This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before.
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@cwebber The number of times someone would DM me on a forum asking me for private help, and I would always tell them to ask on the public forum so that everyone else could benefit … and they never did.
The “fuck the community, I’ve got mine” is stronger than ever.
@futzle @cwebber
When newbies encounter toxicity for asking their question on a public forum, cannot really blame them for turning to a LLM.
https://youtu.be/N7v0yvdkIHg -
@futzle @cwebber
When newbies encounter toxicity for asking their question on a public forum, cannot really blame them for turning to a LLM.
https://youtu.be/N7v0yvdkIHg -
This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber I agree. There is less public information for future training for anyone as well as similar code due to more AI written software also in the open space. I expect an input standstill until someone invents non-LLM AI for coding.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber Well, people went to StackOverflow with a question and looked forward to answers based on the experience of others. While one can still ask an LLM and give a rubber-duck training session for its provider, I still fail to see the influx of answers based on experience.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber
Wait, if AI caused the collapse of wrong-answers-only sites like stackoverflow, doesn't that mean they have positive uses? -
This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber but also, as uninviting as the stack overflow culture may have been, the moderators were there to try to get people to ask better questions. I doubt llms will handle things like x/y problem issues, so to me it seems things will get worse for people able/willing to pay as well.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber Maybe it's because I'm a bit long in the tooth. In 35 years of programming I have never hesitated to turn to others, including online forums.
But I will never turn to LLMs. LLMs are machines that regurgitate answers out of huge amounts of data. What LLMs lack is understanding. So they cannot justify their answers, pick the best answer for you out of their data, or meaningfully engage with you to help you adapt answers to your needs. You know... like humans can.
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@futzle @cwebber
When newbies encounter toxicity for asking their question on a public forum, cannot really blame them for turning to a LLM.
https://youtu.be/N7v0yvdkIHg@bornach @futzle @cwebber not just newbies. I'm 35 years in this work so while this is not "my first rodeo" I regularly have to work on something completely new to me. What a lot of these pricks don't understand is that many of us don't have the time to deep dive into their pet platform, framework, tool, or language, and we don't know how to ask the "right" questions. But still, they're at least human and with a little patience you might just tease the right answer out of them.
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@KatS If you ask me, the first thing to do is to ensure everyone understands how AI is a fascist project.
This also counters anti-AI criticism, namely that not all AI is the same. The key question is always "how does the use of AI in this case disenfranchise people?". (Same for "the cloud", btw, but people are even less willing to hear that.)
This is a conversation that can be had with non-techies.
"It makes my job easier" is a good argument for AI. On the other hand, ...
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@KatS If you ask me, the first thing to do is to ensure everyone understands how AI is a fascist project.
This also counters anti-AI criticism, namely that not all AI is the same. The key question is always "how does the use of AI in this case disenfranchise people?". (Same for "the cloud", btw, but people are even less willing to hear that.)
This is a conversation that can be had with non-techies.
"It makes my job easier" is a good argument for AI. On the other hand, ...
@KatS... "it makes my work experience useless and devalues me as an employee" is a really bad sign.
Note that work requirements *changing* is the tricky bit here. The only constant is change. But change doesn't have to devalue your contribution.
Moving from pen to typewriter to computer didn't devalue the writer. Moving to LLMs does.
And then, it's unions.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
yup.
Competition for dominance necessitates enclosure of the commons, limiting the use of extremely valuable common human dimensions to just the aggressive (or aggressively funded), precluding creative potentialities except only when championed by insiders in line with corporate financial models.
Over and over, humanity suffers profound losses. -
@cwebber of course guys - it was never about the LLM, it was about crowd-sourcing intelligence at an epic-scale. Every piece of code a developer writes and fixes becomes training data. Same with every conversation. I'm surprised people don't see the danger in having one single overlord and gatekeeper of all information in the world. Its crazy.
People seem to have forgotten what the real meaning of democracy and multi-lateralism are.
@mahadevank @cwebber Forget trying to explain that. The "experts" at Davos laid it out for everyone. Yet, somehow they're still optimistic that one entity dominating all others, essentially destroying competition, will bring forth a world of opportunities. It's an all out war, and anyone that doesn't have the resources to insert XYZ's brain into their stack, is just a foot soldier for those that do.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber I'm so glad I stumbled upon this thread, pointing out the fascist nature of the global AI race so many are calling the great democratizer. With enough critical thinkers, maybe civilization will come to its senses before hyperscale data centers become this era's pyramids to explore in the future.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber And here I was thinking "docs in Discord" was bad enough.
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@cwebber you calling it an 'astoundingly good case' makes me feel insightful in a way no LLM has been able to accomplish. I'm going to be insufferably smug for the rest of the day
@michiel Haha, you deserve it! An angle I hadn't considered, it really shook me up and I spent a ton of time thinking about it since.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber I've been saying this for a while. Bubble or not, our profession (and/or vocation, if you prefer) is screwed.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
@cwebber as in many other fields, we have to have real communities who care about stuff.
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@cwebber I've been saying this for a while. Bubble or not, our profession (and/or vocation, if you prefer) is screwed.
@datarama Possibly, though I worry less about professions/vocations than I do about user empowerment. I have long assumed that some day programmer salaries would be unsustainable.
Of course the irony is that many people are shilling LLM services as being empowerment systems. I see them as the opposite. Open, community developed LLMs could be, but LLM-as-a-service corporations are definitively not.
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@datarama Possibly, though I worry less about professions/vocations than I do about user empowerment. I have long assumed that some day programmer salaries would be unsustainable.
Of course the irony is that many people are shilling LLM services as being empowerment systems. I see them as the opposite. Open, community developed LLMs could be, but LLM-as-a-service corporations are definitively not.
@cwebber By vocation, I also mean "people who like to write software".
If I lost my job but still had that, I'm sure I could become a happy store clerk or train driver who hacked on community software in my free time. But in AI Hell, we can't even have that. My option is to become a miserable store clerk or train driver (until that too is automated away) who consumes AI-generated slop forever. And that is what is coming for all of us - current-day programmers are just going to get there first.
(Incidentally, I make less than a third of what people on the internet tell me American software developers with my level of experience do - but I'm no more or less screwed than they are.)
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@datarama Possibly, though I worry less about professions/vocations than I do about user empowerment. I have long assumed that some day programmer salaries would be unsustainable.
Of course the irony is that many people are shilling LLM services as being empowerment systems. I see them as the opposite. Open, community developed LLMs could be, but LLM-as-a-service corporations are definitively not.
@cwebber And the problem is, LLM development is *extremely* capital-intensive. Unless you have a "community" of billionaires, it's going to be very hard to make anything that can compete with the hyperscalers.
