Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS.
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For years I have been structuring it in my mind. It turned out pretty functional. Believe me, no time and dedication would have had the same empowering effect in the same time frame. I am a really slow learner when it comes to the concrete programming languages and their topography. This has been holding me back the last 15 years. Now I can watch functional code being created and see what it does or does not. And what do you think I do? Next time I go and copy the project by hand. (2/5)
Learning how to do it in the process. It's maybe a niche approach, but it works. I only rely on code generation as long as absolutely necessary and not out of comfort. (No "center the div pls"). In a way, the model slowly makes itself obsolete. Another principle I have is to only let code be generated that I understand. Once I don't know what it does, I stop. And the third principle is to not do any potentially harmful coding projects this way. (3/5)
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@tante I agree. And yet there is this: I have been using small LLMs to help me kick-off coding projects that I conceptually understand but lack the mental ability to learn the programming on my own. I let the model sketch the structure, suggest a stack, and then let it build while I watch and ask questions. Then I tell it to document all steps and explain what does what on a granular level. Last week I was able to generate a simple SSG. (1/5)
For years I have been structuring it in my mind. It turned out pretty functional. Believe me, no time and dedication would have had the same empowering effect in the same time frame. I am a really slow learner when it comes to the concrete programming languages and their topography. This has been holding me back the last 15 years. Now I can watch functional code being created and see what it does or does not. And what do you think I do? Next time I go and copy the project by hand. (2/5)
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I code small websites and automations for silly podcasting and conversion of files. That's it.
I don't see this niche talked about much. I have an attention disability. LLMs help me. Believe it or not. (4/5)
You referred to home assistant on another post doing some of the same stuff OpenClaw does. In this context I agree. The equivalent here would be an interactive programming tutorial. They have existed before wide adoption of LLMs, yes. But they were never able to adopt to real context. Instead they are usually prepared and edited by humans as a constrained lesson. Usually there is no room for "what if we did this?". (5/5)
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Learning how to do it in the process. It's maybe a niche approach, but it works. I only rely on code generation as long as absolutely necessary and not out of comfort. (No "center the div pls"). In a way, the model slowly makes itself obsolete. Another principle I have is to only let code be generated that I understand. Once I don't know what it does, I stop. And the third principle is to not do any potentially harmful coding projects this way. (3/5)
I code small websites and automations for silly podcasting and conversion of files. That's it.
I don't see this niche talked about much. I have an attention disability. LLMs help me. Believe it or not. (4/5)
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@tante I agree. And yet there is this: I have been using small LLMs to help me kick-off coding projects that I conceptually understand but lack the mental ability to learn the programming on my own. I let the model sketch the structure, suggest a stack, and then let it build while I watch and ask questions. Then I tell it to document all steps and explain what does what on a granular level. Last week I was able to generate a simple SSG. (1/5)
@eurodivergent @tante this is exactly why I stand by #llms democratizing access to software engineering. I know so many people know, from artists to blue collar to family business hustlers to genomics researcher who are now building full fledged software solving problems for them. I assist minimally. They are truly empowered and so much of the alienating side of tech is gone, from replacing photoshop to using local only html gizmos to just knowing that you can get a relay board connected to your music software without spending the whole weekend on arduino frustrations. It cuts off ties to big tech and gets us back to whimsical personal software.
I can’t speak to other domains, but this one is truly real.
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante we’re democratizing coding! That will be 20$ per month, please
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R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante I spy with my little eye a connection between this sentiment of "AI democratizing things" and UBI not being implemented as policy
Spot-on
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante Also: modern art has thoroughly democratized art already. A fake name signed to an urinal is considered art. What's left to democratize?
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante this is an intellectually dishonest argument.
Everything is solvable by "more time and more access to infrastructure" when your limits approach infinity, similar to how, if you gave an infinite amount of monkey an infinite amount of typewriters, one of them will eventually type up with the works Shakespeare.
Take creating an alternative to Android for example, it's a Herculean task not because of the OS itself, but because of a
> wide range of nonfree software blobs that commonly occur in even the most progressive "free software" operating systems.
LibrePhone
LibrePhone is a project to research freely licensed firmware for mobile phones.
LibrePhone (librephone.fsf.org)
LLMs are great at pattern recognition by design, including identifying function signatures, recognising common driver patterns, reading Ghidra output, etc.
This takes a problem that was so far considered in the realm of needing state backing to a problem that can be tackled by a relatively small team of dedicated researchers.
So yeah, my bad if I don't give a damn about moralising "AI use" when the alternative is rewriting and drying up the moat of American tech companies that enable surveillance and brutalising of the Global South
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante Yeah, if anything it'll do the opposite. Lowering entry costs will drive people out of the market, so that the only ones who can afford to get stuff actually made by a human are the ones who have acquired sufficient money / power to afford it.
E.g. Once upon a time, every chair or table would have been hand-made. Where does hand-made furniture sit in the market, now?
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante Anyone in tech who tosses around the term 'Democratising' means they want to remove the need for consent, the ability for creative people to refuse to allow their art be used to put a glossy sheen on the indefensible. It's the same language we hear from incels when it comes to sex, what their involuntary partner may want isn't even a consideration.
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante Indeed, it's the opposite of democratization. The reason: Who owns the models, who owns the data centers? Oligarchs have control over whether the models generate and what they generate.
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
This is spot on. AI will automate the boring parts but the "democratization" crowd always conflates access with skill. The tools get better, the bar gets higher, not lower
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I do want to see the art people come up with who can't do it today. Give everyone a paid month off every year to do whatever they want. Learn a thing, make music. Paint. Anything.
That gives people access. Not a slop machine.@tante
The slop / plagiarising machine gives giant corporations control,Also you can't copyright / own any AI generated content. You can be sure if it could be copyrighted, the Corp selling the service would own the copyright.
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
When we look at any piece of technology being offered to us the very first thing we should ask is who ends up in control of the process / who is made dependent on the process?
Convenience can only be considered beneficial when we can trust the service not to screw us
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@tante I agree. And yet there is this: I have been using small LLMs to help me kick-off coding projects that I conceptually understand but lack the mental ability to learn the programming on my own. I let the model sketch the structure, suggest a stack, and then let it build while I watch and ask questions. Then I tell it to document all steps and explain what does what on a granular level. Last week I was able to generate a simple SSG. (1/5)
You need to do a real course. You are simply being exploited.
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@tante Furthermore: People are not creating, they are commissioning.
"I used Da Vinci to create the Mona Lisa." - some Medici, probably.
@DerGiga @tante and every artist who had to wrestle their way through a client’s near-inscrutable ‘prompt’ to arrive at a competent picture knows very very intimately that natural language is a really bad interface for such a purpose, too.
this weird dream of ‘i tell the machine what i want and then i get the picture i had in my head’ is making some very bold assumptions about how well they can wield language.
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Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources.
You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure. Easy.
@tante exactly the opposite of democratizing https://mastodon.social/@noleli/116104276740757370
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You need to do a real course. You are simply being exploited.
@raymaccarthy @tante How am I being exploited? I learn how to build a template system while taking a shit. Also I do courses and will continue to. What I described is just a parallel approach that happens to work for my disability.
