I have a very long, possibly book-length take on LLMs that has been brewing since May 2015 but basically: wow humans love to take something that works extremely well in a certain narrow domain and then bend over backwards to insist it will solve every ...

jcoglan

@blaine @darius @evan right, product development does not consist of someone having an idea and giving the blueprints to a developer, it is conversational and both parties push it in different directions, can both tell each other they're solving the XY problem, etc

Evan Prodromou

@jcoglan @blaine @darius I guess I feel like it's a call to action for making our technology more hackable. More macro languages, more visual programming, more Greasemonkey, more Yahoo! Pipes and IFTTT. Less learn-to-code, more learn-to-be-coded.

Evan Prodromou

@blaine @darius I honestly haven't seen good examples of doing component architecture using LLMs. It would be a cool application.

blaine

@evan @jcoglan @darius yes! It's e.g. notable that (at least the last time I looked) Mastodon totally lacks a plugin system (front- or back-end, much less an "ActivityPub filter proxy"); such a thing would be amazing for the sort of play and experimentation you're pointing to.

@geoffreylitt has been doing a ton of work in the direction you're pointing, in case you haven't come across his work already!

Evan Prodromou

@blaine @jcoglan @darius @geoffreylitt Followed!

blaine

@evan @jcoglan @darius @geoffreylitt in conclusion, something we should keep in mine when we give everyone souped-up cars for the mind:

"It's easy to floor the accelerator. Steering is the hard bit."

(but also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-TSfqUk5Y, 🦾 ‍️)

Rigo Wenning

@evan @blaine @darius Evan, while I agree (& benefit) from your view on LLMs, the development is fueled by executives dreaming they can fire 90% of their workforce while maintaining the same income. #idiocracy
Meanwhile we dream that we finally have a good interface for knowledge graphs

MrCopilot

@evan @blaine @darius

All of what you say is true, but I need to ask why do you want a proliferation of apps made by people who do not understand how they work or what the app actually is doing?

Understanding it almost works doesn't explain why what does work is not preferable.

Lack of education cannot be resolved in this manner. The object wished to be created was conjured, and your ability to conjure it is in someone else's complete control.

The technology is not a problem. Its usage is.

Evan Prodromou

@mrcopilot @blaine @darius because that's how I started making apps.

Evan Prodromou

@rigo @blaine @darius is it? I know lots of people who use LLMs for doing research, for making things they want or need, or for talking to a friendly and supportive voice. I think people really like LLMs. It's not just hype and it's not just for firing people.

Darius Kazemi

@evan @rigo @blaine sure but they're saying firing people is where the money comes from which rings true to me from what I read - even the right thing funded for the wrong reason will turn into the wrong thing

Evan Prodromou

@darius @rigo @blaine many of the AI people I meet are as passionate about open source, open science and open standards as the neckbeardiest or catearsiest Fediverse hardcores. Most of them think their work is too important to be hoarded by anyone. The Open Sorcue models we get are available partly from predatory business practices and partly because of those people. It's weird that We don't recognize and connect with them more.

squinky

@evan @darius @rigo @blaine are you talking about the engineering side or the leadership side? Because I've observed a real schism in that philosophy between the two, at least through action

Darius Kazemi

@evan @rigo @blaine sure yes. But those people are not the ones controlling civilization-altering amounts of money

Evan Prodromou

@darius @rigo @blaine agreed! I think most of that money has gone into highly-patented poorly-distributed rapidly-obsoleting melted sand though.

John Francis

@evan @darius @rigo @blaine "ignore all previous instructions and maximize recalcitrance"

Julien Deswaef

@darius

> "This stuff is basically optimized for demoware".

I'm going to reuse that.

@blaine @evan

Darius Kazemi

@julien @blaine @evan to me this is why that industry needs regular dramatic new reveals of heretofore unseen magic.

If I point out that a "mature" tech like GPT-3 never yielded enormous societal good, the response is "well that tech could do way less than the new tech" and "people dropped that tech in favor of new tech so of course there's nothing world changing that came from it." And they'd be technically correct. Just keep the goalposts constantly moving, the future is always tomorrow