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0 pointssimoncion2mo ago0 comments

> All articles are mostly a regurgitation of all the negativity that gets aired here all the time (a lot of it already fixed or debunked) and 0 discussion of utility.

There are multiple sections that talk directly about utility. Here's one of them: [0]

But, sure. I'll bite. Here's the third paragraph of the first part of the essay [1]:

  This is *bullshit* about *bullshit machines*, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play.

I'd say that the specific sort of "utility" discussion that you're probably looking for would be classified as "boosterism". [2]

> Now it can scale with power and compute.

Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3].

[0] <https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...>

[1] <https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...>

[2] Due to their nearly-universally breathless nature, I know that's how I classify the overwhelming majority of such discussions.

[3] <https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/>

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keeda2mo ago

[0] is a throwaway paragraph that handwaves at second-hand accounts of generic things LLMs can do, with no further discussion, apparently because he (surprisingly!) has almost no first-hand experience with them. Then there are 10 pages of negativity with dozens of links to stuff that has been discussed to death here and in media. The "negative spaces" he's filling are already overflowing.

His lack of personal experience with LLMs was the most disappointing aspect, because he does not really know what we're dealing with. He's just going off what he's read / heard. So again, where's the incisive insight?

Now, here's a concrete example of what I mean by utility: a single person being able to rewrite an entire open source project from scratch in a few days just so it could be relicensed. Is that good or bad? I don't know! Is it a stupefying example of what's possible? Yes! Is that "breathless boosterism?" Only if you ignore the infinite nuances involved.

> Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3].

Hadn't come across this one before, but there's not much in there I hadn't seen and even discussed in past comments. As an example, it still mentions the METR study from 2025 without mentioning the very pertinent follow-up from just a couple of months back... which is not very surprising to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145601 ;-)

It does mention (and then gloss over) the real finding of the DORA and related reports, which is pertinent to my original point: LLMs are simply an amplifier of your existing software discipline. Teams with strong software discipline see amazing speedups, those with poor discipline sees increased outages.

And, to my original point, who knows what good software discipline looks like? Hint: it's not the capital class.

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j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

This is *bullshit* about *bullshit machines*, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play.