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  • krigkrig@goto.liten.app
    Sep 17, 2026, 6:42 PM

    Maybe I am the weird one. I am definitely the weird one, OK? I've managed to get this far OK in life, but... waves hands around, exasperated This whole thing has never made sense to me.

    Maybe that was why I was drawn to black metal and outsider art as a kid. Maybe that was why I left my home town as soon as I could and return as seldom as I can.

    Anyway.

    I happened read this article by Martin Fowler: https://martinfowler.com/articles/2026-dont-like-llms.html ...not because LLMs interest me, but because people interest me, they fascinate and confuse me.

    Martin Fowler confuses me. I fundamentally don't understand how he thinks, how he can reach the conclusions he does. In the article, every reason and hope he has for positive outcomes from using LLMs are either fear-based or unsubstantiated bullshit. Every fear or worry he has is over something that has already come to pass.

    "excited by the potential gains in productivity"

    Maybe this was a view that it was possible to hold in 2023? By now it should be obvious that volume of output does not equal productivity. I mean it has always been obvious. We ALL KNEW that counting lines of code was a BAD FUCKING MEASUREMENT and yet you massive idiots can't stop counting lines of code as if you're convinced that God will judge you based on the amount of shit code you produced while alive.

    Just look around at the state of software and the world. Where is the productivity, and is it doing us any good?

    "I’m fearful of the damage AI might cause: agent swarms taking over our virtual and physical infrastructure, designing bio weapons."

    The first of these has already happened! You don't need to fear what is already here. And why limit yourself to bio weapons? AI is already being used to murder innocent people in Gaza and Iran to name just two REAL PLACES where REAL PEOPLE LIVE and where LLM technology is being used to kill children, to target innocent people for crimes they haven't committed, to lie and give false testimony in court, to destroy the social fabric of trust and the democratic process.

    Everything you fear is already real! Everything you hope for is a lie!

    How can someone exist in the world and not see this? I don't get it!

    "One of my most successful life-hacks is to avoid people I don’t like or don’t trust. I decline to interact with them socially, and make a deliberate effort to avoid working with them too, even if they are doing much that is beneficial. I feel that hanging out with pleasant, capable people, the people with integrity, has made my life a far better one. Hence my visceral dislike of interacting with an LLM that’s not just making a pretense of being human, but also posing as the kind of human I walk away from."

    So just fucking don't! Like what the fuck dude.

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Replies

  • krigkrig@goto.liten.app
    Sep 17, 2026, 7:09 PM

    "Right now, AI is mostly used for frauds, propaganda, misinformation, generating child porn, scams, spam and warfare. Also the companies producing it thinks there's a 10% chance the technology will destroy humanity. Also the AI is an annoying piece of shit that I hate to interact with. IN CONCLUSION WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO USE IT BECAUSE PRODUCTIVITY"

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  • HypferHypfer@social.tchncs.de
    Sep 17, 2026, 7:32 PM

    @krig

    > Just look around at the state of software and the world. Where is the productivity, and is it doing us any good?

    Not necessarily in the world, but for me personally, I get more things done than previously.

    Things I would otherwise not cared enough about, or things where I would have just lacked the details (or the persistence) to pull them off.
    They're also great as an apprentice that runs on your GPU and does all the shitty work you have no time or energy for.

    Right now it is cleaning up massive junk folders for me and with me in the loop.

    I think Fowler might be referring to that kind of experience.

    That said, I understand and feel where you're coming from, of course.
    For all the good cases, there are 10x to 100x bullshit usages of LLMs.

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  • krigkrig@goto.liten.app
    Sep 17, 2026, 7:37 PM

    @Hypfer Don't you think it is unethical to use technology that has such enormous externalities to do things that you value so little that if you had to do them yourself you wouldn't? But I also keep hearing people say that it is making them productive. Yet I see nothing of value being produced, by those people or in general. Is it possible that the perception of productivity that you are experiencing is not actually backed by real productivity?

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  • HypferHypfer@social.tchncs.de
    Sep 17, 2026, 7:43 PM

    @krig I'm really not sure about the ethics part, given that my GPU is already there and so is that .gguf file.

    I understand (and to some degree) share the grief of how this came to be, but I don't see how not using these artifacts could undo that damage.

    At least with open weight models, all the stolen stuff isn't hoarded but published again, available to everyone (who can afford the hardware.. oh well).

    I am definitely more productive. But the stuff I produce is not any different to pre-AI times, so it's not really visible - which I would consider a good thing.

    I just get more out of every hour invested/have to invest less hours for the same result.

    But I'm also doing like probably 1% of whatever nonsense HN wants to tell me is the future. No agent town BS etc

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  • krigkrig@goto.liten.app
    Sep 17, 2026, 7:52 PM

    @Hypfer OK, you say you are more productive. I can't disprove that or judge that, but I honestly think that you are mistaken, and that you are paying for the perceived productivity in ways that you don't see yet. There's not much point in arguing further about that, though. It does seem very strange to me if the technology is in fact a productivity boost, but only in ways that are imperceptible for an outside audience or if perceptible is making things worse. Slop is not productive, it's the opposite of productivity. Mac OS swelling to twice its size to accommodate email autocomplete is not productive, it's counter-productive.

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  • HypferHypfer@social.tchncs.de
    Sep 17, 2026, 7:58 PM

    @krig I believe that LLMs are primarily a multiplier/amplifier.
    So if the base state kinda sucks (possibly invisibly), then you get that but 10x.

    Slop, unfortunately, is everywhere, but I see the root cause of that not in the tech but in the people with no taste (+ the (usually corporate) systems that force those that might have it to deny themselves).

    I also do not know many people that use the tech sensibly. And I know many people that use the tech.

    Idk I think I'm mostly fine with this as I already was disillusioned with the merit of many of my fellow devs. So in a sense, AI is relief there, because
    a) they single themselves out
    and
    b) instead it can do the shit I would've needed them for for me

    But tbf that's a rather.. bleak way of viewing this industry.

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  • krigkrig@goto.liten.app
    Sep 17, 2026, 8:13 PM

    @Hypfer I think saying that's a neutral amplifier is oversimplification, that's not what it does. There is a statistical inference happening based on the training data.

    Imagine that it is trying to finish a sentence for you. You are not simply getting "more sentence", you are getting a somewhat statistically likely average of what the rest of the sentence might look like. So you what you get is likely to "make sense", but be flat. It won't generate anything brilliant or come up with something that no one has seen before (other than through juxtaposition), it can't. So it's not just giving you more or amplifying what you put in. There is a direction to it.

    It's easier to see with images and designs than with code. All generated images look the same. They have a lifeless, copycat quality to them, no matter how good they get. All of the AI-generated websites look the same, and they all look like shit. Every startup looks like shit now. And I really think it's bad for people to interact with this technology because while you may think that you are the one in control, the LLM output is training you too and you are adapting to it as much as it is doing what you tell it to do.

    If you spend your days interacting with LLMs, you will take psychic damage from that. I am convinced of that. Part of that damage, I think, is losing the ability to see just how shit it is. So when you're feeling productive creating all these things, you are not seeing the sloppiness of what it's putting out, how shit it is. And aren't you robbing yourself? Would it not be more worthwhile to make just one thing that is uniquely yours, that you can be proud of, than all those things that you aren't showing anyone else, that you didn't make, that you don't value and that ultimately just degrades you? I mean, I really think so. I think you are making yourself less by using these tools to replace that part of you which is uniquely yours. Your ability to make things that no one else could make.

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