Phillip Winn @pwinn@social.cleverlibre.org

@chuckwendig Obviously all of my fears are rational. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have the fear!

@unrealfred @dtgeek Performing worse critically doesn't matter to most studios so long as they still make money, but the movies are sure declining quickly.

In 2016, on a budget of $175m, $811m gross.

In 2018, on a budget of $200m, $650m gross.

In 2022, on a budget of $200m, $404m gross.

However, the game broke some records, with $850m in sales in just the first two weeks (on a $150m budget).

So the lesson might be: no more movies, or no more "Fantastic Beasts," but there's still plenty of love for Hogwarts. Perhaps on TV, telling the original story?

@LouisIngenthron You've made a series of statements that I'm not sure are related to each other, and I agree with some of them.

Writing code *is* the easy part! I believe both Wyatt Cheng and I have said as much, both in this linked video and in my previous posts. I don't even think debugging is as hard as design, but okay, both debugging and design are harder than coding. So little of most developer jobs is actually writing code! The video demonstrates using ChatGPT (and Cheng's experience and understanding) for debugging, and I've used it for debugging as well. This gets back to what I said, which is those who communicate clearly and well can make better use of these tools than those who cannot. ChatGPT is faster than I am at spotting a certain class of coding mistakes, so I can give it a function and say "when I give it X, I expect Y, but instead I get Z," and it will tell me why I'm getting Z, and what I need to change to get Y instead.

You always opined on the quality of the jobs created, which... I didn't actually talk about creating jobs, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm not even sure what it would look like for LLMs to create new developer jobs! I said I think fewer jobs are going to be destroyed than some are predicting, but less-severe destruction is not creation.

Finally, you said this is all very short-sighted. I'm assuming you mean "the entire concept of using LLMs to write code," but if that's now what you meant, let me know. It's definitely short-sighted in the Luddite sense, and I think the Luddites were absolutely correct! Machinery put skilled craftspeople out of work _en masse_, and ended an entire way of life for many. I mentioned my concerns about junior developer positions.

That said, right or not, Luddites are generally mocked today, as they are perceived as standing in the way of Progress™. In the moment, the Luddites were focused on what seemed like the longer view, while short-sighted factory owners were chasing profits and destroying livelihoods. But it turned out there was an even longer-term view, in which you and I can be dressed like royalty in ways unimaginable more than 200 years ago, and so can everybody else.

I don't know what the long term of skilled designers, directors, and developers having access to LLMs is going to look like, and I don't think anybody else does, either. I know that we'll all find out, because the advantages to those using LLMs today already outweigh the disadvantages both personally and as a group.

I suggest that there are short-term gains from LLMs, and medium-term losses, but almost certainly also long-term gains that dwarf both.

@Miriamm The entire "Pioneer Woman" brand started out as stories Ree Drummond told before recipes! Now it's a whole thing: https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/products/

I remember when she started up, she even explained that she was telling her story to make Google happy.

@J12t This is sorely needed. Not just for *one* site to have it, but for all Fediverse sites to support it, both as provider and consumer.

@coleens_ It is! I try to stick with the 0-cal sodas, so maybe I’m more used to the taste, but I think it’s great.

@coleens_ It even comes in a zero-calorie variety, and it is *fantastic*! It has joined Pepsi Mango as a favorite for me.

@Adam_Cadmon1 I think the first 7 lbs is the hardest to lose.

Unfortunately, the last 7 lbs is the second-hardest, but hey, you've got the middle 15 now! Easy!

💪

@CWilbur A low-trust vs high-trust society is not necessarily about inaction vs action. In a high-trust society, I wouldn't feel any need to do anything, because I would believe in the institutions with the responsibility to protect and serve people. In a low-trust society, I know that anything good that's going to happen, I need to make it happen, because I don't trust it'll happen otherwise.

Hypernormalisation is real, and I won't be staying home.

@hellomiakoda At some point, I'd love to see a post about your favorite shows on YouTube. 😀

@ech Oh, I know how it works, and you're absolutely right. While I'm surprised at just how badly this model performed, I'm posting these results to push back against the crowd that is trying to tell everybody that will listen that there is True Reasoning emerging from these models. It's not reasoning, it's probabilities!

In normal conversation, especially with people inclined to Believe, it seems natural, especially with enough coaching. But that's because of the flexibility of the English language and the credulity of the Believers. It's clearly not actually reasoning, regardless of how well it does on tests that have previously claimed to test reasoning.

People want to Believe, and so they see what they want to see, from Blake Lemoine with LaMDA to adamsmith143 on Hacker News.

It's still spicy autocomplete. And it's sometimes truly amazing, mind-blowingly good! I'm often very impressed, but I think it's a mistake to anthropomorphize the language models.

From memory, and reasoning: you take the hoje across first, since it can't be trusted with either the blurple or the mantiple. You return alone.

Then you take over either of the others, let's say the blurple. But this time you bring the hoje back with you.

Now you take the other one, the mantiple across, leaving poor voracious hoje alone. You return alone again.

Finally you take the hoje across again, but this time to stay, since you're there to protect the blurple and mantiple.

That's it, four steps, done. The hoje was never left alone with either the blurple or the mantiple, and all are safely across. I guess now you know I'm not an LLM, at least until LLMs are trained to answer this one correctly.