> You have a lot of control over what the LLM creates.
No, you don't, you have "influence" or "suggestion".
You can absolutely narrow down the probability ranges of what is produced , but there is no guarantee that it will stick to your guidelines.
So far, at least, it's just not how they work.
> You don't have 100% control over what your LLM devs are doing, but more than you think. Just like normal managers don't micromanage every action of their team.
This overlooks the role of actual reasoning/interpretation that is found when dealing with actual people.
While it might seem like directing an LLM is similar in practice to managing a team of people, the underlying mechanisms are not the same.
If you analyse based on comparisons between those two approaches, without understanding the fundamental differences in what's happening beneath the surface, then any conclusions drawn will be flawed.
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I'm not against LLM's, i'm against using them poorly and presenting them as something they are not.
I think i have enough control, probably more than when working with developers. Here's something i recently had claude code build: https://github.com/ako/backing-tracks
This is probably just a disagreement about the term "control", so we can agree to disagree on that one i suppose.
The rest of the reply doesn't really relate to any of the points i mentioned.
That it's possible to successfully use the tool to achieve your goals wasn't in dispute.
I'll try to narrow it down:
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> You are not a victim at the mercy of your LLM.
Yes, you absolutely are, it's how they work.
As i said, you can suggest guidelines and directions but it's not guaranteed they'll be adhered to.
To be clear , this also applies to people as well.
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Directing an LLM (or LLM based orchestration system) is not the same as directing a team of people.
The "interface" is similar in that you provide instructions and guidelines and receive an attempt at the wanted outcome.
However, the underlying mechanisms of how they work are so different that the analogy you were trying to use doesn't make sense.
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Again, LLM's can be useful tools, but presenting them as something they aren't only serves to muddy the waters of understanding how best to use them.
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As an aside, IMO, the sketchy salesmen approach to over-promising on features and obscuring the the limitations will do great harm to the adoption of LLM's in the medium to long term.
The misrepresentation of terminology is also contributing to this.
The term AI is intentionally being used to attribute a level of reasoning and problem solving capability beyond what actually exists in these systems.
Looks like we just have different expectations: i don't want to micromanage my coding agents any more than i micromanage the developers i work with as a product manager. If the output does what it is supposed to do, and the software is maintainable and extendable by following certain best practices, i'm happy. And i expect that goes for most business people.
And in practice i have more control with a coding agent than with developers as i can iterate over ideas quickly: "build this idea", "no change this", "remove this and replace it with this". Within an hour you can quickly iterate an idea into something that works well. With developers this would have taken days if not more. And they would've complained i need to better prepare my requirements.
If it's working for you, great, but presenting it like it's a general direct replacement for development teams is disingenuous.
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> Looks like we just have different expectations: i don't want to micromanage my coding agents any more than i micromanage the developers i work with as a product manager. If the output does what it is supposed to do, and the software is maintainable and extendable by following certain best practices, i'm happy. And i expect that goes for most business people.
None of what i said implied any expectations of the process of using the tools, but if you've found something that works for you that's good.
On the subject of maintainability and extension, that is usually bound to the level of complexity of the project and the increase in requirements is not generally linear.
I agree, many business people would love what you've described, very few are getting it.
> And in practice i have more control with a coding agent than with developers as i can iterate over ideas quickly: "build this idea", "no change this", "remove this and replace it with this". Within an hour you can quickly iterate an idea into something that works well. With developers this would have taken days if not more. And they would've complained i need to better prepare my requirements.
Up to a point, yes.
If your application of this methodology works well enough before you hit the limitations of the tooling, that's great.
There is , however, a threshold of complexity where this starts to break down, this threshold can be mitigated somewhat with experience and a better understanding on how to utilise the tooling, but it still exists (currently).
Once you reach this threshold the approaches you are talking about start to work less effectively and even actively hinder progress.
There are techniques and approaches to software development that can further push this threshold out, but then you're getting into the territory of having to know enough to be able to instruct the LLM to use these approaches.
Isn't the whole point of amphetamine based treatement for ADHD to correct(or beneficially alter, depending on your point of view) an non-standard brain chemistry?
AFAIK some neurodivergent brains deal with amphetamines differently and the baseline levels of chemical affected by amphetamines is different.
Wear and tear might be a thing, i don't know, but the analogy of putting NO2 in their car feels a bit off.
It'd be more like finally putting premium unleaded in your car after years of "back of the lorry" pseudo-unleaded.
I believe parent commenter was referring to recreational use, i.e., use by people without such diagnoses who want a "performance boost". I heard about that sort of thing being popular when I was in college — people would take Adderall to cram for an exam or to study late into the night.
You're right that, for people with ADHD and related disorders, stimulant medication sort of just adjusts their baselines so they can pay attention like a "normal" person.
> You're right that, for people with ADHD and related disorders, stimulant medication sort of just adjusts their baselines so they can pay attention like a "normal" person.
I have ADHD and take metylphenidate(I've tried many kinds of stimulants as well) -- and the NO2 analogy is an imperfect but better analogy than saying stimulants simply adjusts the baseline of people with ADHD to function like "normal" persons.
I feel there is a narrow window of dosage and time where it might feel that way -- i.e. stimulants at the onset might calm you down, reduce anxiety, but all stimulants are very broad hammers.
For me it feels like it's impossible to re-create chemically exactly the neurotypical focus that I've seen in other colleagues.
Like spending 5-6 hours of continous work where you drill down just enough, get back on track, don't get distracted, don't get too anxious, don't get hyperfocused AND do that consistently, day after day after day.
My non-chemical modes are either hyper focus for 2 weeks on a problem, immerse myself but then completely lose interest, most of the time without showing much for it OR procastinate it a long way, get extremely anxious and work really hard on the problem.
With stimulants it's a bit like:
- dosed just right:it evaporates anxiety, stressful situations feel easy to deal with, BUT there's always increased heart rate, grinding teeth and some tension at the end of the day
- some stimulants make mundane things wildly interesting (on isopropylphenidate I spent a few hours playing with a PLSQL debugger because I thought it was really cool), but no sense of "GO, GO, GO, do it".
- some make things seem urgent enough and help stay on track -- like the metylphenidate I'm prescribed.
- some make going into a flow-like state easy and fun (like methamphetamine and phenmetrazine).
- some are pure energy and urgency -- like modafinil.
All of the stimulants have the potential to give me euphoria, all of them temporarily increase libido I still have to be mindful of not focusing on the wrong thing, the "normal" feeling is very fleeting, it's very easy to get hyper on stimulants, all of them feel like wear & tear at the end of the day, some more than others.
I've had similar experiences to you.
I never can quite get that normalcy. I now just take rilatin but it is finnicky.
Getting enough sleep and eating the right amount of the right stuff just before ingesting is extremely important so I don't even take it all that much even tho i struggle.
I wonder if you tried lisdexamfetamine? I can't get it prescribed easily here since it's not covered the way the alternatives are but someone i know had amazing success with it. Seemingly because it's a prodrug.
I can't help but be hopefull that I'll get to try it one day and that it ends up being what I always needed.
Not the OP, but I‘ve had a rather bad experience with methylphenidate (ritalin) where it made me way more awkward around people, and increased my obsessive tendencies. It did help with focus, but the effects were very short-lived. It also obliterated my hunger and once the effects wore off, it left me feeling semi-depressed until the end of the day.
Once I got prescribed lisdexamphetamine, my life turned around almost instantaneously. While it doesn‘t really get rid of my ADHD, it does help tremendously. The everlasting brainfog isn‘t as debilitating anymore. When I get excited about something I actually tend to follow through. I still battle with my obsessive tendencies — like getting stuck at setting up the perfect project tooling stack or spending way too much time on planning and research instead of just getting to work — but these are not so much related to ADHD.
On lisdexamphetamine, I am more social, my appetite is better, when I actually commit to something, I tend to stick to it for much longer, and I have also picked up a bunch of healthy habits. For example I exercise almost every day now.
If you someday get a chance to switch to lisdex, do it. It’s much smoother, longer-lasting, with fewer side effects. But honestly, anything is better than ritalin in my book.
It's not legal where I live also, I did try 2-FMA and it felt better in certain scenarios -- like following a hard course, but I also felt the tolerance ramps up much faster in releasers than re-uptake inhibitors so methylphenidate still is a wonderful tool.
Watching a good friend of mine struggle with this after diagnosis for a few years now and I feel this really captures the nuance and complexity of this struggle well. Stimulants are an incredible tool but also an incredibly imperfect one.
Eh, for me the comment rings mostly true. It fixed my ADHD - I was incredibly more productive, present, and "on track" so to speak. I set goals for myself and achieved them (some for the first time) once I was treated.
That said, it completely destroyed my appetite. I picked up ciggies, too. It made me crave nicotine and caffeine. I started pulling all-nighters because I was so productive (or, so into whatever game I was playing.) I got cold sweats often and had some weird uh sexual health side effects. Develeoped a tolerance to 5-10mg very quickly, so went up to 15-20mg, which also felt weakened after a month or so.
So, wasn't lolng before I could tell this was not healthy. Felt like I was in overdrive mode - super mentally active, and productive, but running my body into the ground. I would never do it long-term.
A bit more esoteric (and less warningy) and you get the signals we send in to space intentionally as a time-capsule/marker for potential alien contact.
Yeah, dismissing data as racist is quite annoying. I looked at the fertility rate in Poland and it is 0.33 per1000. In Portugal it got better at the expense of 10% of the population being immigrant in a span of 5 years. Of course the natives revolted, all while they enjoy their lives without dependants .
The fault is not of the Indians, or immigrants that come for a better life, and are often needed. The fault is all the developed world, and some not, deciding that having children is not good. I have a the very controversial opinion that not wanting to have children is a disease as we are living organisms and all of them reproduce. There might be manageable diseases but current demographics is a public health crisis.
I am very capitalist but if there is something where the state needs to intervene is to make any kind of employment disturbance into families a severe liability. I just got to know a parent lost its job after coming from paternity leave, for me that company is on my bad book forever, and I sold its stock.
More importantly evolution will evolve around the people that don’t want to reproduce because they will not pass their childless traits. Crudely, it will consider all childless people even if they live to a 100 as death on birth. If somebody said that 60% of the developed world will die in about 5 generations this would be a catastrophe for Bruce Willis, but as it takes time and we have immigrants that have other fertility inclinations to fill the gap, the frog boils slowly into oblivion.
There's a comic out right now positing that a sufficiently intelligent AI with appropriate access could use imperceptible (to us) vibrations from mechanical computing parts like spinning rust HDD's etc.
It's a throwaway mechanic in the comic, but it seems plausible.
You don't need an AI to come up with remote sensing or air gap traversal capabilities though.
Note for example TEMPEST surveillance, or using a distant laser to pickup speech in a room based on window vibrations. Air-gap traversal is easily done by exploiting human weaknesses (e.g. curiousity to pick up a USB drive to see what's on it), and was successfully done by Stuxnet.
Indeed, there are lots of methods, but i was specifically thinking of the possibility of a method an isolated AI might feasibly figure out with only the tools it has easily available to it.
But as someone said earlier, the real interesting part is when/if they start figuring out novel concepts we as humans haven't even considered.
That's generally how it is with opinionated frameworks (and i use that term as a literal, as opposed to agnostic), you do the thing in the way expected or it's a fight.
Svelte is one of the less opinionated ones i've used but it does still have it's eccentricities.
Woke as a pejorative is a big red flag for a lot of people btw, especially here, you're going to get significantly less positive interactions by starting your text with the textual equivalent of a red baseball cap.
> LLMs in their current state have integrated into the workflows for many, many IT roles. They'll never be niche, unless governing bodies come together to kill them.
That is an exaggeration, it is integrated into some workflows, usually in a provisional manner while the full implications of such integrations are assessed for viability in the mid to long term.
At least in the fields of which i have first hand knowledge.
> Straw man argument - this is in no way a metric for validating the power of LLMs as a tool for IT roles. Can you not find open source code bases that leverage LLMS because you haven't looked, or because you can't tell the difference between human and LLM code?
Straw man rebuttal, presenting an imaginary position in which this statement is doesn't apply doesn't invalidate the statement as a whole.
> As I said, you haven't been paying attention.
Or alternatively you've been paying attention to a selective subset of your specific industry and have made wide extrapolations based on that.
> Denialism - the practice of denying the existence, truth, or validity of something despite proof or strong evidence that it is real, true, or valid
What's the one where you claim strong proof or evidence while only providing anecdotal "trust me bro" ?
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