I've used LLMs for some very small coding and math tasks, and I've found it much easier to work with on "formal" types of problems.

But for my consulting and legal work, which is "fuzzier," I struggle more with verification. I feel like I have to verify every single fact/premise in the LLM's output (this problem doesn't seem as big with coding?), as well as every single logical conclusion. Plus, even with explicit instructions I feel like the LLM is not great at anticipating what certain audiences will be interested in or find compelling.

Compared to the black-and-white nature of a computer program, all the components of a legal memorandum (premises, logical structure, conclusions, etc) seem so much fuzzier and require so much specific and accumulated context to apply reliably.

Is it just faster? More persuasive? Better at coming up with novel arguments?

Speed is great from a client perspective, but not as important as accuracy on important stuff. I haven't seen LLMs produce arguments that are more persuasive than those crafted by good lawyers. Finding the "perfect case" in Westlaw is helpful, but rarely the deciding factor.

I could see asking an LLM to reproduce your work AFTER you've done a first pass, to see if you missed anything -- that seems like a real value add. But I truly can't understand how not using it would be "malpractice." In fact, I still think committing malpractice would be MUCH more likely with AI. (Now if by "malpractice", you meant pissing off clients with expensive bills, that's a different story...)

Even in my personal life, while I've been addicted to using Claude and ChatGPT as a first step for research/projects/etc, I'm still not convinced they are actually saving me time -- just too many errors, too confidently stated, and I have to re-do all the research myself.

I wonder if the validation piece is easier with coding?

EDIT: To be clear, when I say I'm having trouble incorporating AI into my white-collar work, I'm talking about producing GOOD work. On a few occasions I have given in to the temptation of using Claude to produce work that looked good (superficially), without verifying everything.....it worked out, and I'm sure others are doing it. But that scares me, because it feels like a ticking timebomb.

I also think the analogy works if we're talking about average photographs, or even very good photographs, that are conventionally well-composed, balanced, etc, but lack the special spark that we associate with true art.

But if the photographer on the hill is a real artist, it's hard for me to imagine a current frontier LLM winning the contest. I suppose it may stumble upon a winning photo sooner than a roomful of monkeys would, but I believe the number of attempts would still be so vast that it would be more efficient for the human to make one single attempt at taking a photo, rather than dealing with prompts and sorting through the millions of AI-generated options.

EDIT: I also think it's very easy to underestimate the size of the nearly limitless set of possible "solutions" to the photograph, and also easy to overlook the constant feedback loop in the artist's mind as he considers each option and looks through the viewfinder, while the LLM is shooting blind the entire time.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907296

Points: 161

# Comments: 233

In your ideal world, how would someone even signal they are a "willing participant" without talking to someone?

The drama and stories in his work don’t do much for me, I view them more as a vehicle for his poetry (which is some of the greatest ever written). And I enjoy it more on the page than spoken by others.

I know there are at least some others out there like me! Nabokov cleverly said something along the lines of “with Shakespeare, the metaphor is the thing, not the play.”

My half-baked point is that the harm of voters NOT having access to this information is less than the harm of lobbyists and major donors having access to it.

I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get results, otherwise they get replaced by the next exciting candidate.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that most people have very particular taste in poetry. (So particular that some people might never discover their own!) It doesn't help that there is a lot of bad poetry out there, as well as poetry that might be good in some superficial "academic" sense, like you described, but doesn't produce any reaction in the reader.

There's also the fact that reading poetry is so different from reading regular prose, and it can take some getting used to. It took me several re-readings before poems that I now love first started to "click."

For me, it all started with discovering Nabokov's novels last summer -- his writing sparked an appreciation of prose and imagery that I never experienced before, despite being a lifetime reader. I read that he loved Keats, so I picked a few of Keats's best-known poems and read them over and over, until I internalized them and eventually came to love them. As I've explored other poets, I find that the more I read, the more I become sensitive to. But still, I'd say that 80% of the poetry I encounter (especially modern stuff) leaves me feeling stupid and insensitive, at least after the first couple readings. Better than the 99% a year ago, though!

EDIT: I went through something similar with classical music a couple years ago. Despite being a musician and music lover, I could just never get into it. I immersed myself in it for a few months and began to see/feel the beauty in it. I think it's just a very different way of approaching music compared to modern genres and structures, kind of like how poetry is fundamentally different from the novels most of us grow up reading.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15343030

Points: 19

# Comments: 1

I've heard people talk about the risk to cars, but what other kinds of embedded systems will still be in use after 20 years? Maybe certain industrial machines?

Edit: Now page 6: http://imgur.com/3CAfOnT. (Look at the points/times of the stories above and below it...)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13440888

Points: 38

# Comments: 4