| ▲ | threetonesun 2 hours ago |
| I’d love it if for once someone on here saying LLMs are some life changing apparatus would give a single example. |
|
| ▲ | hedora 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| We have some exotic chicks the kids picked out, and 4 were going to die of brooder pneumonia. An LLM correctly diagnosed it, and figure out that we could treat them with Nutri-drench Sheep Supplement, since Tractor Supply was sold out of the chicken version, and they are very similar. Of course it then immediately recommended we use hemp bedding that would kill them a different way, but the saleswoman sanity checked all of the above, 100% survival rate. Everyone’s thriving. Chickens would follow the medical advice again, I guess. |
|
| ▲ | olalonde an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I can give some recent examples. - Significantly increased my productivity as a software engineer. - Using it daily for Chinese-English translation. Significantly better than pre-LLM translation software. Also, great at teaching grammar, nuances, etc. - General Q&A. Like "Googling" but much faster. This is probably the most common use case for me. |
| |
| ▲ | alpha_squared an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > - Significantly increased my productivity as a software engineer. This is exactly the point that keeps coming up that folks are struggling to grasp, myself included. How are you measuring this? It certainly makes me feel productive, but I'm not sure I can confidently say it has actually made me more productive. It's made the easy stuff a no-brainer (e.g. boilerplate, simple logic) and the moderate stuff really hard. Never mind the hard stuff. Vetting the code has become a whole other job on its own. The only folks I've found who confidently claim it increases productivity appear to be online (and without evidence), because no one in person is willing to claim that and show it. | | | |
| ▲ | batshit_beaver an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Significantly increased my productivity as a software engineer. You’re going to have to define productivity as it applies to software engineering. With LLMs we’ve primarily seen the number of PRs over time being discussed as a proxy for LoC, as well as the speed of bootstrapping a small project. None of these have a known correlation with economic output. They just feel good, to the programmer, their manager, or both. > Using it daily for Chinese-English translation. Significantly better than pre-LLM translation software. Also, great at teaching grammar, nuances, etc. Yes dealing with language is the one area LLMs are actually designed for. But what’s the TAM for machine translation? > General Q&A. Like "Googling" but much faster. This is probably the most common use case for me. And now you’re missing any kind of traceability for the information that you “learn,” since it all gets spaghettified and then recombined into a pile of plausible slop with no attribution. Where before you had to do slightly more work to find the information you needed, now it’s available faster but you’re at complete mercy of literally 3 American companies plus the CCP for the accuracy of that information. Most people somehow seem happy with this arrangement. | | |
| ▲ | olalonde an hour ago | parent [-] | | > You’re going to have to define productivity as it applies to software engineering. I meant it in a colloquial way. I just get more done, faster. > And now you’re missing any kind of traceability for the information Modern LLM assistants provide sources and references. While it can sometimes be just "slightly faster", it can genuinely save hours of research on complex ones. Also the "slightly faster" can add up to hours saved with frequent use. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | s1artibartfast 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Immediate medical and childcare advice from LLM are pretty life changing. Interpreting reports, avoiding drug interactions, or knowing when to seek medical care. And before people object- I can literally use the same LLM my doctor does to check these things, without waiting 2 weeks for an appointment. I helped my parents work through bacterial culture results when he was hospitalized with sepsis, and ask their doctor for specific follow up tests. I rebuilt my gas furnace and fixed my dishwasher with AI as an assistant. Those aren't the fun parts tho. My favorite is touring art museums ancient historical sites with an LLM guide. It can give me a short academic essay about every artist, painting, or artifact. It can pull out details quirky stories about the history that I specifically would find interesting. I cant recommend this enough. Its like visiting with a 10 PhD docents in art history. |
|
| ▲ | Cider9986 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Some guy vibe coded a tasks app client that I really like. Not life changing but I couldn't find one that suited my needs since de-iPhoning before this one. |
|
| ▲ | wyre 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| https://www.the-scientist.com/chatgpt-and-alphafold-help-des... Literally saved his dog's life. |
