LlMs are very interesting and incredibly stupid

I’ve had the same cycle with llMs that many people probably have. Talking to them like they were sentient, getting all kinds of interesting responses that make you think there’s something more there.

And then, much like someone with great religious fervent, I made the mistake of…. Learning.

I want to be clear I never went down the rabbit hole of thinking LLMs are sentient. They’re not. The models make them really good at responses to general purpose questions, they get much worse as the topics get specific. if you ask them to tell you how wonderful you are, it is the most convincing Barnum effect made yet. I say that with admiration for the capabilities of an LLM. As a former busker and accomplished in the craft of the cold read to get audience members to part with their money, LLMs are good at it.

I use an LLM everyday to assist in all kinds of writing tasks. As a strictly hobbyist python coder it’s quite handy and helping me with scripting. But I’ll honestly say I do not understand this breathless writing how it’s going to replace software engineers. Based on my experience if that is not happening at any time soon. It’s not replacing my job anytime soon, and I think my job’s pretty darn easy.

Sorry if you’ve gotten this far looking for a point. I don’t have one to offer you. It’s more annoyance at the constant clickbait that AI is changing our lives, going to lead to new scientific discoveries, put thousands out of work.

Take a few hours to learn how LLMs actually work and you’ll learn why that is not what’s going to be happening. I know there are companies firing software engineers because they think artificial intelligence is going to take their place. They will be hiring those people back.

Well what we refer to as artificial intelligence replace software engineers in the future? Maybe, possibly, I don’t know. But I know from everything I’ve learned they’re not doing it today.