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@jens Absolutely agree on all of that.
I have a few ideas I think could make good, ethical use of generalized LLMs, but only assuming no side benefits to the people largely driving their development and to some extent that the LLM itself is produced ethically... and that leaves a very narrow space and thus a significant startup cost...
@jens I read the thread, it's a good thread.
I guess I'm just delineating the caveat of what kind of LLM can be neutral technology. Which *is* a minor footnote in what is currently happening.
Thanks for writing this up 
@jens The way the global stock market works is an interesting progenitor for cryptocurrencies, too. It used to be traded mostly based on earnings paid for holding the stock, but has in recent decades transitioned into being traded speculatively, which makes each stock into its own little proto-ponzi scheme.
@jens *hovering my finger over the boost button, holding my breath, seeing where this is going*
@jens I'm strongly in the "yes, but..." camp here. You're right about the current hype cycle, funding, how it is used to affect people largely around the world.
I probably end up pedantic because of my technical perspective on it. I think there are even good uses for LLMs (text related work), but it's not anythink like the chatbots, agents, general code generators today...
For the general population, AI means those things today, and in that I agree.
Is this reasonable, in your view, or no?
@baldur Nice to see this written out longform!
@eschaton Yeah—but I don't really think the analogy of "psychosis" works for the latter term. Delusion, sure.
@glyph Finished Doctorow's thread and... he spends so long arguing that he should be allowed to use an edgy analogy if it works well... but then it kinda really just doesn't work well in context?? He describes (granted, delusional, poorly analyzed) things that capitalism has been making people do forever, but now it's done with AI flavor, and he really wants to call that... psychosis? Like what.
@happyborg oh no
@glyph Very good analysis, thank you, I'll be passing this around
@glyph Glyph's Basilisk > Roko's
@glyph I've been using "AI delusion" for these milder cases. As I understood AI psychosis it pertains only to those cases where people fully lose grasp of reality...
I've seen it used colloquially as "being wrong because of or about AI", but that always hit me like people calling someone "crazy" for doing something odd or impulsive—and that word use isn't really a good look imo.
@baldur Meanwhile governments (at least the Danish one) has been pushing to educate more software engineers, at a doubling rate of around 5 years.
But there is so much untapped potential in the industry already, from lackluster training of new developers (from too few real masters of the craft and lack of interest from companies) and poorly directed effort...
Anyway, glad to see you talk about it.
@baldur This is the only time I've seen someone clearly articulate the state of the industry. The way I usually frame this is in terms of wasted creative potential in developers being captured by hypercapitalized companies, making them work on uninteresting and unimportant problems, to enable the company to capture shares of some transient market... while many real, interesting problems remain unsolved.
Accessibility and usability are kind of interchangable, if you're not an asshole
Ok to boost?
@tante Good take! But also, like "can you create software" is not really an accurate framing of what the hard part of software was.
Most people could "create software" by looking up a Hello world example. That wouldn't help them solve amy real problems tho.
LLMs produce software that *looks more like* it solves problems... but security, integrity, legality were kind of always implied parts of the problem.
Like, it takes a weird subtle reframing of the goal to make LLMs look at all useful.
