The landscape is turbulent (so this comment might be outdated by the time I submit it), but one thing I’m catching between the lines is a resistance to provide defensive coding patterns because (guessing) they make the flaw they’re defending against obvious. When the flaw is widespread - those patterns effectively make it cheap to attack for observant eyes.

After seeing the enhanced capabilities recently, my conspiracy theory is that models do indeed traverse the pathways containing ideal mitigations, but they fall back to common anti-patterns when they hit the guardrails. Some of the things I’ve seen are baffling, and registered as adversarial on my radar.

Sometimes when I look at code it feels like I was led into a weird surprise party celebrating structure and correctness, only for everyone to jump out as soon as I get past the door to shout, “Just kidding - it’s the same old bullshit!” All that to say, we’re about as good or worse as anyone else, at our respective jobs.

The direct problem isn’t that people are using LLMs for everything - it’s that some people can’t be bothered to provide reasonable diligence. Phrasing that concern by blaming LLMs implies that these were perfectly diligent human workers before LLMs came along. Do we really believe that to be the case?

Assuming we have time to do this in some post-having-jobs world, of course.

While “essential” cleanly maps to “can’t go without” - it doesn’t map to “bare minimum”.

For instance, let’s assume you’re surviving in the wilderness and you need to start a fire. Your fire starting kit is obviously essential, but it could also be included in a “Camper Value Pack” - but those things don’t have anything to do with each other. The kit is essential, and it was obtained in a value pack. This message brought to you by Mr. Obvious.

> they threatened Google when they didn't immediately rename the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" on their maps

I don’t want to downplay the government pressure you cited in your second example, so I’ll start by acknowledging - that example, as stated, does indeed look like government overreach to me. It doesn’t have anything to do with what I said though.

The stance I was taking is that renaming your own “cool kids” club while you’re in a position to effectively do that - does not amount to Fascism, or anything close to it. No one else is in that club except them, and none of them will be in it later. The moniker will only stick if next group of cool kids carry it.

An important part of remaining credible (imo) is being able to support a point directly. When someone reaches for evidence that isn’t directly relevant to prove a point (e.g. Group A performed action B and it was bad, so if Group A performs action C it must be equally as bad), that’s a clear sign of a weak argument. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not trying to stick up for anyone, I’m just asking for stronger arguments.

Is it like one of those “Morning” nods, where two people cross paths and acknowledge that it is in fact morning? Or is there an unstated preference being communicated?

Is there any real concern behind LLMs writing a piece, or is the concern that the human didn’t actually guide it? In other words, is the spirit of such comments really about LLM writing, or is it about human diligence?

That begs another question: does LLM writing expose anything about the diligence of the human, outside of when it’s plainly incorrect? If an LLM generates a boringly correct report - what does that tell us about the human behind that LLM?

What you just described is consensus, and framing it as fascism damages the credibility of your stance. There are better arguments to make, which don’t require framing a label update as oppression.

Forget about data centers, all the little things will iteratively start getting a little better. Then one day we’ll look around and realize, “This place looks pretty good.”

I think it’s fair to expect a question mark when the author expects other people to produce an answer.

If one desires deeper understanding, they should at least have the stamina to ask their question gracefully.

When working with LLMs, one of my primary concerns is keeping tabs on their operating assumptions. I often catch them red-handed running with assumptions like they were scissors, and I’m forced to berate them.

So my ideal “async agents” are agents that keep me informed not of the outcome of a task, but of the assumptions they hold as they work.

I’ve always been a little slow recognizing things that others find obvious, such as “good enough” actually being good enough. I obtusely disagree. My finish line isn’t “good enough”, it’s “correct”, and yes, I will die on that hill still working on the same product I started as a younger man.

Jokes aside, I really would like to see:

1. Periodic notifications informing me of important working assumptions. 2. The ability to interject and course correct - likely requiring a bit of backtracking. 3. In addition to periodic working assumption notifications, I’d also like periodic “mission statements” - worded in the context of the current task - as assurance that the agent still has its eye on the ball.

It's about as serious as a heart attack at this point...