Curious_Canid

This is why we could, and should, replace most CEOs with AI. If someone is going to make bad decisions, we could at least avoid paying them hundreds of millions of dollars to do it.

I write software for a living and I have worked directly with LLM backend code. You aren’t wrong about the exceptions, but I think they actually reinforce my main point. If you play with the parameters you can make all kinds of things happen, but all of those things are still driven by the existing information it already has or can find. It can mash things together in random new ways, but it will always work with components that already exist. There is no awareness of context or meaning that would allow it to make intelligent choices about what it mashes together. That will always be driven by the patterns it already knows, positively or negatively.

It’s like doing chemistry by picking random bottles from the shelf and dumping them into a beaker to see what happens. You could make an amazing discovery that way, but the chances of it happening are very, very low. And even if it does happen, there’s an excellent chance that you won’t recognize it.

I’m in favor of using LLMs for tasks that involve large-scale data analysis. They can be quite helpful, as long as the user understands their limitations and performs due diligence to validate the results.

Unfortunately what we are mostly seeing are cases where LLMs are used to generate boilerplate text or code that is assembled from a vast collection of material that someone who actually knew what they were doing had previously created. That kind of reuse is not inherently bad, but it should not be confused with what competent writers or coders do. And if LLMs really do take over a lot of routine daily tasks from people, the pool of approaches to those tasks will stagnate, and eventually degenerate, as LLMs become the primary sources of each others’ solutions.

LLMs may very well change the world, but not it in the ways most people expect. Companies that have invested heavily in them are pushing them as the solutions to the wrong problems.

LLMs are not capable of creating anything, including code. They are enormous word-matching search engines that try to find and piece together the closest existing examples of what is being requested. If what you’re looking for is reasonably common, that may be useful. If what you’re looking for is obscure, you may get things that don’t apply. And the LLM cannot tell the difference. They can be useful but, unlike an LLM, you need to understand the context to use them safely.

I think the most interesting thing about LLMs is actually what they tell us about the repetitive nature of most of what we do.

We are screwed.

I’m giving it a try. It does look like a good option. My only concern is that there don’t seem to be many source options for the US. There were several that showed up as unavailable when I first started, it that no longer show as options now that I’ve configured it. I’m puzzled.

I don’t think that is a characteristic of our species. It is not universally true across other cultures.
And studies strongly suggest that the characteristic that was most important to the early survival of humans was altruism. There are always a lot more people who are basically good than basically bad. Only around 4% of the population are sociopathic.

Unfortunately, promoting sociopaths is a built-in characteristic of capitalism. Without controls, it rewards managers who are willing to sacrifice other people for profit (or power). The people who do that the best are those without empathy. So we end up with the worst of us making the decisions about how the world should work.

You’re right, but a lot of apps work the same way, and only serve ads to unpaid users. I’m hoping for the best.

If they stick with ads only for unpaid use, I’m okay with that. Software authors need to make a living.

Overall, I’m happy to see Nova Launcher getting support again. I’ve tried a half-dozen other launchers without finding one that really does everything I want.

I am also a software developer. The interview process in our industry has become increasingly offensive over the last 30 years. That started out with high-prestige companies who provided exceptional pay and benefits. Some people were willing to put up with that, so they mostly got away with it. Now most companies assume they have all the power and can demand whatever they want from applicants.

Refusing to participate is perfectly legitimate. It may keep you from finding a job, at least in this industry, but that may be better than giving up your self-respect for basic survival. And there are still decent software companies to work for, although they are hard to find. Changing careers is also a viable option.

Our overall economy is so broken in favor of the super rich and their corporations that individuals really do have very little power. Organized actions, of various types, give us some counter-leverage. Collective bargaining, strikes, and political efforts to push for better regulations all have the potential to improve things, at least in the middle- to long-term.

We all need to keep the big picture in mind while we do what we need to get by individually.