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   chris@strafpla.net (chris@mstdn.strafpla.net)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 21:20:05 JST chris@strafpla.net

   • Neil Brown

   @neil
   The less one knows about a problem, the more #LLM #AI looks like a solution to it.
   But generating legal documents by #WhafflingDevices seems peak stupid.

   • Embed this notice
     chris@strafpla.net (chris@mstdn.strafpla.net)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 21:19:57 JST chris@strafpla.net

     in reply to

     • Neil Brown
     • Tim Newman

     @timdnewman I love how it hallucinates methods that would make its job easier.
     I convinced myself to try it out and it is useful to me with knowlegde in IT between “okay” and “@neil” and documentation/sites at hand.
     If the user is aware that the code just a prototype without proper structure, proper tests, sanitation and checks for boundaries/unforseen conditions. It helped me iteratively prototype some ideas that would otherwise be lost on the graveyard list by lowering the bar just enough.

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Newman (timdnewman@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 21:19:58 JST Tim Newman

     in reply to

     • Neil Brown

     @chris @neil my experience of it for code falls into two camps:

     1. I know enough about this to know it's got it wrong and no amount of kicking will make it go right (and I've kicked it a lot)
     2. I didn't know enough about it, and learned the hard way that it didn't either

     I've seen it be successful on toy problems but nothing even close to real (for me YMMV).

     If I had a choice between 1hr on StackOverflow and 1hr on an LLM it's SO every time so far (mostly because I'll end up there anyway)

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Tim Newman (timdnewman@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 21:19:58 JST Tim Newman

     in reply to

     • Neil Brown

     @chris @neil

     "It‘s a nice interactive boilerplate/scaffolding generator *if* you know what you want but don‘t know the libraries yet" < specifically on this I had it invent a library. Luckily my experience of teaching IT, scant though it was, has taught me to smell rat quite strongly. Sure enough my exclamation "surely that doesn't exist!" was correct. If I wasn't the nerd I am l could have spent quite a while trying to find a non-existent Microsoft package to install.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Tim Newman (timdnewman@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 21:20:01 JST Tim Newman

     in reply to

     • Neil Brown

     @chris @neil if the answer matters, and you can't put the time and expertise in correcting it don't expect a parrot to solve your problems. At which point it's probably cheaper to do it yourself. It holds for code. It certainly holds for some of the safety critical stuff I have seen it suggested for.

   • Embed this notice
     chris@strafpla.net (chris@mstdn.strafpla.net)'s status on Monday, 19-Feb-2024 21:20:01 JST chris@strafpla.net

     in reply to

     • Neil Brown
     • Tim Newman

     @timdnewman @neil To be fair from own experience I think that there is use for #LLM in programming.
     It‘s a nice interactive boilerplate/scaffolding generator *if* you know what you want but don‘t know the libraries yet and *because* one can test the code and read documentation.
     It‘s a like rubber duck debugging but with a parrot that has a huge vocabulary and is good in grammar but has no idea what it says.
     Nothing of this is to be used in production, neither in legal nor in computer code.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.