Silamoth

Nit: I’ve never heard of Magnus Carlsen, and I can’t imagine most people have, outside of those really into chess. The only chess person I’ve ever heard of is Gary Kasparov, and that’s only because it was a big deal when Deep Blue beat him.

Okay, sure - maybe. But how does that weigh against any of the other concerns? So we consume large amounts of energy, build lots of new data, emit more pollution, concentrate even more wealth and power in the hands of a few companies, and ruin the job market. Is that really worth it so some people interested in games (but not interested enough to actually learn!) can “make” games by prompting an LLM?

That’s the piece that’s missing from this and other analyses. At least in other cases it makes a little sense in automating work. But game development is a creative endeavor, and the health of our planet and the lives of real people are at stake. Can’t you at least weigh the downsides against the benefits?

This feels like Jurassic Park: “Your scientists spent so much time asking if they could, they didn’t stop to ask if they should.” LLM supporters act like LLMs are inevitable and talk about the benefits, even when they’re relatively minimal. But serious discussion of the risks and downsides is missing. And it has been missing for years now.

What about them? No, really, I’m not trying to be snarky, but what about them? Lots of people want to do lots of things. Plenty of them don’t want to put in the work. So what?

For the record, I was one of those people who wanted to make games. That led me to learn programming and eventually led to a career as a programmer. Lots of others with similar stories. But if you’d given a younger me an LLM, I may never would have developed those skills.

That’s one of my concerns. I have others, like effects on the job market, the general unfairness of all our data being used to train models we’re now expected to pay for, negative effects on the environment, and the way in which LLMs promote inequality and can potentially crush small businesses. How do these concerns weigh against someone who wants to make a video game but doesn’t want to learn how to make video games?

Wow, we really do live in the worst timeline. At least a lot of gamers are rallying against generative “AI” slop assets, and indie devs are largely against generative “AI” in general. But yikes, this is just unfortunate.

I don’t want the games industry to be polluted with slop that has no soul. But also, I want opportunities for people to learn or just exist in game development via smaller projects. There is some market for web games, casual games, and generally small games. These markets can be great for indie devs and beginners. But if we lose that market to the slop machine, real people will lose a lot of these opportunities.

Man, if my old DoD contractor job paid $150K, I’d probably still be working there. A lot of DoD contracting firms pay much less than that. Especially in the R&D space where a lot of smart people want to work.

At best that seems like a nitpick based on a specific notion of “all of mathematics”. Care to explain what you mean?

Did you read TFA? They never claimed they’ve formalized all of mathematics. For a couple decades now, mathematicians have been discussing formalizing all of mathematics. Some are now proposing AI can be used for this. But TFA argues that’s not necessarily the best approach. It’s a discussion of how to move forward in formalizing all of math, not a claim about having done so. Not clickbait at all.

Do yourself a favor and search “Agent Orange” on your preferred search engine (Sidenote: I’m trying to avoid using “Google” as a verb). Most people associate that term with the very harmful Vietnam-era herbicide, not the band. The band name may be a reference to the herbicide?

Did we read the same article? You’re quoting from the end, so it seems like you did at least skim the article. But this article has nothing to do with child porn? Where did you even get that idea? It’s talking about a famous mathematical proof.

“…at least half of all academic researchers have retracted a paper at least once in their lives”

Source: Ass, My

Who’s “we” here? Formal verification isn’t common, sure. But you don’t speak for all programmers. You might work on “plain enterprise and web software”. But there’s still plenty of other software out there that many of us work on. And lots of code being written for internal use (e.g., data analysis code) that needs to be correct.

Of course, even enterprise and web software benefits from a little rigorous thinking. It’s pretty wild that understanding your code and its assumptions and informally proving it works is controversial. But I guess that explains why most software I use has actively gotten worse over the years.

Yes, just file a ticket and let the people with relevant expertise and context handle it - obviously. Do software engineers ask Claude for recommendations on handling network outages and bug IT with “AI” slop? Do accountants bring “AI” slop advice to electricians wiring a building? Do lawyers use Claude to try helping physicians diagnose illnesses?

By providing a bad “AI” slop solution that you can’t evaluate, you’re actually creating more work for the people responsible for doing the thing. Now they have to understand the slop you’ve given them, explain why it’s wrong/won’t fit in the existing architecture/has other issue you can’t see without deep context. Or, they have to play politics to ignore your slop without angering you and creating more problems down the line. Either way, it’s harder than just letting them do their job.

Interesting. I feel the same way about Medium - it’s mostly a bunch of undergrads and tech bootcamp students regurgitating basic tutorials.

But in my experience, Substack is much higher quality. I actually read several Substack blogs regularly because they’re better and more consistent than most blogs I come across. YMMV, I guess, but I have at least half a dozen blogs I actively follow on Substack, compared to maybe 1 elsewhere.

If a lot of people make the same claim, then from their perspective, you’re the one with a “wildly different” experience. What makes you so certain your experience generalizes to “most people’s experiences”?

You don’t “need” any LLMs to do software development. Plenty of us were productively writing code for years before these models were released, and many of us continue to do so. The “AI” companies want to sell you hype. But you don’t “need” them - not if you’re a legit, professional programmer.