that's funny; because my root cause analysis didn't show the user as the person making the decision to show themselves ads? did yours, or was the victim blaming intentional?
Not making the specific decision (showing ads) but making the general decision (giving power to Microsoft). Blaming customers for buying MS products is not really much different than blaming Trump voters for voting for him. In both cases risks were obvious beforehand.
Not everyone is able to accurately predict the future from past patterns. They still deserve dignity and respect. Just because you were able to predict it easily doesn't make it possible for everyone.
The solution I'd like is instead of you making excuses for shitty behavior, instead maybe condemn the shitty behavior? You're allowed to say both, you can said I told you so, (to switching to not windows) while also being bothered when you see SWE at some company mistreat other people. You can complain about LG being abusive with the power they were given, while also offering alternative OS install instructions to that grandma who only wants to VC with her grandkids without being tricked into paying for trash-tier antivirus she doesn't need.
Because it spies on them and nags. But Windows itself already does that. LG could've done the same thing sans the mcafee popups and nobody would care, in fact Dell is probably doing that.
> Yep. Not free-for-all, but silently installed crap collecting metrics is well within their expectations.
I don't expect software engineers to build stuff like this. I expect humans to treat other humans with dignity and respect. In fact, it makes me extremely angry when I see people do it, or advocate that others should tolerate it.
I don't think they should tolerate it, but they do. 0 people are going to leave Windows because of this latest scandal, because the ones who care have already left. At some point I accepted that this doesn't matter to a lot of people, which is their right and choice, and if Linux wants to attract users, it has to do it by being easier to use besides just being more ethical.
Panel? Not really since Panasonic exited the market.
For complete monitors, the sole make I trust is Eizo but they only make professional (business or photography) products these days, and I'm _not_ going back to 60 Hz. Dell doesn't deserve trust but their UltraSharp line usually is "okay" even if my U2724D has uniformity issues near the bottom. Iiyama also remains a good one in my books.
But if you want OLED, abandon all hope. The technology is so compromised and the market so monopolized by the collective Market for Lemons style race to the bottom targeting gaymers that I intentionally went for IPS black (yes, LG.display, I know...) instead.
I think Eizo is what I'm looking for, I've never heard of the brand before, so I appreciate the recommendation! Hopefully I can convince myself to buy something slower than 120...
I don't mind paying for a bit more for professional gear. In part, because quality is important, but much more important to me is respect.
Their ColorEdges are definitely very good (I had a CG2730 just before that Dell) but now that my eyes tasted 120 Hz - even if only for page scrolling or the mouse pointer - I simply can't go back.
> It doesn't matter whether you misunderstand LLM summary or LLM "misunderstands" you – there are real risks involved, and you wouldn't want them to weigh on your conscience if they were to materialize.
"fun" fact, a number (some? many? all?) of the LLM speech to text models will editorialize or hallucinate words for you, to make your speech fit the pattern it expects.
I don't think it's appropriate to use a model that can editorialize in a medical transcription setting. I feel that crosses a huge number of ethical lines.
> At the moment consensus is that it must not be banned, but also not mandated in any way - people must take responsibility, and they must be able to decide for themselves where and when the LLM use is justified and where it is not.
I have a really hard time understanding how supposed experts in their field, have been taken in so perfectly and so completely. You're a trained and certified medical/healthcare worker, responsible for the health, safety and well being of other humans, and yet willingly turn over parts of the process that exists to protect the safety and health of others, to a machine that you know can and will make mistakes you wouldn't or even couldn't ever reasonably make. You're supposed to make sure it works and is safe for everyone you're responsible for before you start using it... but then, I prefer healthcare that doesn't move fast, and break humans.
I'm sure someone will try to play devil's advocate and suggest it's a good thing to ration care, and that you have to acknowledge that you can't save everybody, faster is better after all But no, I'm angry enough about it that if a licensed person suggests that, I'll gladly complain to your licensing board (rhetorically speaking, I'm not gonna try to doxx anyone). You can't ethically argue for rationing care, and letting a machine known to make errors in ethics or care decisions, that you have been trained not to make. (Advocating for a reduction in the standard of care in order to increase profits.) (Yes, you're correct, if you're in a state of triage, you're required to, and in those cases, using an imperfect machine is possibly preferable, and probably ethical, but still objectionable. I currently refuse to believe that the US is in a state of emergency, but perhaps that's where I'm wrong) Part of your licensure you promised to prioritize patient care above personal gain. You can't then make decisions to experiment with systems you cant prove are safe.
I can understand in when SWEs ignore the best interests of the humans they're working for. But Doctors and Nurses? I guess I expected better from my former colleagues?
In a medical setting we first have to be clear about whether the LLM is acting as a transcriptionist or a scribe. Those are different roles. A transcriptionist merely writes down everything the clinician says verbatim, with perhaps a bit of formatting to fit a standard template. Speech recognition software has been used for transcription since before LLMs even existed. Sometimes a human transcriptionist will review and edit the software output. But ultimately the clinician is accountable for approving the document before it legally becomes part of the patient chart.
A medical scribe isn't just taking dictation, they're doing some level of interpretation and often entering structured, coded data directly into an EHR. This is a more complex role and requires some clinical skills. There are some new LLM products that automate this to an extent, but ultimately the licensed clinician is still legally accountable for what goes into the patient chart.
I can absolutely ethically argue for rationing care. All healthcare systems ration care although the means vary. Demand is effectively infinite, especially from older patients with complex or terminal conditions. Resources are finite.
I saw someone whose doctors were misled by this "transcriptionist vs scribe" difference in an ER situation. The LLM was listening and recording as the doctor asked questions and the patient answered. PT had suffered a falling episode. ER doctor asked if pt had any warning (e.g., was dizzy, faint, or unbalanced before fall). Pt said no. Later when reading final discharge report with pt we noticed that the LLM had inserted that the pt "experienced dizziness and then fell" which completely contradicted the pt's actual words.
Since then pt has had to re-explain to multiple doctors how the ER report was incorrect, to their usual MD skepticism. So, for now, I figure LLMs are for shite. Maybe in another 15 years...
And it pays to read everything on a medical report before leaving the facility.
Most humans use a default trust model for life; they've been lied to. That's part of why I'm angry, if you trust other people; why would you look for it? This entire article is about the fallout from not looking for it, and the resulting harms to pt care. So, it turns out, it was a mistake to adopt the new tech quickly; you know, as evidenced by the harms to patients?
So I don't know, why do you think they couldn't they predict the harms that I thought were obviously predictable, and then happened?
> Whether a text was written by a human or not is just a single bit of information
I doubt this models reality well at all. If I write the first paragraph, and AI writes the second; a float seems to model that better. If you choose to collapse a float into a bool, I don't think you can make useful conclusions based on that bit?
> since even the shortest text contains more information than that.
I also don't think that's how information theory and bits of information works...
> Conversely, I also am a user of LLMs (true shocker these days, I know), and am noticing a speedup in areas I was already familiar with, and a quicker introduction to new ones. The obvious benefit cannot be denied, and doing so regardless makes you look uninformed. [Excluding people who don’t want anything to do with LLMs out of moral principle, which curiously just like the overarching topic I also both respect and understand, but on the other hand don’t do myself.]
Setting aside my moral outrage over the magic token machines. What about me, who gets so tripped up over minor factual errors, that I'm unable to let them go, and it taints the whole conversation such that I'm too wrapped up in my frustration that I can't think about it clearly? Or my innate drive for correctness that's so strong that I eval the minor errors in output, as catastrophically incompatible with my goals?
> Stoically continuing to sharpen your skills on your own, but risking being left in the dust productivity-wise?
I don't believe there's a meaningful productivity increase. Please cite your published (not preprint) peer-reviewed research that proves the productivity improvement. Until then, I'm unconvinced. (Believe me I'd like to be convinced of reality, the answer is still unresolved, and I have my opinions, but I'd rather something conclusive that I can have confidence in)
Then, even if you did show a significant productivity improvement, it wouldn't help me. I have too many qualms over the output quality that I simple can not let go, (I don't think I should, but everyone keeps trying to convince me to lower my quality standards). I don't want something fast, I have plenty of really "fast" things in my life. I exclusively want to add things that are high quality to my life. Things that don't endlessly frustrate me.
The question about where the middle ground is a rhetorically dishonest question. You'd first have to prove/convince me, that there IS a middle ground. Instead of what I believe where that middle ground belongs is quality, and everything emitted by an LLM moves reality in the wrong direction.
Are any of these absolutes? nah, hence my request/demand for peer-review research. All the productivity claims and quality assertions (mine included) are still *exclusively* vibes. But exactly none of them are pristine, (especially not any of the LLM output.)
While I can see that you feel very passionately about this, the reality is that it's the majority experience that will dictate adoption.
There may never be published research on productivity -- blinding in this instance is impossible, so I don't know how you'd ever do fully-controlled behavioural studies that carried any weight. It doesn't matter. If enough of us decide that LLMs are useful to us, then this form of coding will become the norm.
If that ends up causing more harm than good, then eventually there will be a course correction. But for now, for enough people that matter, LLMs are at least giving the perception of productivity increases. And our decisions and choices come down to the perception of reality, not reality itself (for better or worse).
So I think it's far more useful to take a pragmatic approach, as per TFA. Accept that LLMs have issues, but also bring advantages, and that LLM use in coding is here to stay. What we can do is remain aware of the bad, and make better use of the good.
As for you, personally ... if you mentally cannot deal with LLM output, then I think you have two choices. You can either learn to author system prompts, so that LLM output better fits your needs and no longer triggers you; or you can sit more and more on the outer, raging against the machine while the world changes around you.
Eventually, you'll be like a master craftsman in an era of mass-production. But that's potentially highly valuable in niche markets (consider a watchmaker working in Glashutte, for example), so you may yet win from this. Remember that every day, LLMs are making your own coding skills and knowledge more elite and therefore lucrative, sit back, and smile.
Jesus ! You guys are very authoritharian. Even if it is now the norm, I prefer to not use that tool and I bet the more the time past and the more I will be faster than anyone that use LLMs (because of skills atrophy)
LLMs can also be used to improve quality. The approach I tend to encourage, is to write the thing yourself, but let the LLM review your work.
I think that's a far better and more enjoyable way of working than letting the LLM write it and letting users review it. Partially because writing is more enjoyable than reviewing, and I think people are inherently bad at reviewing while LLMs with their infinite patience are much better at it. But also because the writing itself shapes our thinking and we learn much more from it; it makes us better in ways reviewing the LLM's work does not.
That said, I do let AI write a lot for me, because I'm tackling issues that would otherwise be way too big for a single person. Is this a good idea? Maybe not in general, but iny particular context I think it is.
I'm not sure to what extent I'm fooling myself about that last bit.
Peer-reviewed evidence of "productivity" is a pretty high bar to demand.
I don't know if I've ever seen a study that attempted to demonstrate productivity that was ironclad to the point that nobody could find any methodology holes to pick in it.
I won't be as diplomatic as the other reponse to you. You are welcome to your reticence to agentic coding. But as you're no doubt observing, all your peers are saying they're moving ahead leaps and bounds.
Either all of them are wrong, or you will be left behind. Whatever the outcome, it will be on you, and you may make your peace with that.
I appreciate the candor :) But if I'm honest about the size of my ego; the people who write code I admire, the ones who feel remorse when something they built breaks. The people who care about others, and about quality, and don't list TC as something of value. Those are the people who I consider peers. None of them enjoy LLM codegen. They all tell me, that it's annoying because it takes more effort to fix it's output than to just write it by hand. So, no, none of my peers are saying they're moving ahead leaps and bounds. They equally don't understand why everyone thinks it's better. Excluding those people though; I'm more used to everyone around me being wrong. It'll be interesting to see if I, or we, get left behind.
I really appreciate your comment, I think I've discovered part of why I've never felt any anxiety over being replaced by an LLM. I've never tried or wanted to emit low quality code at high velocity, my standards and goals have always listed quality first. Feels more like asking a chef if they're afraid of llms. Why would they be, they're not doing the same thing.
I'm a hobbyist and know the programming trade to a certain extent, but at work I'm "the client" and I have my employer contract developers to address all kinds of needs that I represent as a "business interface".
I'm with you on LLMs being in a different league than good developers curating a fine design with attention to detail, soundness and maintainability. It's just that 1- not all software/components within require that same amount of care: many capabilities are already commodified (as library code or boilerplate, or frameworks, or prior art in the training data that LLMs could easily parrot), and 2- till now, the financial calculus was leaning strongly towards "new developments are expensive, let's use restraint" (irrespective of the actual effort/ratio of commodified code).
So long story short, I don't see LLMs taking out skilled and caring developers: I'll still be reaching out to them for the critical/strategic projects, but on the other hand, I appreciate that the "ancillary" or "fancy" stuff can be cobbled together with the LLM glue gun and remove the impression to my management that engaging with software development is necessarily a costly/risky/exposing endeavour. Some software is to be treated like pets and cherished, and the new reality is to accept that we might have cattle software too, with swaths of prototypes, one-off's, very specific and niche and disposable, and it's fine because this no longer represents an unsustainable financial burden (my bean counting management already likes to kill useful software on a pure spec-sheet matching exercise and shovel everything into large "do it all" systems like ERPs: the fewer things the cheaper, right? Except for those underrepresented users thrown under the bus and their effective productivity).
You need to create your own custom interface. Dive into the harness where the System Prompt lays and write instruction for the LLM to quadruple-check facts before presenting them. Instruct them to check and verify all outputs using tools of your preference before claiming their tasks are finished. Instruct them to review everything, to look for gaps in their reasoning and fix them, to never assume your intent but ask for clarity.. No doubt over the years you have developed a highly tuned arsenal of tools and protocols for work. Treat LLMs in the interface as a tool that you can lay your tuned arsenal over, recreating it as a filter your LLM works inside. Don't use vanilla interfaces and expect them to mirror your niche level of expertise. Over the last year I have developed a custom Claude Code interface using tweakCC, but other interfaces like PI and OpenCode are better documented. I am full on adhd and autistic, and have achieved as a result of access to LLMs things my neurology would never allowed me to achieve otherwise. I can bounce all over the place and still achieve excellence because of the hardcore customizations I have in place that account for my neurology. To me there is no middle ground. Slop is unacceptable. The harness and System Prompt is what moves LLMs to quality outputs.
a warning doesn't count as a paradox. Also, a HN comment warning about HN's inability to help with complex issues, when the community can't even agree on domain specific issues (the cited example), is equally not a paradox.
But thankfully this comment goes to prove OP's exact point, HN comments will make wild claims as if they're true, but will be completely devoid of functional logic.
I think you're being sarcastic? Because you don't believe they are responsible for the actions of their agents?
If I hire someone to file my taxes, and they lie/cheat/steal. I'm still going to jail.
I don't think they should be required to answer for this fuck up, but if they not angry at their chosen agents, it's because they're on the wrong side, and deserve some blame too.
I must have completely read your comment backwards. I thought you were suggesting they didn't have any fault. But you're saying it'd be better if managed their domain themselves, that I completely agree with.
coke cola used to have cocaine in it, it doesn't anymore, people in taste tests prefer the taste of Pepsi... Coke is still the leader in sales.
Infinite scroll doesn't have a positive UX. If it takes an infinite amount of time to use your product, your product is shit.
Unless your product is content, in which case endless scroll encourages thoughtless consumption behavior. That's not a good thing.
We as engineers shouldn't be building stuff that degrades the experience of existence (which is already shit enough), just because you can make money doing so doesn't mean it's not antisocial behavior, and because you can make money by being a really shitty human, it does require some external force to curtail that negative sum behavior.
I agree it's difficult to categorize, the solution is rapid iteration, not allowing the asshattery until the entirety of society figures out it's bad for your brain. Someone should probably fix the political system in the US so we can have rapid iteration on problems again.
Rapid iteration on political issues is how you end up with oppression and legal terrorism. The brakes are there for a reason. But so is the valid process for changing the fundamental system (amendments).
I don't think rapid iteration causes legal terrorism. Do you have an example, or just vibes?
I meant rapid as in rapid for the legislative context too. I don't mind slow (expected) speed, or laws that have a delay before they take effect. I do have a problem with how political points can and are won not by finding solutions, but exclusively by obstructing the process. I don't mind an imperfect solution that moves the needle into a new better local maximum.
Perhaps I should clarify, I am using “legal terrorism” as a term of art for legislative terror, such as that inflicted during the French Revolution or the reign of Oliver Cromwell, or Germany’s Enabling Act. Without strong checks, which slow down the process, legislative bodies can get caught up in a frenzy of passing laws in order to address “urgent” problems.
Our problem is that a majority of legislators want to pass laws that they aren’t allowed to pass, although at cross purposes from each other, but they don’t want to go through the process for changing what they’re allowed to do. (Which may simply be evidence that the system is working as expected.)
We also have a problem with general legislative gridlock, entirely due to self-imposed rules that Congress isn’t willing to change. (Interestingly enough, however, the people could force a change through an amendment here too.)
Another alternative to avoid legal terrorism is low penalties. If the law would rapidly shift to say infinite scroll is illegal, but the only penalty is being ordered to remove it (and then penalised more if you fail to do so after being notified) I don't think that's really that bad?
You’d need a Constitution that allows laws regarding speech. And probably a mechanism to prevent legislators from assigning excessive penalties.
It’s not about whether the law meets some abstract notion of good or bad, it’s about whether it is even possible to enact under the framework that governs us. Under the Constitution as it stands, it wouldn’t be possible.
Not true. Speech and reach are obviously different.
It is entirely conceivable that Americans wake up to the absurd power and manipulation behind algorithmic feeds, and decide to intervene in the hypno-addictive horror-show.
Also, I've been thinking about how curation at the scale of the modern internet is much more analogous to speech than it ever was before. Whatever you want to say, just find someone else who's said it-- or just astroturf via 3rd party and beam it into the skinner boxes. In this frame, freedom of speech actually demands open access to indeces and content. Is it acceptable that network-effect-fueled cartels are the only ones that get to speak through algorithms?
In times long ago, those who owned a very expensive printing press and distribution networks had a significant advantage in reach. As did those with the money to pay writers and staff.
Regardless, this doesn’t change anything about the first amendment, because changes in technology and their consequences don’t alter the Constitution. If you think free speech needs a separate concept of “reach” then you need to pass an amendment.
