The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

Article URL: https://www.theocharis.dev/blog/llm-critics-are-right-i-use-llms-anyway/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933310

Points: 234

# Comments: 244

Hacker News 讨论

237 points · 244 comments · 查看原帖

msdz
> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thoughts, opinions, taste will still come out sharper and faster after five, ten, 20 years of using these tools almost every day? Conversely, I also am a user of LLMs (true shocker these days, I know), and am noticing a speedup in areas I was already familiar with, and a quicker introduction to new ones. The obvious benefit cannot be denied, and doing so regardless makes you look uninformed. [0] So what’s the ideal “middle ground” in this situation? Stoically continuing to sharpe
sivakon
> And then there are the geopolitical tensions. What happens if China or the US cut us off overnight from these technologies? Just a couple of weeks ago the US government showed it was able and willing to cut off non-US citizens from Anthropic’s latest frontier model. The only evidence you have is US here and all the frontier models from China are free to download. Pure projection. You can read China's AI strategy here: https://ipc.court.gov.cn/zh-cn/news/view-5766.html
mark_and_sweep
> a genuinely good tool that enriches your thinking A smartphone is also a genuinely good all-around tool. Even social media is a genuinely good tool for connecting people. Yet, I feel like we've been overly optimistic about the impact of said tools on us and our societies in the past two decades. Smartphones are so good, in fact, in some societies, half of us are addicted to them. Billions of people world-wide. I ask myself: Will LLMs enrich my thinking in the long run, or will they ruin it? And what about most people? Will half of us outsource most of our thinking in a decade from now? Given the speed and global scale that we're running these experiments with, it's fair, I think, to be a bit sceptical of the conclusion that, in the long run, LLMs will enrich our thinking.
swiftcoder
> I am a little bit scared to say this too: last month I spent almost 10k USD on tokens. It sounds so insane. What are people actually doing with all these tokens? I use LLMs pretty heavily for development, and I'm rarely spending all the tokens that come with a $10/month OpenCode Go subscription...
tonyedgecombe
> And then there is the situation about junior engineers. There are actually two different points in there: a) you cannot trust the effort behind your junior’s code anymore, and b) seniors have no incentive left to teach juniors. If you are bringing in juniors with the expectation that they won’t produce any value for some time then it might be better to block them from using LLMs. Do this and you will get a better understanding of where they are in the process and they will probably learn the ropes more quickly.
dannersy
I think folks ITT are trivializing the issue here. Many keep drawing parallels to LLMs being akin to the loom or calculator. That seems intellectually dishonest to me. Those tools were not anthropomorphized interfaces, nor were they instant gratification. To do significant things with a calculator, you still had to know maths, order of operations, formulas, etc. We didn't lose mathematicians as a result of the calculator, nor did the calculator play with our emotions. I have linked this elsewhere in this thread, but the studies on this matter suggest a worse outcome than just losing hand crafted or "artisanal" software: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04721 > These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning. > We posit that persistence is reduced because AI conditions people to expe
buster_hymen404
I think that the use of LLMs to expedite the learning process (especially when it comes to learning new things) is extraordinary and should be practiced by anybody with the means to. Think about how far we as the human race have come. Everything eventually plateaus and either flatlines or else regresses.. With the use of AI we can expand our ways of thinking into a new tier we would have never been able to achieve otherwise. It goes without saying that people who refuse to use the tools we've been given are close-minded and susceptible to fail in the new age that we are truly lucky to be a part of. And its here to stay, whether you like it or not lol
a1o
One thing about open source is a lot of people are throwing low quality PRs that should have been an issue or even a discussion, so you can understand what was the problem the person encountered that motivated such PR. This is hard to get because usually people use LLMs to also answer questions you make about the PR. I am tending towards blocking PRs from people outside the main developers in most of my open source projects. If the person CAN discuss the problem, authoring the PR is easier if I do it myself, even if using an LLM, because reviewing a PR authored by random internet people/bots is hard because of how much the entire code tends to change after minimal questions are asked. What I am sad of this approach is that I did met a few interesting people through receiving PRs and establishing trust and some relationships in the past (eight years ago and before)