7 ms·

It's a tool. The first time you used a shell you had to learn it. The first time you used a text editor you had to learn it. You can learn how to use it, or yo

by kfajdsl 9mo ago

It's a tool. The first time you used a shell you had to learn it. The first time you used a text editor you had to learn it. You can learn how to use it, or you can put it down if you think it doesn't bring you any benefit.

hansmayer 9mo ago
I am sorry but what do I have to learn? That the tool does not work as advertised? That sometimes it will work as advertised, sometimes not? That it will sometimes expose critical secrets as plain text and some other time suggest to solve a problem in a function by removing the function code completely? What are you even talking about, comparing to shell and text editors? These are still bloody deterministic tools. You learn how they work and the usage does not change unpredictably every day! How can you learn something that does not have predictable outputs?
- simonw 9mo ago
  Yes, you have to learn those things. LLMs are hard to use. So are animals, but we've used dogs and falcons and truffle hunting pigs as tools for thousands of years. Non-deterministic tools are still tools, they just take a bunch more work to figure out.
  - xn 9mo ago
    It's like having Michael Jordan with dementia on your team. You start out mesmerized by how many points he can score, and then you get incredibly frustrated that he forgets he has to dribble and shoot into the correct hoop.
    - hansmayer 9mo ago
      Spot on. Not to mention all the fouls and traveling the demented "all star" makes for your team, effectively negating any point gains.
  - exasperaited 9mo ago
    > So are animals, but we've used dogs and falcons and truffle hunting pigs as tools for thousands of years. Dogs learn their jobs way faster, more consistently and more expressively than any AI tool. Trivially, dogs understand "good dog" and "bad dog" for example. Reinforcement learning with AI tooling clearly seems not to work.
    - simonw 9mo ago
      > Dogs learn their jobs way faster, more consistently and more expressively than any AI tool. That doesn't match my experience with dogs or LLMs at all.
      - hansmayer 9mo ago
        Ever heard of service dogs? Or police dogs? Now tell me, when will LLMs ever be safe to be used as assistance to blind people? Or will the big tech at some point release some sloppy blind-people-tool based on LLMs and unleash the LLM-influencers like yourself to start gaslighting the users into thinking they were "not holding it right" ? For mission and life critical problems, I'll take a dog any day, thank you very much!
        simonw 9mo ago
        I've talked to a few people who are blind about vision LLMs and they're very, very positive about them. They fully understand their limitations. Users of accessibility technology are extremely good at understanding the precise capabilities of the tools they use - which reminds me that screenreaders themselves are a great example of unreliable tools due to the shockingly bad web apps that exist today. I've also discussed the analogy to service dogs with them, which they found very apt given how easily their assistive tool could be distracted by a nearby steak. The one thing people who use assistive technology do not appreciate is being told that they shouldn't try a technology out themselves because it's unreliable and hence unsafe for them to use!
        hansmayer 9mo ago
  - hansmayer 9mo ago
    No, please, stop misleading people Simon. People use tools to make things easier for them, not harder. And a tool which I cannot steer predictably is not a god damn tool at all! The sheer persistence the AI-promoters like you are willing to invest just to gaslight us all into thinking we were dumb and did not know how to use the shit-generators is really baffling. Understand that a lot of us are early adopters and we see this shit for what it is - the most serious mess up of the "Big Tech" since Zuckerberg burned 77B for his metaverse idiocy. By the way - animals are not tools. People do not use them - they engage with them as helpers, companions and for some people, even friends of sorts. Drop your LLM and try engaging with someone who has a hunting dog for example - they'd be quite surprised if you referred to their beloved retriever as a "tool". And you might learn something about a real intelligence.
    - simonw 9mo ago
      Your insistence that LLMs are not useful tools is difficult for me to empathize with as someone who has been using them successfully as useful tools for several years - and sharing in great detail how I am using them. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/html-tools/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/html-tools/ is the 37th post in my series about this: https://simonwillison.net/series/using-llms/ https://simonwillison.net/series/using-llms/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ is probably still my most useful of those. I know you absolutely hate being told you're holding them wrong... but you're holding them wrong. They're not nearly as unpredictable as you appear to think they are. One of us is misleading people here, and I don't think it's me.
      - hansmayer 9mo ago
        > One of us is misleading people here, and I don't think it's me. Firstly, I am not the one with an LLM-influencer side-gig. Secondly - No sorry, please don't move the goalposts. You did not answer my main argument - which is - how does a "tool" which constantly change its behaviour deserve being called a tool at all? If a tailor had scissors which cut the fabric sometimes just a bit, and sometimes completely differently every time they used it, would you tell the tailor he is not using them right too? Thirdly you are now contradicting yourself. First you said we need to live with the fact that they are un-predictable. Now you are sugarcoating it into being "a bit unpredictable", or "not as nearly unpredictable". I am not sure if you are doing this intentionally or do you really want to believe in the "magic" but either way you are ignoring the ground tenets of how this technology works. I'd be fine if they used it to generate cheap holiday novels or erotica - but clearly after four years of experimenting with the crap machines to write code created a huge pushback in the community - we don't need the proverbial scissors which cut our fabric differently each time!
- baq 9mo ago
  You’ve asked the right questions and don’t want to find the answers. It’s on you.
  - hansmayer 9mo ago
    Whats "on me" mate? Not being impressed with the 101st ToDo app vibe-coding hobbysts elatedly put together with the help of the statistical magic box?
PunchyHamster 9mo ago
even shell remembers my commands...

by kfajdsl 9mo ago

hansmayer 9mo ago

I am sorry but what do I have to learn? That the tool does not work as advertised? That sometimes it will work as advertised, sometimes not? That it will sometimes expose critical secrets as plain text and some other time suggest to solve a problem in a function by removing the function code completely? What are you even talking about, comparing to shell and text editors? These are still bloody deterministic tools. You learn how they work and the usage does not change unpredictably every day! How can you learn something that does not have predictable outputs?

simonw 9mo ago
Yes, you have to learn those things. LLMs are hard to use. So are animals, but we've used dogs and falcons and truffle hunting pigs as tools for thousands of years. Non-deterministic tools are still tools, they just take a bunch more work to figure out.
- xn 9mo ago
  It's like having Michael Jordan with dementia on your team. You start out mesmerized by how many points he can score, and then you get incredibly frustrated that he forgets he has to dribble and shoot into the correct hoop.
  - hansmayer 9mo ago
    Spot on. Not to mention all the fouls and traveling the demented "all star" makes for your team, effectively negating any point gains.
- exasperaited 9mo ago
  > So are animals, but we've used dogs and falcons and truffle hunting pigs as tools for thousands of years. Dogs learn their jobs way faster, more consistently and more expressively than any AI tool. Trivially, dogs understand "good dog" and "bad dog" for example. Reinforcement learning with AI tooling clearly seems not to work.
  - simonw 9mo ago
    > Dogs learn their jobs way faster, more consistently and more expressively than any AI tool. That doesn't match my experience with dogs or LLMs at all.
    - hansmayer 9mo ago
      Ever heard of service dogs? Or police dogs? Now tell me, when will LLMs ever be safe to be used as assistance to blind people? Or will the big tech at some point release some sloppy blind-people-tool based on LLMs and unleash the LLM-influencers like yourself to start gaslighting the users into thinking they were "not holding it right" ? For mission and life critical problems, I'll take a dog any day, thank you very much!
      - simonw 9mo ago
        I've talked to a few people who are blind about vision LLMs and they're very, very positive about them. They fully understand their limitations. Users of accessibility technology are extremely good at understanding the precise capabilities of the tools they use - which reminds me that screenreaders themselves are a great example of unreliable tools due to the shockingly bad web apps that exist today. I've also discussed the analogy to service dogs with them, which they found very apt given how easily their assistive tool could be distracted by a nearby steak. The one thing people who use assistive technology do not appreciate is being told that they shouldn't try a technology out themselves because it's unreliable and hence unsafe for them to use!
        hansmayer 9mo ago
- hansmayer 9mo ago
  No, please, stop misleading people Simon. People use tools to make things easier for them, not harder. And a tool which I cannot steer predictably is not a god damn tool at all! The sheer persistence the AI-promoters like you are willing to invest just to gaslight us all into thinking we were dumb and did not know how to use the shit-generators is really baffling. Understand that a lot of us are early adopters and we see this shit for what it is - the most serious mess up of the "Big Tech" since Zuckerberg burned 77B for his metaverse idiocy. By the way - animals are not tools. People do not use them - they engage with them as helpers, companions and for some people, even friends of sorts. Drop your LLM and try engaging with someone who has a hunting dog for example - they'd be quite surprised if you referred to their beloved retriever as a "tool". And you might learn something about a real intelligence.
  - simonw 9mo ago
    Your insistence that LLMs are not useful tools is difficult for me to empathize with as someone who has been using them successfully as useful tools for several years - and sharing in great detail how I am using them. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/html-tools/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/html-tools/ is the 37th post in my series about this: https://simonwillison.net/series/using-llms/ https://simonwillison.net/series/using-llms/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ is probably still my most useful of those. I know you absolutely hate being told you're holding them wrong... but you're holding them wrong. They're not nearly as unpredictable as you appear to think they are. One of us is misleading people here, and I don't think it's me.
    - hansmayer 9mo ago
      > One of us is misleading people here, and I don't think it's me. Firstly, I am not the one with an LLM-influencer side-gig. Secondly - No sorry, please don't move the goalposts. You did not answer my main argument - which is - how does a "tool" which constantly change its behaviour deserve being called a tool at all? If a tailor had scissors which cut the fabric sometimes just a bit, and sometimes completely differently every time they used it, would you tell the tailor he is not using them right too? Thirdly you are now contradicting yourself. First you said we need to live with the fact that they are un-predictable. Now you are sugarcoating it into being "a bit unpredictable", or "not as nearly unpredictable". I am not sure if you are doing this intentionally or do you really want to believe in the "magic" but either way you are ignoring the ground tenets of how this technology works. I'd be fine if they used it to generate cheap holiday novels or erotica - but clearly after four years of experimenting with the crap machines to write code created a huge pushback in the community - we don't need the proverbial scissors which cut our fabric differently each time!
baq 9mo ago
You’ve asked the right questions and don’t want to find the answers. It’s on you.
- hansmayer 9mo ago
  Whats "on me" mate? Not being impressed with the 101st ToDo app vibe-coding hobbysts elatedly put together with the help of the statistical magic box?

PunchyHamster 9mo ago

even shell remembers my commands...