Joe

Heh. I often use LLMs to strip out the unnecessary and help tighten my own points. I fully agree that most people are terrible at writing bug reports (or asking for meaningful help), and LLMs are often GIGO. I think the rule applies that if you cannot do it yourself, then you can’t expect an LLM to do it better, simply because you cannot judge the result. In this case, you are more likely to waste other people’s time. On the other side, it is possible to have agents give useful feedback on bug reports, request tickets, etc. and guide people (and their personal AI) to provide all the needed info and even automatically resolve issues. So long as the agent isn’t gatekeeping and a human is able to be pulled in easily. And honestly, if someone really wants to speak to a person, that is OK and shouldn’t require jumping through hoops.

I agree. What you get with chatbots is the ability to iterate on ideas & statements first without spreading undue confusion. If you can’t clearly explain an idea to a chatbot, you might not be ready to explain it to a person.

For future reference: discuss.tchncs.de/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&us… It had nothing to do with Rule 2 (avoid excessive reposting, nor rule 1). It was just arbitrary, and if one were cynical, perhaps intended to support the desired narrative in these parts and bring the thread to an end. Shrug. Modlogs are indeed interesting.

discuss.tchncs.de/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&us… for those curious. Rule 1 is “be civil and and nice”. boggles It is an instance and community’s right to censor and ban as they wish, but rule 1 should perhaps be changed to “I don’t like the cut of your jib” 🙈

Trump and JD Vance are doing their best to replace the US as the “leader of the free world” with a coalition of increasingly well armed and assertive independent blocs and states. Totally wild to see it cut its own throat like that. The rest aren’t really wardogs, despite France and the UK seizing the opportunity in Libya a few years back. I don’t think the UK was quite over the Lockerbie bombing, and who the fuck knows with France.

Replace “America” with “voluntary coalition of countries and individuals who promote freedom and justice and wish to build and maintain a world of international laws and norms” In a completely unrelated public service announcement: Watch out for mouthpieces for manufactured grievances and loyal echoers of other’s lies.

salutes

It’s accelerating trends that have already been well underway in the world, with the US leading the pack, and doubling down on its own demise (and apparently also working toward the active demise of European Democracy and Freedom) under trump and jd vance. The analogy I always think of is: We’ve got shovels and we are in a big hole … which way are we going to dig? In my experience, most people keep digging down because it seems easier now, and eventually find themselves in a deeper hole.

That this is and will be abused is not in question. :-P

While this is a popular sentiment, it is not true, nor will it ever be true. AI (LLMs & agents in the coding context, in this case) can serve as both a tool and a crutch. Those who learn to master the tools will gain benefit from them, without detracting from their own skill. Those who use them as a crutch will lose (or never gain) their own skills. Some skills will in turn become irrelevent in day-to-day life (as is always the case with new tech), and we will adapt in turn.

Indeed… Throw-away code is currently where AI coding excels. And that is cool and useful - creating one off scripts, self-contained modules automating boilerplate, etc. You can’t quite use it the same way for complex existing code bases though… Not yet, at least…