5 ms·
This article reads like a description of gambling-addiction behavior; the author appears to be addicted to using LLMs. He's eagerly awaiting his next hit of do
by dlenski 3mo ago
This article reads like a description of gambling-addiction behavior; the author appears to be addicted to using LLMs.
He's eagerly awaiting his next hit of dopamine from his favorite model. He's setting timers to be ready for when his next hit comes available. He's spinning up unnecessary queries just to start the timer ticking on new models.
You could basically write the same article about some guy who sits in a casino all day eagerly awaiting double-your-winnings bonuses or similar.
- serf 3mo ago> This article reads like a description of gambling-addiction behavior; the author appears to be addicted to using LLMs. you're projecting, it's just insanely irritating to work with a tool that 1) limits its' own use 2) with a random interval. keeping in mind that plenty of people are making money on token use.. this guy sets a timer to wake up for work; he appears to be addicted to work.
- rob 3mo agoI have a subscription. If I don't have anything to do at the moment I don't use it. I don't think I need to set a timer every five hours and come up with tasks to do just to use my subscription. Seems like odd behavior? I also have a Netflix subscription. I watch a couple of things on it and stop. I don't think to myself I need to maximize my subscription so let me watch movies all the time and wake up at 2 AM to make sure the next movie starts.
- skeledrew 3mo agoI encourage you others to keep on minimizing so us others can keep in maximizing. Balance!
- dlenski 3mo ago> it's just insanely irritating to work with a tool that 1) limits its' own use 2) with a random interval. Do you understand how the psychological response to the "random" disappearance of an annoyance is pretty much exactly the same as the psychological response to the "random" appearance of a reward? I put "random" in square quotes because neither are in fact totally random, but both are clearly quite carefully engineered to provoke the desired response. > you're projecting I am not projecting. My total lifetime gambling consists of maybe 10 or 15 cash poker games with high school friends, ten minutes at a casino in Montréal which I found a revolting experience, and receiving a few $1 scratch lottery tickets as party favors.
- fragmede 3mo agoHow does that mean you're not projecting? Yes if you oversimplify an LLM's responses to be random, and you squint real hard, it kinda resembles gambling, but an essay's worth of words is more meaningful to a human reading them than a human pulling a lever on a slot machine hoping for three sets of three cherries.
- vitaflo 3mo agoIf you don’t want 1 or 2 then pay by the token. If that’s too expensive for you then now you know why 1 and 2 exist.
- margalabargala 3mo agoThat's fine, but that doesn't mean that people taking steps to get the most out of what they have with 1 and 2 are now somehow gamblers.
- minimaxir 3mo agoGambling addition implies dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes: as I note in the post, I don't get a dopamine hit from running agents. I know people say "LLMs are just gambling because they're next-token-maximizers that can't write real code" but with GPT 5.6 Sol (and a few new tricks I discovered) the outputs are much less irregular and uncertain. It's just typical engineering. "Not wanting to waste money" is the polar opposite of gambling.
- dehrmann 3mo ago> dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes Like the LLM getting the solution right?
- minimaxir 3mo agoFor the problems I work on with GPT 5.6 Sol and the checks and balances I have in place, I estimate: - 80% of prompts get everything correct and are confirmed correct with manual validation - 19% of prompts make a minor mistake based on an ambiguity of the original prompt (user error not LLM error), but then reliably fixed in a followup prompt - 1% of prompts causes more problems than it solves and is more pragmatic to just revert For 99% good output, there isn't much of a dopamine rush when there is good output. The dopamine rushes are for the <1% odds. From the other replies on this post, I suspect no one believes me, but I am offering these numbers in good faith.
- SyneRyder 3mo agoI think those of us who are using AI consistently believe you and understand. I'd say roughly the same thing about Claude in terms of numbers. I think many people who don't believe you just haven't built-up the kind of prompt history & MCP / CLI tooling etc that lets you get to the point where things work at that level of accuracy. Hope it helps to know that at least some of us here understand and are seeing the same thing. And if it's anything like my experience with Fable, "always be more ambitious". The capabilities of the models are often limited only by what you're brave enough to ask for. I keep finding I'm not ambitious enough.
- nightshift1 3mo agoI think it is because the plans are crazy expensive. when you pay 200-300$/month for an online subscription, its normal to want to extract as much value as possible.
- huflungdung 3mo agoNo it’s definitely addiction
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- perching_aix 3mo agoOh this is a good idea actually, that reset checker site allows for setting up a scheduled agent job, so that GPT alerts me when there's been a reset :)
- margalabargala 3mo ago> He's spinning up unnecessary queries just to start the timer ticking on new models. This one just makes sense though. If you have a body of work to do that you know will exceed your 5 hour limit, then sending a message 3 hours before you start so that the reset happens in the middle enables you to do a task in one sitting.
- InsideOutSanta 3mo agoYeah, I subjectively definitely feel like using LLMs has aspects of gambling. It's 100% a Skinner box where I push a button with a high chance of a substantial reward. It's fun and addictive. But setting an automatic prompt in the morning so limits are more sensible during the day and allow continuous work is just common sense.
- bulbar 3mo agoAddiction is about negative impact on your private and professional life and the life of those around you and doing things about your will or things you know are bad for you. Might be the case here, but just setting a timer and being generally hyped about something is not enough for that. Very weird how convinced some here seem to be that addiction is involved while they apparently don't know anything about the diagnosis criteria.
- minimaxir 3mo agoIronically my time and focus on agentic prompting and coding has helped me break an actual bad addiction (World of Warcraft)