> If everyone is using LLMs then nobody has advantage
LLMs are a tool like any other - and like any tool there will be people who are better at utilising the tool to achieve an outcome than other users of the tool.
Those differences typically come down to a combination of experience, in-depth understanding of your subject/objective and an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the tool.
TBH the rise of LLMs reminds me a lot of the era when google search emerged. People's ability to utilise a search engine to achieve their aims was massively varied.
* Some people were absolutely useless - they struggled to use a search engine to find anything beyond the most basic of things.
* Others were ok - they'd be able to dig a little deeper, they knew a few of the tricks of the searching trade and they had a bit of an understanding of where to look/how to look for something obscure.
* Some were good - they knew all the key search constraints, they had a good understanding around how data is structured and what keywords and approaches to use when to get to the thing they need
* and some had 'google fu' - those people seemed to have a god-like ability to navigate the internet to find the most obscure things in a matter of seconds.
LLMs are different to search engines but their rise shares many similarities to them - they are changing the rules of the game in a monumental way; they have fundamentally reduced the barriers to entry in many fields.
The skills that made someone valuable in a pre LLM world do still matter, but IMO we're currently starting to go through a major change where the people who learn how to best utilise LLMs within their field will find themselves leapfrogging people with stronger skills who obstinately seek to avoid using the new tools becoming available to them.
That does sound pretty poor, surprised it's not mandated that there needs to be an onscreen warning as well, not just an unexplained beep.
For my experience i've found the safety features helpful and don't mind them. I turn off the audible warning but the onscreen warnings are helpful nudges/reminders.
The lane-assist bit I leave on and whilst I do occasionally have to 'wrestle' with the car a little in some scenarios, it doesn't ever feel like I lose control I just have to overcome a little bit more resistance when the system is concerned about me departing the lane inadvertently. For me that's not really a problem, but I do see how others might find it frustrating.
> But car beeps generally give no clue what they're beeping about.
Can't speak to all vehicles, but my VW ID3 clearly indicates what the issue is on the dashboard.
So if it's the lane-keeping assist it highlights which lane(s) it is monitoring and it provides a written prompt on screen (e.g. "drive in the centre of the lane") if it's not happy.
If the speed limiter is on it shows the current signed speed limit in the dashboard and it flashes that speed limit if I am driving over the speed limit.
If the car believes I am not concentrating on the road and instead interacting too much with the touch-screen it puts a large warning in the middle of the touchscreen to pay attention to the road and prevents me using the infotainment system for a few second.
I'd be surprised if most other modern/new cars didn't also include instrument display feedback like this alongside audible warnings.
In my mind, 'tinkering for fun and knowledge' was never meant to be profitable - if you're tinkering with the express aim of making a profit i'm not sure you're really 'tinkering' so much as you're trying to create a product/service/output for someone else to pay for?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that - I'm just not sure the 'ethos' of tinkering has anything to do with trying to make money and is usually reserved for describing someone playing about with something for their own enjoyment/fun with no desire to make money.
Now, of course some people did find that their tinkerings were able to make them money, but I think at its base it's a term I'd tend to say implies doing something for fun/for themselves, rather than doing it for profit?
In my experience there's still plenty of people out there tinkering just for their own personal satisfaction, but of course there's almost certain a whole load more people out there 'tinkering' to try make a profit.
> Rampant use of AI for cheating is not at all incompatible with negative opinions of AI.
Possibly. Either way it (for me at least) neatly highlights why AI will succeed.
The students you talk about don't abstain from AI use entirely - they utilise AI for things they consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort.
That is precisely the market AI will capture first - the tasks and processes that people (in general) have to do but don't really have any passion/interest in doing and for which perfection isn't critical.
And what may surprise many people in this thread (given its flow so far)...there are a whole heap of things that you and I care about, that 10s if not 100s of millions of other people consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort and for which they will happily make do with a 'sub par' AI experience if it's cheaper, easier, more convenient.
Ahh ok - that's fair enough - hand-reviewed/not controlled by the agent seems a sensible approach (wasn't sure if it was instructive of a complete distrust of AI generated code)
> But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code.
Genuine question...why would that need to be hand-written?
It makes absolute sense as a general statement and is kinda crazy that this wasn't a built-in limitation, but I'm not quite sure why the code for that bit must be hand-written (provided the code functionally does what you describe).
> But most people sat there watching, clearly wanting to take part but scared. People have learned that creativity and participation are not welcome.
In my experience, a decent proportion of people have always been nervous about joining in. I'd wager that for many of the onlookers it isn't driven by a creativity/participation thing, it's just a (pretty normal) fear of embarrassing themselves. Scroll back 30 years and I would undoubtedly be one of those awkward teenagers wanting to join in but scared to do so out of fear of embarrassing myself.
That said...There probably is a reasonable argument to be made that in the modern world the potential for everything you do to be filmed and shared with others amplifies those fear more than ever.
Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.
Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.
Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.
Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.
I don't know whether it's a sign of it being AI or not but I did find it a bit weird that within the first 3 sentences there were 2 different "less like X and more like Y" statements:
> the reason is that this is less like painting a wooden fence, which is easy, and more like changing the colour of a carbon-fibre Formula 1 part, which requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics.
and
> this is less like making ice cubes and more like baking a complex soufflé where every degree of temperature and milligram of ingredients matters.
Not a problem, but it felt odd enough that I noticed it, so maybe that's what got them thinking it was AI written/assisted?
> seems to imply they have to pick and choose what they pursue. They really don't, especially if it's hard- vs software.
Money can often just be one part of the equation.
To do things well you also need - available & capable technical resource, suitable facilities, available & capable leadership and management (with engaging at the right level in the business) and a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve/working towards.
Given how Apple appears to operate, I wonder if a strong desire for senior management control/oversight over major developments means they (artificially) limit how many concurrent large-scale things they can work on at any given time?
Nah, though I imagine every insurance company that did these sorts of mail shots got the same stuff back.
Apparently there used to be people who would buy the policy purely for the parker pen. They'd get the pen then cancel the policy for a full refund. There's some weird people out there.
Interesting stuff - and lovely to see positive/nice examples of interaction with the game developers. Very cute.
It reminded me of a job nigh on 25 years ago I had - I worked at a large insurance firm as part of a team delivering a specialist service to high value customers...but it was often under-subscribed so if things were quieter we'd get roped into doing all manner of different tasks to keep us busy/help out.
One thing we occasionally got roped into was opening returned mail from mail-shots advertising 'over 50s whole of life' insurance (basically a policy over 50s would take out with guaranteed payment on death that would primarily be used to cover funeral costs).
The mail shots were sent with a pre-paid envelope and a form to fill in to buy the product. It's going back a while now but some days it'd be 100s of letters coming back - my rough estimate would be:
* ~2-3% of the return envelopes were people buying the product
* ~95% were people return the application form in ripped up form
* ~1-2% were people sending something weird back
The weird stuff we got back varied massively, but a few that have lived long in my memory:
* A sheet of paper with a hand written note saying they'd farted on it
* Toe-nail clippings
* A stash of cuttings taken from pretty graphic porn magazines
* Hand written notes, often so apoplectic in their rage that they were hilarious to read
* 'Filled in' forms but where all the information was clearly fake/puns/nonsense ('Mr Hugh Janus' that sort of thing)
* Randomly (to me at least) peeled off labels from jars/etc. were quite common to get back
For what was a pretty dull task (open envelopes, if genuine, scan for the processing team and return a 'parker pen' to the applicant, if not dispose of) the occasional weird responses we'd get made the task much more amusing.
{all mail had already been through some sort of security scan process for metals/etc. so we didn't tend to get anything truly dodgy back}
> Like there was some point in time when people decided to start abusing the policy, necessitating the change. Like people cared about new ll bean so much they'd scour garage sales and do the return fraud.
It's entirely possible that a hack/fraud like this existed at a relatively small scale that was 'tolerable' to the business, but subsequently became more popular to the extent it became unsustainable to continue to offer the guarantee.
I could easily image that happening a couple of ways -
* a 'life hack' like mentioned gets spread around in forums/online, raising awareness of the 'hack' which sees return volumes increase beyond what they had modelled/expected when pricing the cost of the guarantee into their product
* The above, combined with the growth in peer-to-peer used clothing sales (things like Vinted in the UK, or ThreadUp? in the US) means there's money to be made taking advantage of things like this - people could absolutely earn a living/earn money finding used clothes in thrift stores, cashing in on the manufacturer guarantee and then reselling the subsequent items on via peer-to-peer sales as unused/unwanted clothing where they'd undoubtedly make a sizeable mark-up vs. the cost of buying potentially quite used clothing in a thrift-store.
On that second point - I personally know people who supplement their modest incomes by doing similar things - scouring things like Facebook marketplace/freecycle for items they know they can turn around and resell online for a small profit. Feels like way too much work per £/$ earned for me, but undoubtedly it happens).
Of course...you could be absolute right, it could just be a convenient scapegoat to point to when removing a previously offered service that the business has deemed no longer viable/not worthwhile to offer.
> in e.g. the Iran War just have to place their bets 3 days before?
It certainly wouldn't perfectly solve things but the further out a prediction is made the more risk there is that the outcome could change - even for someone with insider knowledge.
E.g. I've worked in businesses where an M&A has looked a nail on cert - as part of a small discreet team involved we were being readied for the announcement etc. only for it to stumble a few days before completion.
Obviously there are some markets/situations where a few extra days won't make a difference at all, but I could see how something like that would introduce more risk/uncertainty for those with insider knowledge.
LLMs are a tool like any other - and like any tool there will be people who are better at utilising the tool to achieve an outcome than other users of the tool.
Those differences typically come down to a combination of experience, in-depth understanding of your subject/objective and an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the tool.
TBH the rise of LLMs reminds me a lot of the era when google search emerged. People's ability to utilise a search engine to achieve their aims was massively varied.
* Some people were absolutely useless - they struggled to use a search engine to find anything beyond the most basic of things.
* Others were ok - they'd be able to dig a little deeper, they knew a few of the tricks of the searching trade and they had a bit of an understanding of where to look/how to look for something obscure.
* Some were good - they knew all the key search constraints, they had a good understanding around how data is structured and what keywords and approaches to use when to get to the thing they need
* and some had 'google fu' - those people seemed to have a god-like ability to navigate the internet to find the most obscure things in a matter of seconds.
LLMs are different to search engines but their rise shares many similarities to them - they are changing the rules of the game in a monumental way; they have fundamentally reduced the barriers to entry in many fields.
The skills that made someone valuable in a pre LLM world do still matter, but IMO we're currently starting to go through a major change where the people who learn how to best utilise LLMs within their field will find themselves leapfrogging people with stronger skills who obstinately seek to avoid using the new tools becoming available to them.