4 ms·

Why would he push back? His whole schtick is to sell only AI hype. He’s not going to hurt his revenue.

by moomoo11 9mo ago

square_usual 9mo ago
That's a great way to tell on yourself that you've never read Simon's work.
- blibble 9mo ago
  the bare minimum of criticism to allow independence to be claimed?
- GoatInGrey 9mo ago
  On the contrary, we get to read hundreds of his comments explaining how the LLM in anecdote X didn't fail, it was the developer's fault and they should know better than to blame the LLM. I only know this because on occasion I'll notice there was a comment from them (I only check the name of the user if it's a hot take) and I ctrl-F their username to see 20-70 matches on the same thread. Exactly 0 of those comments present the idea that LLMs are seriously flawed in programming environments regardless of who's in the driver seat. It always goes back to operator error and "just you watch, in the next 3 months or years...". I dunno, I manage LLM implementation consulting teams and I will tell you to your face that LLMs are unequivocally shit for the majority of use cases. It's not hard to directly criticize the tech without hiding behind deflections or euphemisms.
  - simonw 9mo ago
    > Exactly 0 of those comments present the idea that LLMs are seriously flawed in programming environments regardless of who's in the driver seat. Why would I say that when I very genuinely believe the opposite? LLMs are flawed in programming environments if driven by people who don't know how to use them effectively. Learning to use them effectively is unintuitive and difficult, as I'm sure you've seen yourself. So I try to help people learn how to use them, through articles like https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ and comments like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765460#46765940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765460#46765940 (I don't ever say variants of "just you watch, in the next 3 months or years..." though, I think predicting future improvements is pointless when we can be focusing on what the models we have right now can do.)
- moomoo11 9mo ago
  I literally see their posts every (other) day, and its always glazing something that doesn't fully work (but is kind of cool at a glance) or is really just hyped beyond belief. Comments usually point out the issues or more grounded reality. BTW I'm bullish on AI, going through 100s of millions of tokens per month.
simonw 9mo ago
If I sell only AI hype why do I keep telling people that many systems built on top of LLMs are inherently insecure? https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/
sealeck 9mo ago
I actually don't think this is true, and certainly of people who cover LLMs Simon Willison is one of the more critical and measured people.

Why would he push back? His whole schtick is to sell only AI hype. He’s not going to hurt his revenue.

square_usual 9mo ago

That's a great way to tell on yourself that you've never read Simon's work.

blibble 9mo ago
the bare minimum of criticism to allow independence to be claimed?
GoatInGrey 9mo ago
On the contrary, we get to read hundreds of his comments explaining how the LLM in anecdote X didn't fail, it was the developer's fault and they should know better than to blame the LLM. I only know this because on occasion I'll notice there was a comment from them (I only check the name of the user if it's a hot take) and I ctrl-F their username to see 20-70 matches on the same thread. Exactly 0 of those comments present the idea that LLMs are seriously flawed in programming environments regardless of who's in the driver seat. It always goes back to operator error and "just you watch, in the next 3 months or years...". I dunno, I manage LLM implementation consulting teams and I will tell you to your face that LLMs are unequivocally shit for the majority of use cases. It's not hard to directly criticize the tech without hiding behind deflections or euphemisms.
- simonw 9mo ago
  > Exactly 0 of those comments present the idea that LLMs are seriously flawed in programming environments regardless of who's in the driver seat. Why would I say that when I very genuinely believe the opposite? LLMs are flawed in programming environments if driven by people who don't know how to use them effectively. Learning to use them effectively is unintuitive and difficult, as I'm sure you've seen yourself. So I try to help people learn how to use them, through articles like https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ and comments like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765460#46765940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765460#46765940 (I don't ever say variants of "just you watch, in the next 3 months or years..." though, I think predicting future improvements is pointless when we can be focusing on what the models we have right now can do.)
moomoo11 9mo ago
I literally see their posts every (other) day, and its always glazing something that doesn't fully work (but is kind of cool at a glance) or is really just hyped beyond belief. Comments usually point out the issues or more grounded reality. BTW I'm bullish on AI, going through 100s of millions of tokens per month.

simonw 9mo ago

If I sell only AI hype why do I keep telling people that many systems built on top of LLMs are inherently insecure? https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/

sealeck 9mo ago

I actually don't think this is true, and certainly of people who cover LLMs Simon Willison is one of the more critical and measured people.