It’s hard to describe how soul-sucking the process of handing over development to an LLM is, at least for some of us. Even if I have the luxury of reading the slop and wrestling with it, there’s something mind crushing in the process. I don’t understand exactly myself why I hate it so damn much. There’s something psychological going on. I’ve worked with no purpose before, coding stuff because management says so even if I knew it was going to tank hard or it was clearly wrong. This hits different. It’s worst than boring. It’s worst than loss of purpose.

I don’t believe AI is about to take over the world and annihilate humanity. I still think Sanders’ move is a good one. This puts AI gurus in an impossible position: either admit the hype is overdone or accept being represented purely as the greedy psychopathic vilains they are.

It’s more a question of agency than ability. Take this excerpt from the announcement:

For a company that sells subscriptions, an AI assistant justifies a price increase and strengthens the case for keeping all documents within its own infrastructure. The functionality and the business model reinforce each other, so integration is not only attractive but almost mandatory.

Anyone employed in such a company will have a hard time resisting. There’s a mix of unrest and despair in the discipline right now. I’ve met colleagues drastically change careers over this. Sick leaves over mental health too.

Valuing yourself by the danger you pose to the world is so terminally machist.

Do you have evidence of leaders in the organization making hard choices to do the right thing?

This went from a hard yes to a soft no and I don’t know if it’s soul crushing but it feels super crappy.

Garbage In Garbage Out

But will the chat bot understand itself? It’s fun when you start questioning the LLM line by line about its own slop in the same session and it starts flagging all sorts of things it did wrong. Why didn’t it write it correctly in the first place? Or is the fix wrong? Who knows? People I guess. The model is fed on knowledge but whether it will activate in response to your prompt and be restored unadulterated is a coin toss.

It’s hard having two decades of experiences in a domain I suddenly find myself at odds with. Reading about others having the same qualm reassures me that I’m not going crazy. On the other I feel drawn further into an untenable contradictory position.

Once in a while I give in. It’s typically when I’m faced with a non trivial problem I realize will take me days of learning before I have any chance of tackling it. My colleagues start suggesting it or share some slop to “help out”. So I think fuck it I’ll study later for now AI will solve it I need this ticket closed asap. I fire up a “decent” paid model and I start feeding it context. Every time it’s a nightmare. Hours of trying stuff that doesn’t stick, of questioning, of arguing with a chat bot, of wading through “here are the facts” and “good catch” and “I owe you an apology”. It’s not a shortcut it’s a fucking dead end. Then the bitter aftertaste can only be cleansed with cold hard time consuming actual learning.

The incorrect answer on Stackoverflow can be downvoted and commented by the community. With a LLM the incorrect answer is perfectly formulated and you’re alone to recognize it. I’ll favor a large community’s advice (cultural quriks and all) over a LLM’s any day.

Imagine the unfathomable power of a company who would harness the velocity of rapid AI advancement or somesuch AND keep their employees. The world isn’t ready for such raw productivity. It would be too easy to get ahead of competition. Understandably they steer clear of such lawless behaviour. Gentlemanly sportsmanship, truly.

Hey, good to know Apple’s music has been DRM free for a while! I’ve bounced off iTunes many, many years ago.

Look. We already have a little computer in our pocket. Besides Apple can go fly a kite with their DRM audio files. Just let me own my phone.

EDIT: iTunes used to sell DRM music a long time ago and then I stopped paying attention. They’re DRM free now, my bad.

That’s so much fun! Even though some of those works use cutting edge browser features, their free spirited mindset brings me right back to the primordial web.

HGModernism has a video about “lying” LLMs which is interesting. Basically an LLM is calibrated to find the shortest route to a an answer. It has no conception of obedience. Say you tell the LLM to use your script to solve a problem. Say the LLM will spend more energy figuring out and using your script than whipping up its own one. The LLM will therefore pretend your script is broken, generously make a new one and use that instead.

No problem, have a good one!

No, Sora is over as an app and API. An OpenAI spokesperson has said:

We’ve decided to discontinue Sora in the consumer app and API. […] As we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks.

Nobody needs to know I got my resistance at Urban Outfitters

I don’t want to be a party pooper but I can’t help feeling that buying Google’s hardware to avoid Google’s software might not pan out in the long run.

The sad part is that LineageOS, GrapheneOS and basically all Android alternative OS are built on top of the AOSP, which Google controls, and they’re staling updates to twice a year. These stalled updates may include critical security patches or device compatibility support.

Furthermore many android devices prevent users from entering a boot state which lets the owner install the OS of their choice, making everything more complicated.

If you’re up for some reading be sure to check out the Breaking Free report. Hands down the most thorough, easy to read document about the issue imho.