mirrorlake

LLM text and images have crept into so many places, and I've experienced quite a lot of existential dread this year from it. I've definitely felt what the author wrote about here.

Another trend, starting sometime last year, has been witnessing people reading scripts on camera: YouTube, public speeches, advertisements, and podcasts where a real human is reading from a script that is LLM-generated.

In the case of smaller video creators and podcasters, I then start wondering if they really think they can pretend that this is organic human speech? Or do they think I'm stupid and will continue to consume this slop without any critical thought..? Or do they think that their audience must know, and therefore consent to it, and so it's okay? In some cases, the person reading the LLM script is literally unaware that they're reading LLM text because a human scriptwriter handed them the page. I see this with advertising copy and a few YouTube channels.

Either way, it has led to quite a few instances where I got the LLM "ick", like I'm witnessing an LLM wearing a human skin, and it grosses me out so much.

As one final note: some of us assumed in ~2023 that LLMs would help to improve technical documentation. Thus far, 3 years after that prediction, I can say definitively that we've not ushered in an era of great documentation. We've got a steadily increasing percentage of documents that cause my eyes to glaze over because I don't know if a human expert ever once vetted it.

Looking forward to reading this, I am one of the people who preordered. I've often heard people with degrees say that they regret not being better at the material in this book, so for many peope this will be a chance to practice these skills in a way that their CS/math/physics/engineering degrees didn't really enable.

Also, Hillel (author) has a blog that's absolutely worth checking out as well as some great conference talks which are on YouTube, he's on the short list of speakers who I automatically watch any of their talks.

I always bind a side button on my gaming mice to ctrl+click so that my thumb can open links in a new tab. Slight ergonomic improvement for me.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

I feel like I'm being rickrolled over and over again by infomercial-grade slop.

It's also TV in 1950.

Perhaps consider making some tutorials, then, and share your wealth of knowledge rather than calling people stupid.

It's a social-media-level of fact checking, that is to say, you feel something is right but have no clue if it actually is. If you had a better source for a fact, you'd quote that source rather than the LLM.

Just do the research, and you don't have to qualify it. "GPT said that Don Knuth said..." Just verify that Don said it, and report the real fact! And if something turns out to be too difficult to fact check, that's still valuable information.

Yeah, the Steam HW survey shows that 16:9 resolutions form a majority (60%+) of their users with 1080p + 4K, so it makes sense as a default design choice for a company that only wants to target one ratio.

As a former user of 16:10, I feel your pain, though.

I quite like the 2x3 grid of videos. No complaints, actually.

I saw profiles across different searches which had no contact info listed, seems like it isn't really designed to be a hiring tool.

I'm very skeptical of the claim that you'll be able to identify people by "usefulness of code", whatever that means.

"There are no shortcuts, you have to put in the work." Spoken like someone who doesn't use an SRS system, then. They're actually extremely hard to use, because the focus is on feeding you the toughest possible version of every recalled card. Part of why people quit using them is because it's mentally exhausting!

Anecdotally, English/History/Communications professors are confirming cheaters with them because they find it easy to identify false information. The red flags are so obvious that the checker tools are just a formality: student papers now have fake URLs and fake citations. Students will boldly submit college papers which have paragraphs about nonexistent characters, or make false claims about what characters did in a story.

The e-mail correspondence goes like this: "Hello Professor, I'd like to meet to discuss my failing grade. I didn't know that using ChatGPT was bad, can I have some points back or rewrite my essay?"

For longer beer drinking sessions, store in a double walled vacuum-sealed insulated bottle, of course.