So many people have spent a lot of energy dehumanizing others on the basis of their “contribution to society”. Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc. I can only hope that AI can force people to rethink whether their value is tied to their work output or not.
It goes beyond that. There is inherent classism in this, because it implies that you do not question the value of wealthy people who put in relatively little actual work output due to their privileged position. Versus for example the unemployed person in your example who might have literally been 100 times more productive in their career than a VC who lucked out and has been cruising on a few boards for ten years.
This is by far the best definition of AI slop I ever read, and the blog post itself is the contrary of AI slop: a short post where each word matters. The creation of an output that is at the same time large and lacks fundamental motivation/understanding is what creates AI slop, not the use of AI itself. This distinction allows us to have a mental model to don't blame AI itself but its continuous misuses. This also creates a formal model to understand why continuous AI steering during AI-assisted coding is so important. The sum of all the prompts provided, if they form a cohesive view of the software intent, constitutes the seed and specification that can generate good, useful code. Try to put together instead the sum of all the short prompts that prey the AI to retry "it does not work, retry", and see what you obtian.
Incredible.
Lately, I’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis.
I know I’m a passionate and not-so-bad developer, but with all this talk about AI, I couldn’t really understand if that was an end of an era for me.
But while reading this article, something clicked, it makes so much sense. It really made me feel better.
This quote resonated with me: “ Tom Hudson told me, “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.”
In my personal life I use AI a lot for information discovery and high level discussion of the problem space. I use it occasionally to write some prototype code to get started on something. It makes a great debugging and problem solving tool, though I typically find that I need to have an idea of what the problem is to steer it in the right direction. It makes a poor intuition generator, but a great intuition checker and can run with an idea for much faster iteration. I use it essentially zero in my day job as an civil engineer though.
I would essentially NEVER use it to write an email. By the time I’ve specified what it is I’m trying to say, I’ve basically said it. Wordsmithing beyond that usually has almost zero value. Same frankly with writing engineering reports. By the time I’ve told it what it needs to say, I’ve basically written that section. In general, I feel like LLMs are just bad writing tools… In writing I typically find that if I can farm it out to have an LLM write something, then it frankly probably just didn’t need to be said.
Agreed - communication is a bright line for me. I use it (judicially) to learn. I use it (judicially) to write code. I will absolutely never use it to write English for distribution of any kind. To me, that is hideous.
Maybe I would use it to write to a person I have absolutely no respect for. I haven't encountered that use case yet. I have a base level of respect for all people.
First I'll say the disambiguation of discerning intent as the driver behind whether something is slop or not was very interesting.
But, I'll take one point in their article a step further you can just say "Humans are invaluable." instead.
I don't like defining humans in terms of valuable at all. Maybe because I feel like that word is very concrete and measured and to actually judge that on any one person requires perspective and capabilities none of us existing or have ever existed possess.
The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all. Those who have tried are often reflected in history as the worst among us.
> The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all
I think that's basically the same thing that the "Humans are Valuable" was getting at. Invaluable is just a different way of saying unmeasurable amounts of value
Right and words matter. Valuable is a relative term that asserts a measurable quantity and they're trying to assert something non relative and not measurable.
I don't take issue with their point. Just that we can use a stronger word.
What a strange world - I'm an atheist, and the quoted argument resonates intensely with me, as somebody who believes in the innate value of humans even in the face of objectivity.
I'm a big fan of the "veil of ignorance" philosophical thought experiment[1]. Let's say you are given the freedom to design a society and its moral code. Then you will be born into that society and subject to it. The trick is you don't know who you will born into. It's a roll of a dice. What kind of society would you design such that that seems like a winning game?
I'm fairly certain that when living in that society, you would wish to feel valued by others and that others believe you deserve a certain level of dignity and respect. Since you don't know who you will be born into, that suggests that you want a society where everyone is valued and granted dignity. That in turn extends even to people who are unfortunately not able to produce material objects with a level of skill superior to what technology can produce at some specific moment in time.
If you agree with that, then we should advocate for granting all people value and dignity "just because" and not because they happen to be better at producing bytes than an LLM. That way, even if the LLM gets better at producing those bytes, you are still valued.
But while reading this article, something clicked, it makes so much sense. It really made me feel better.
In my personal life I use AI a lot for information discovery and high level discussion of the problem space. I use it occasionally to write some prototype code to get started on something. It makes a great debugging and problem solving tool, though I typically find that I need to have an idea of what the problem is to steer it in the right direction. It makes a poor intuition generator, but a great intuition checker and can run with an idea for much faster iteration. I use it essentially zero in my day job as an civil engineer though.
I would essentially NEVER use it to write an email. By the time I’ve specified what it is I’m trying to say, I’ve basically said it. Wordsmithing beyond that usually has almost zero value. Same frankly with writing engineering reports. By the time I’ve told it what it needs to say, I’ve basically written that section. In general, I feel like LLMs are just bad writing tools… In writing I typically find that if I can farm it out to have an LLM write something, then it frankly probably just didn’t need to be said.
Maybe I would use it to write to a person I have absolutely no respect for. I haven't encountered that use case yet. I have a base level of respect for all people.
But, I'll take one point in their article a step further you can just say "Humans are invaluable." instead.
I don't like defining humans in terms of valuable at all. Maybe because I feel like that word is very concrete and measured and to actually judge that on any one person requires perspective and capabilities none of us existing or have ever existed possess.
The complexity of the sum total of a human life is so great that I think its folly to try measure the value at all. Those who have tried are often reflected in history as the worst among us.
I think that's basically the same thing that the "Humans are Valuable" was getting at. Invaluable is just a different way of saying unmeasurable amounts of value
I don't take issue with their point. Just that we can use a stronger word.
Robust as in assertive, I suppose.
I'm a big fan of the "veil of ignorance" philosophical thought experiment[1]. Let's say you are given the freedom to design a society and its moral code. Then you will be born into that society and subject to it. The trick is you don't know who you will born into. It's a roll of a dice. What kind of society would you design such that that seems like a winning game?
I'm fairly certain that when living in that society, you would wish to feel valued by others and that others believe you deserve a certain level of dignity and respect. Since you don't know who you will be born into, that suggests that you want a society where everyone is valued and granted dignity. That in turn extends even to people who are unfortunately not able to produce material objects with a level of skill superior to what technology can produce at some specific moment in time.
If you agree with that, then we should advocate for granting all people value and dignity "just because" and not because they happen to be better at producing bytes than an LLM. That way, even if the LLM gets better at producing those bytes, you are still valued.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position