LLMs are tools and, like all tools, are more fit for some purposes than others
This is the whole problem, this take is disingenuous. Nobody who actually argues in good faith and knows what they’re talking about, argues that LLM isn’t a tool, or it’s something bigger than that. The argument that is being ignored is that LLM is a tool that inherently has downsides that are bringing more “bad” than it brings “good” when it’s useful. But proponents successfully argue that they can use LLM with some benefits, and act like they answered something, and any retaliation to that is unreasonable.
My favourite analogy is asbestos, and I say it as a huge disservice to asbestos. Asbestos is an amazing material that legit has many very important uses (way more than any LLM will ever have), but we’re not using it because we understand that no matter how great of a insulator it is, and how nice it looks as snow replacement on a movie set, and how wonderful it is in a cigarette filter, the supercancer it causes kinda nullifies all that.
I think asbestos is a good analogy, but I think your claims that the inherent downsides of LLMs outweigh any possible upsides are as-yet unfounded. I also think it’s kind of strange that you assume anyone who thinks otherwise is being disingenuous.
Maybe they are too dangerous for broad use, and we need to regulate them like asbestos, or uranium. Maybe they shouldn’t be used outside of a laboratory setting or by anyone who doesn’t have extensive training with how to interact with them safely. It seems pretty clear that Torvalds has decided they’re worth the downside, and while I don’t know if that’s a good call, I don’t think he’s operating in bad faith to the detriment of the kernel project. That doesn’t sound like something he would do.
I feel confident that I don’t have the expertise to say for certain one way or the other, though the experience I do have with software tools makes me think there’s probably an application for them where the downsides can be mitigated to the point where they become worthwhile. I think there’s probably some single-purpose or tailored application of LLMs related to textual analysis that don’t require the theft of the whole internet, and don’t require insane amounts of energy to run. I don’t think we have discovered them yet (at least I haven’t), but saying “this kind of software is only bad and can have no ethical uses, ever” seems premature.
There are, broadly speaking, two categories of problems with LLM generated code (well, everything, but code here specifically). One is purely technical, does it bring anything to the process, does it broadly speaking saves you time or effort. And the second is everything else: environmental impact, the bubble of it all, the consolidation of power to all the worst people, erosion of skills, death of education, inflation of prices of consumer electronics, psychological impact, and so so so much more, all lumped together as non-technical downsides.
A bunch of llm-proponents, and here we sadly have to include even Linus, are only engaged with the first category of problems, throwing the whole second category aside as “irrelevant”. And a lot of those people are smart enough so I don’t believe they don’t see this.
If there was only the problem of the tool being kinda shitty but useful for some people, I wouldn’t be so against it. I still don’t believe they actually benefit from it, but if they think they do, I’m not going to argue with them about it.
But it’s fundamentally not true. You can’t ignore the second category in your evaluation. To quote Linus himself,
But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing “La La
La, I can’t hear you” at the top of your voice like some people seem
to do
about the fact that even one of the downsides from the second category makes the whole “but I, a person with 40 years of experience, can use llm in such a way that it sometimes produces some benefit” not worth it. No benefit of it is worth the fact that the new generation of junior developers don’t know how to write code on a fundamental level, while elon mask owns all of humanity’s personal data and can do whatever he wants with it. Even if those benefits were kinda big, it wouldn’t worth it, but they aren’t.
This is the whole problem, this take is disingenuous. Nobody who actually argues in good faith and knows what they’re talking about, argues that LLM isn’t a tool, or it’s something bigger than that. The argument that is being ignored is that LLM is a tool that inherently has downsides that are bringing more “bad” than it brings “good” when it’s useful. But proponents successfully argue that they can use LLM with some benefits, and act like they answered something, and any retaliation to that is unreasonable.
My favourite analogy is asbestos, and I say it as a huge disservice to asbestos. Asbestos is an amazing material that legit has many very important uses (way more than any LLM will ever have), but we’re not using it because we understand that no matter how great of a insulator it is, and how nice it looks as snow replacement on a movie set, and how wonderful it is in a cigarette filter, the supercancer it causes kinda nullifies all that.
I think asbestos is a good analogy, but I think your claims that the inherent downsides of LLMs outweigh any possible upsides are as-yet unfounded. I also think it’s kind of strange that you assume anyone who thinks otherwise is being disingenuous.
Maybe they are too dangerous for broad use, and we need to regulate them like asbestos, or uranium. Maybe they shouldn’t be used outside of a laboratory setting or by anyone who doesn’t have extensive training with how to interact with them safely. It seems pretty clear that Torvalds has decided they’re worth the downside, and while I don’t know if that’s a good call, I don’t think he’s operating in bad faith to the detriment of the kernel project. That doesn’t sound like something he would do.
I feel confident that I don’t have the expertise to say for certain one way or the other, though the experience I do have with software tools makes me think there’s probably an application for them where the downsides can be mitigated to the point where they become worthwhile. I think there’s probably some single-purpose or tailored application of LLMs related to textual analysis that don’t require the theft of the whole internet, and don’t require insane amounts of energy to run. I don’t think we have discovered them yet (at least I haven’t), but saying “this kind of software is only bad and can have no ethical uses, ever” seems premature.
There are, broadly speaking, two categories of problems with LLM generated code (well, everything, but code here specifically). One is purely technical, does it bring anything to the process, does it broadly speaking saves you time or effort. And the second is everything else: environmental impact, the bubble of it all, the consolidation of power to all the worst people, erosion of skills, death of education, inflation of prices of consumer electronics, psychological impact, and so so so much more, all lumped together as non-technical downsides.
A bunch of llm-proponents, and here we sadly have to include even Linus, are only engaged with the first category of problems, throwing the whole second category aside as “irrelevant”. And a lot of those people are smart enough so I don’t believe they don’t see this.
If there was only the problem of the tool being kinda shitty but useful for some people, I wouldn’t be so against it. I still don’t believe they actually benefit from it, but if they think they do, I’m not going to argue with them about it.
But it’s fundamentally not true. You can’t ignore the second category in your evaluation. To quote Linus himself,
about the fact that even one of the downsides from the second category makes the whole “but I, a person with 40 years of experience, can use llm in such a way that it sometimes produces some benefit” not worth it. No benefit of it is worth the fact that the new generation of junior developers don’t know how to write code on a fundamental level, while elon mask owns all of humanity’s personal data and can do whatever he wants with it. Even if those benefits were kinda big, it wouldn’t worth it, but they aren’t.