Now imagine if your calculator billed per button press.

And imagine you can't own a calculator because owning one outright requires too much hardware (or whatever).

The exact same arguments were made against electronic computing in general, in the early days. Pearl clutching is a very human thing to do as new technologies are integrated and become common place. A whole generation or two of developers are going to have to pass away before we stop hearing incessant diatribes about LLMs.

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cj 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Don't use calculator as an analogy, then.

Calculators are a simple machine that implement very basic rules.

LLMs are in a different category. The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense.

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quantummagic an hour ago | parent [-]

> The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense.

The technology doesn't matter, you can compare to say the power loom from the 1700's. I'm comparing the reaction of humans; human's haven't changed that much. They always react the same when they feel threatened and emotionally challenged by a technology.

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dd8601fn an hour ago | parent [-]

And someone else always cries luddite if anyone says, “Hey guys, this isn’t what the salesman said.”

What matters is the reality of the thing… which is exactly what everyone is discussing.

As they should. We need more conversations like this, early. It could have saved us decades of bad practices with impossible expectations (see: agile).

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quantummagic an hour ago | parent [-]

But people can't separate their emotions from the "reality". The reality is, this technology has strengths and limitations. It has benefits and it has negative consequences. We can and will discuss all of that. But many people aren't operating from a detached analytical viewpoint. They're operating from an emotional, self-interested, defensive stance. And granted, there are just as many people operating from a utopian, rose tinted, self-serving, evangelical position.

In the end, the technology will get used where appropriate. And more importantly many of its weaknesses will be overcome and replaced by new challenges.

It's just a bit tiring to hear the same denouncements repeated over and over. Everyone knows them all by heart now. They're not wrong, they're just not helpful or accomplishing anything. The technology marches forward and will develop naturally. If you personally don't want to use it, then don't.

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cj 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

> They're not wrong, they're just not helpful or accomplishing anything.

I think what it accomplishes is developing a shared understanding of the pros/cons of the tech, the risks associated, how we should mitigate those risks, where the tech is appropriate vs. not appropriate, etc.

It feels very dismissive to say that these conversations aren't worth having. Or that we're thinking about these things too much.

I get that it's tiring, especially in the HN echo chamber. But the conversations are still worth having IMO.

	▲	quantummagic 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There are conversations worth having. But it feels very dismissive of the obvious power of the technology to constantly focus, in an unbalanced way, on the challenges. People are biased heavily by irrational emotion, on both sides of the debate. It's all just getting a little tedious. I'm all for rational discourse and debate, but it's hard to find through all the vitriol and contempt.