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emp17344 5 hours ago

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this guy say anything negative about an AI product, which makes me skeptical of his insights here.

asadotzler 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

He's a proponent, but that doesn't mean his analysis isn't useful. It's clear and mostly accurate and when he gets something wrong he makes it right. Does he do all that with rose tinted glasses, probably, but my experience reading him is that he's sharp, thoughtful, and entirely reasonable.

Dismissing the opportunity to learn because the person offering you knowledge is enthusiastic about his area of expertise is probably shortsighted.

Cornbilly 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think they were being dismissive. They just said they were skeptical, which is generally a good thing. It's certainly better than the goofy hero worship I constantly see on HN.

emp17344 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How is this Simon’s area of expertise? I know he’s a programming legend, but I’ve never heard anything to indicate he’s a machine learning expert.

I’m not intending to be dismissive, just noticing a pattern and advocating a bit of skepticism.

wanderingstan 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This is more akin to a race car driver give a review of, for example, a new type of electric car. It doesn’t matter that the driver is not a domain expert in electric motors and regenerative braking; what matters is he knows how to operate these machines in their use case at the limits.

Hearing a programming legend weigh in on the latest programming tool seems entirely completely reasonable.

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simonw an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you seen my writing on prompt injection (a term that I coined)?

That's pretty negative! https://simonwillison.net/series/prompt-injection/

There's a whole section in the linked piece about how Cowork doesn't do enough here, including:

> I do not think it is fair to tell regular non-programmer users to watch out for “suspicious actions that may indicate prompt injection”

mbesto 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would argue the EXACT opposite. His analysis is very constructive.

The people you should be skeptical of are the random Xitter handles who post about a robotic phlebotomists and say "THE FUTUE IS ALREADY HERE".

mvdtnz 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're right to be skeptical. He makes a living as a hype merchant.

webdevver 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

id imagine someone like Simon to pick his AI products carefully enough that he doesn't waste his time on duds.