpeg to handle particular files.

xattt 10mo ago

It you stretch it little further, those formal directives also include language and vocabulary of a particular domain (legalese, etc…).

famahar 10mo ago

Do most devs even look at the source code for packages they install? Or the compiled machine code? I think of this as just a higher level of abstraction. Confirm it works and not worry about the details of how it works

skydhash 10mo ago
I don’t because I trust the process to get the artifacts. Why? Because it’s easy to replicate and verify. Just like how proof works in math. You can’t verify LLM’s output. And thus, any form of trust is faith, not rational logic.
- ben_w 10mo ago
  I don't install 3rd party dependencies if I can avoid them. Why? Because although someone could have verified them, there's no guarantee that anybody actually did, and this difference has been exploited by attackers often enough to get its own name, a "supply-chain attack". With an LLM’s output, it is short enough that I can* put in the effort to make sure it's not obliviously malicious. Then I save the output as an artefact. * and I do put in this effort, unless I'm deliberately experimenting with vibe coding to see what the SOTA is.
  - skydhash 10mo ago
    > Because although someone could have verified them, there's no guarantee that anybody actually did In the case of npm and the like, I don't trust them because they are actually using insecure procedures, which is proven to be so. And the vectors of attacks are well known. But I do trust Debian and the binaries they provide as the risks are for the Debian infrastructure to be compromised, malicious code in in the original source, and cryptographic failures. All threes are possibles, but there's more risk of bodily harm to myself that them happening.
- josephg 10mo ago
  > You can’t verify LLM’s output. And thus, any form of trust is faith, not rational logic. Well, you can verify an LLM's output all sorts of ways. But even if you couldn't, its still very rational to be judicious with how you use your time and attention. If I spent a few hours going through the ffmpeg documentation I could probably learn it better than chatgpt. But, its a judgement call whether its better to spend 5 minutes getting chatgpt to generate an ffmpeg command (with some error rate) or spend 2 hours doing it myself (with maybe a lower error rate). Which is a better use of my time depends on lots of factors. How much I care. How important it is. How often that knowledge will be useful in the future. And so on. If I worked in a hollywood production studio, I'd probably spend the 2 hours (and many more). But if I just reach for ffmpeg once a year, the small% error rate from chatgpt's invocations might be fine. Your time and attention are incredibly limited resources. Its very rational to spend them sparingly.