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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Oct-2025 00:22:17 JST Paul Cantrell

   • Anil Dash

   I’m an industry dev turned comp sci prof. I’ve been writing code for 40-some years; my first commercial software was for the Apple ][+. I’ve worked on web, mobile, desktop, server, and data analysis projects for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 to arts nonprofits. In short, I’ve been lucky to know a lot of people in a lot of corners of tech.

   @anildash’s opening paragraphs are spot on. If consensus is not 100%, well, it’s 99%.

   https://www.anildash.com//2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view/

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Oct-2025 00:37:00 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Anil Dash

     There •is• definitely debate about LLMs among folks who have both tech expertise and a level head, and that debate is mostly between:

     (1) “If only we could have reasonable conversations about what if anything this tech is actually good for! It could be useful! Curse this hype! Curse this bubble!”

     and

     (2) “This technology is so toxic we shouldn’t even be considering •any• uses for it”

     That’s a continuum, and folks (including me) fall in all kinds of complicated places along it. Just note the continuum’s endpoints.

     @anildash

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Oct-2025 00:40:48 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Because this is Mastodon, I know lots of people will take the previous post as an invitation to put their opinion in my replies. It was not in fact such an invitation, but…it’s cool. C’est la vie Mastodonique!

     What’s really important, per Dash’s OP, is for those of us in tech to get the actual debate among experts into view of the broader public — i.e. not just here — and not let charlatan billionaires dominate the conversation.

   • Embed this notice
     Jeff Miller (orange hatband) (jmeowmeow@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Oct-2025 00:56:23 JST Jeff Miller (orange hatband)

     in reply to

     @inthehands Perhaps the language of stage magic and mentalist cold readings is appropriate for distinguishing the play to the audience from the content and rhythm of the interactions, and the use of LLMs as instruments.

     I have trouble seeing beyond the terrible synergy of the financial bubble and the motivated reasoning of the boosters to the genuine positive applications and the real costs and limits.

     Working with conversational support and workflow agents before the bubble, I could see that there were really good ways to use them, "everybody wins" ways, but a temptation to cheap out on creating the right interaction context for that case.