Conditional on LLMs scaling to AGI, I feel like it’s a contradiction to say that “LLMs offer little or negative utility AND it’s going to stay this way”. My model is that we are either dying in a couple years to LLMs getting us to AGI, and we are going to have a year or two or of AIs that can provide incredible utility, or we are not dying to LLMs and the timelines are longer.
I think I read somewhere that you don’t believe LLMs will get us to AGI, so this might already be implicit in your model? I personally am putting at least some credence on the ai-2027 model, which predicts superhuman coders in the near future. (Not saying that I believe this is the most probable future, just that I find it convincing enough that I want to be prepared for it.)
Up until recently I was in the “LLMs offer zero utility” camp (for coding), but now at work we have a Cursor plan (still would not pay for it for personal use probably), and with a lot of trial and error I feel like I am finding the kinds of tasks where AIs can offer a bit of utility, and I am slowly moving towards the “marginal utility” camp.
One kind of thing I like using it for is small scripts to automate bits of my workflow. E.g. I have an idea for a script, I know it would take me 30m-1h to implement it, but it’s not worth it because e.g. it would only save me a few seconds each time. But if I can reduce the time investment to only a few minutes by giving the task to the LLM, it can suddenly be worth it.
I would be interested in other people’s experiences with the negative side effects of LLM use. What are the symptoms/warning signs of “LLM brain rot”? I feel like with my current use I am relatively well equipped to avoid that:
I only ask things from LLMs that I know I could solve in a few hours tops.
I code review the result, tell it if it did something stupid.
90% of my job is stuff that is currently not close to being LLM automatable anyway.
Conditional on LLMs scaling to AGI, I feel like it’s a contradiction to say that “LLMs offer little or negative utility AND it’s going to stay this way”. My model is that we are either dying in a couple years to LLMs getting us to AGI, and we are going to have a year or two or of AIs that can provide incredible utility, or we are not dying to LLMs and the timelines are longer.
I think I read somewhere that you don’t believe LLMs will get us to AGI, so this might already be implicit in your model? I personally am putting at least some credence on the ai-2027 model, which predicts superhuman coders in the near future. (Not saying that I believe this is the most probable future, just that I find it convincing enough that I want to be prepared for it.)
Up until recently I was in the “LLMs offer zero utility” camp (for coding), but now at work we have a Cursor plan (still would not pay for it for personal use probably), and with a lot of trial and error I feel like I am finding the kinds of tasks where AIs can offer a bit of utility, and I am slowly moving towards the “marginal utility” camp.
One kind of thing I like using it for is small scripts to automate bits of my workflow. E.g. I have an idea for a script, I know it would take me 30m-1h to implement it, but it’s not worth it because e.g. it would only save me a few seconds each time. But if I can reduce the time investment to only a few minutes by giving the task to the LLM, it can suddenly be worth it.
I would be interested in other people’s experiences with the negative side effects of LLM use. What are the symptoms/warning signs of “LLM brain rot”? I feel like with my current use I am relatively well equipped to avoid that:
I only ask things from LLMs that I know I could solve in a few hours tops.
I code review the result, tell it if it did something stupid.
90% of my job is stuff that is currently not close to being LLM automatable anyway.