LLMs are not humans, they are ostensibly tools. Tools are supposed to come with a list of things they can do. LLMs don’t and are therefore bad at being tools, so we anthropomorphize them. But they are also not good at being people, so LLMs are left in this weird in-between state where half the people say they’re useful and half the people say they cause more problems than they solve.

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vidarh 6 days ago | parent [-]

They are fantastic tools to me. The provide abilities that no other tools we have can provide.

That they also have flaws does not remove those benefits.

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ModernMech 6 days ago | parent [-]

There's no question they have capabilities that no other tool has. But a good tool goes beyond just doing something, there are some generally agreed upon principles of tool design that make something good versus just useful.

For example, I think a hammer is a good tool because every time I swing it at a nail, it provides the force necessary to drive it into the wood. It's reliable. Sure, sometimes a hammer breaks, but my baseline expectation in using one is that every time I swing the hammer it will behave the same way.

Something more complicated, like a Rust compiler is also a good tool in the same way. It's vastly more intricate than the hammer, yet it still has the good tool property of being reliable; every time I press compile, if the program is wrong, then the compiler tells me that. If it's right, then the compiler passes every time. It doesn't lie, it doesn't guess, it doesn't rate limit, it doesn't charge a subscription, it doesn't silently update causing code to fail, it informs when changes are breaking and what they are, it allows me to pick my version and doesn't silently deprecate me without recourse, etc.

There are of course ecosystems out there where building a project is more like a delicate dance, or a courtship ritual, and those ecosystems are pain in the ass to deal with. I'm talking XKCD #1987, or NodeJS circa 2014, or just the entire rationale behind Docker. People exit their careers to not have to deal with such technology, because it's like working at the DMV or living in Kafka's nightmares. LLMs are more in that direction, and no one is going to like where we end up if we make them our entire stack, as seems to be the intent by the powers that be.

There's a difference between what LLMs are and what they're being sold as. For what they are, they can be useful and may one day they will be turned into good tools if some of the major flaws are fixed.

On the other hand, we are in the process of totally upending the way our industry works on the basis of what these things will be, which they are selling as essentially an oracle. "The smartest person who know in your pocket", "a simultaneous expert PhD, MD, JD", "Smarter than all humans combined". But there's a giant gulf between what they're selling and what it is, and that gulf is what makes LLMs a poor tool.

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vidarh 6 days ago | parent [-]

They are good tools to me.

We won't agree on this.

The provide abilities no other tool provides me with. They could be better, but they've still provided me with possibilities that I have never had before without hiring humans.

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ModernMech 6 days ago | parent [-]

I'm sure they're good for you, I'm not suggesting otherwise. What I'm saying is, if you ask 100 engineers to describe the properties of the best tools they use, the set of adjectives and characteristics come up with will largely not be applicable to LLMs, and ChatGPT 5 doesn't change that.

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vidarh 6 days ago | parent [-]

This is pure, unsubstantiated conjecture.

It's also wildly unrealistic conjecture, in my opinion.

The first, and most important, measure to me of a good tool is whether it makes me more productive. LLMs does. Measurably so.

You will certainly find people who don't believe LLMs do for them, but that won't change the fact that for a lot of us it is an immensely good tool. And a tool doesn't need to fit everyones processes to be a good tool.

	▲	ModernMech 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		> It's also wildly unrealistic conjecture, in my opinion. The only property of good tools you've mentioned that LLMs have is they do something useful. But are they reliable? No, they inexplicably work sometimes and don't work other times. Do they have a clear purpose? No, their purpose is muddled and it's sold as being capable of literally everything. Are the ergonomics good? No, the interface is completely opaque, accessed only behind a natural language text box that comes with no instructions on how to use. But then it must be intuitive, right? No, common wisdom on how to use them sound more like astrological forecasts, or the kind of advice you give people trying to get something from a toddler -- "If you want good results, first you have to get into character!"... etc. etc. > it makes me more productive. Awesome! I'm sure they are doing exactly what you say and your experiences with them are amazing. But yours and my personal productivity isn't the question facing the industry at the moment or the topic of this discussion. The question isn't whether you personally as an induvial find these things useful in your process. If that were the question I wouldn't be here complaining about them. I'm here because the powers that be are telling us that we must adopt these things into every aspect of our work lives as soon as possible, and if we don't, we deserve to be left behind. THAT is what I'm here to talk about. > And a tool doesn't need to fit everyones processes to be a good tool. I haven't argued this. Of course a tool doesn't have to fit everyone's process to be good, but we have some generally accepted principles of good tool design, and LLMs don't follow them. That doesn't preclude you from using them well in your process.