5 ms·

I know I have already written a (long!) piece on this, so I don't want to expand too much here -- but this really was a very odd experience, to be talking with

I know I have already written a (long!) piece on this, so I don't want to expand too much here -- but this really was a very odd experience, to be talking with (understandably!) anxious parents of young adults about the peril of dehumanization while at the same time having this intensely human experience very much enabled by an LLM. More than anything, it reinforced something that I think many of us believe: the future is especially uncertain right now, and will contain many surprises!

stavros 4mo ago
Well, they are tools, aren't they? They aren't inherently good or bad, what people are doubtful of who will get to reap the benefits of the tools. For the past few decades, slowly but surely, the recipients of the benefits of technologies have increasingly been corporations. Of course people are worried that this will move even more wealth out of their hand and into CEOs' coffers. We really are living in technofeudalism, and we need to figure out how to stop it.
mbf1 4mo ago
It was great to see you, Adam, and others at the reunion.
throw0101a 4mo ago
> […] but this really was a very odd experience, to be talking with (understandably!) anxious parents of young adults about the peril of dehumanization while at the same time having this intensely human experience very much enabled by an LLM. While it just came out, are you planning on reading Pope Leo's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas? * https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifica_Humanitas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifica_Humanitas * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206
- RugnirViking 4mo ago
  it is really very long. I was trying to read it on monday evening and an eyebrow was raised when, after some time, I saw CHAPTER ONE and realised that up until that point I had been reading the foreword!
  - sedimannapoleon 4mo ago
    [dead]
trebligdivad 4mo ago
Perhaps the uncertainty is more to do with the public being able to see this new tech; think what's happened in those 30 years, some of which you as a techie would have been well aware of but most people were clueless about. Those of us using PDAs at the time, most of the public didn't imagine constant wireless connectivity and powerful computers in their pockets. Networked games, neat tricks bunches of geeks ran at the time; today everywhere. Is AI really that much of an outlier other than public knowledge?
- XorNot 4mo ago
  AI is absurdly, massively centralized though. You don't own it. You can't own it. Access can be removed at any time. This situation may not persist but it's not like traditional pillars of society have demonstrated any incentive or even a perception of obligation to act in the public interest lately.
  - mikestaas 4mo ago
    Local LLMs are getting pretty darn good.
    - CalRobert 4mo ago
      True, but presumably they weren't trained locally.
  - trebligdivad 4mo ago
    you mean just like the Document editors or email systems these days? (or cloudflare etc etc)
hedgehog 4mo ago
I've done some tool-assisted ports (including without original source), the work you already did is probably 1/4 of the way to a web-hosted Rust BattleTris.
jcgrillo 4mo ago
I'm curious whether you have any insights into why high quality LLM-assisted (or enabled?) projects seem so relatively rare? Instead it seems like the preponderant contribution is a deluge of low quality slop. You didn't share yours and Adam's prompts in the post, so I'm left wondering how much of the success of this project is attributable to your collective ability and experience (both with this particular project and software in general) vs the capability of the model and harness itself? On that note, do you anticipate releasing LLMs at Oxide[1] (linked from RFD 0576)? Personally I find credible success stories like yours interesting, if a little jarring. If they were commonplace, shouldn't software be generally getting a lot better? [1] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/meta/tree/master/engineering/llms https://github.com/oxidecomputer/meta/tree/master/engineerin...
- RugnirViking 4mo ago
  for the same reason that there is so much bad writing online? you'd think that making it much easier to make large projects would mean a great many more people would make large projects - this will inevitably reduce quality. The number of people with the time and dilligence, the people who previously would have been making them previously, is much fewer. They hide themselves away to find likeminded people anyway, but now its even harder to find them amongst all the deafening slop.
- rincebrain 4mo ago
  There exist a great many people in the world who think that the only important thing is having a good enough idea, and everything else is almost valueless by comparison. You've probably met them, people who say things like "I just need someone to code it, can you sign this NDA, what do you mean you want to be paid, it's just coding?" They exist in other formats too - blogs in the vein of "for exposure" cover the same premise, mostly. Vibe coding has allowed them all to try and show everyone how right they were.
  - jcgrillo 4mo ago
    Right, but most of them don't already work as software engineers, at least it hasn't been my experience of my colleagues. However, companies that are aggressively adopting AI coding tools aren't (at least nobody has shown it) getting better by any metric. So, what gives? Why, generally, isn't this kind of success story common?

stavros 4mo ago

Well, they are tools, aren't they? They aren't inherently good or bad, what people are doubtful of who will get to reap the benefits of the tools. For the past few decades, slowly but surely, the recipients of the benefits of technologies have increasingly been corporations. Of course people are worried that this will move even more wealth out of their hand and into CEOs' coffers. We really are living in technofeudalism, and we need to figure out how to stop it.

mbf1 4mo ago

It was great to see you, Adam, and others at the reunion.

throw0101a 4mo ago

> […] but this really was a very odd experience, to be talking with (understandably!) anxious parents of young adults about the peril of dehumanization while at the same time having this intensely human experience very much enabled by an LLM. While it just came out, are you planning on reading Pope Leo's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas? * https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifica_Humanitas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifica_Humanitas * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206

RugnirViking 4mo ago
it is really very long. I was trying to read it on monday evening and an eyebrow was raised when, after some time, I saw CHAPTER ONE and realised that up until that point I had been reading the foreword!
- sedimannapoleon 4mo ago
  [dead]

trebligdivad 4mo ago

Perhaps the uncertainty is more to do with the public being able to see this new tech; think what's happened in those 30 years, some of which you as a techie would have been well aware of but most people were clueless about. Those of us using PDAs at the time, most of the public didn't imagine constant wireless connectivity and powerful computers in their pockets. Networked games, neat tricks bunches of geeks ran at the time; today everywhere. Is AI really that much of an outlier other than public knowledge?

XorNot 4mo ago
AI is absurdly, massively centralized though. You don't own it. You can't own it. Access can be removed at any time. This situation may not persist but it's not like traditional pillars of society have demonstrated any incentive or even a perception of obligation to act in the public interest lately.
- mikestaas 4mo ago
  Local LLMs are getting pretty darn good.
  - CalRobert 4mo ago
    True, but presumably they weren't trained locally.
- trebligdivad 4mo ago
  you mean just like the Document editors or email systems these days? (or cloudflare etc etc)

hedgehog 4mo ago

I've done some tool-assisted ports (including without original source), the work you already did is probably 1/4 of the way to a web-hosted Rust BattleTris.

jcgrillo 4mo ago

I'm curious whether you have any insights into why high quality LLM-assisted (or enabled?) projects seem so relatively rare? Instead it seems like the preponderant contribution is a deluge of low quality slop. You didn't share yours and Adam's prompts in the post, so I'm left wondering how much of the success of this project is attributable to your collective ability and experience (both with this particular project and software in general) vs the capability of the model and harness itself? On that note, do you anticipate releasing LLMs at Oxide[1] (linked from RFD 0576)? Personally I find credible success stories like yours interesting, if a little jarring. If they were commonplace, shouldn't software be generally getting a lot better? [1] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/meta/tree/master/engineering/llms https://github.com/oxidecomputer/meta/tree/master/engineerin...

RugnirViking 4mo ago
for the same reason that there is so much bad writing online? you'd think that making it much easier to make large projects would mean a great many more people would make large projects - this will inevitably reduce quality. The number of people with the time and dilligence, the people who previously would have been making them previously, is much fewer. They hide themselves away to find likeminded people anyway, but now its even harder to find them amongst all the deafening slop.
rincebrain 4mo ago
There exist a great many people in the world who think that the only important thing is having a good enough idea, and everything else is almost valueless by comparison. You've probably met them, people who say things like "I just need someone to code it, can you sign this NDA, what do you mean you want to be paid, it's just coding?" They exist in other formats too - blogs in the vein of "for exposure" cover the same premise, mostly. Vibe coding has allowed them all to try and show everyone how right they were.
- jcgrillo 4mo ago
  Right, but most of them don't already work as software engineers, at least it hasn't been my experience of my colleagues. However, companies that are aggressively adopting AI coding tools aren't (at least nobody has shown it) getting better by any metric. So, what gives? Why, generally, isn't this kind of success story common?