Yeah, don't let pesky discussions about ethics get in the way of building cool stuff.
I'm working on paving over the Amazon rainforest so I can build the world's largest roller coaster, but for some reason people keep trying to talk me out of it. Good thing I have this bucket of sand to put my head in so I can tune them out.
The argument that you're ignoring is about whether they're ethical or not. Your priors may land you on either side of that argument, but ideally you're willing to have your mind changed if the other side makes a strong enough case.
But intentionally blinding yourself to the debate and plowing ahead anyway (which is how I interpreted your parent comment) sounds like willful ignorance.
I'm not ignoring anything. I've already moved on and I don't owe you further debate. No one does. If you don't like it we have a very thorough legal process you can follow.
You most definitely don't have to reply. I wasn't really expecting you to.
> I've already moved on
Imagine there's a certain kind of of candy that you enjoy. Now imagine you learn that candy is manufactured by literal child slaves, its ingredients include the ground-up bones of an endangered species (which happens to be carcinogenic), and the company which makes it donates all of their profits to political causes that you strongly disagree with. Would you reconsider buying said candy in the future?
Are there any facts or perspectives that you could become aware of which might change your mind about the ethics surrounding large language models? Or is it an entirely closed case for you?
I personally try to keep an open mind about pretty much everything. It's not that I don't have opinions, but they're always subject to change.
To put my cards on the table regarding my current opinions of the current subject: I've historically been pretty anti-copyright; I believe that information wants to be free. However, I'm unsettled by the uneven application of existing intellectual property laws (if these laws are going to exist they should be enforced consistently). I'm undecided as to whether I think LLMs themselves should be considered derivative works of their training material, but I definitely think they're often used to produce derivative works (sometimes unintentionally/unknowingly). None of that means they aren't useful for building cool stuff or that the technology behind them isn't amazing.
I can see from a lot of replies the "cool" threshold is undefined, but here goes:
For myself it let me finish a project I started a year ago for measuring how much home energy efficiency upgrades will reduce my AC usage. I bought a pile of Raspberry Pi Picos and turned them mostly into temperature reading devices, but also one that can detect when my AC turns on.
So I can record how often my AC runs and I can record the temperature at various points around the house, which lets me compare like-for-like before-and-after.
The easy but unrealistic way to accomplish what I want is to use Python. It gives me access to a file system, a shell, and all sorts of other niceties. But I wanted to run these on two AA batteries and based upon my measurements they would last about 2 weeks. I tested using C instead and they should last 4 months. That's long enough for my use case. There's enough flash storage for that time period too.
However this means I need to write all the utilities for configuring the Picos myself. There's all sorts of annoying things such as having to set the clock (picos lose it anytime they lose power), having to write directly to flash memory (no operating system), having to write a utility for exporting that data from flash memory, and so on.
And AI coding let me burn through a pile of code I knew how to write but didn't care to spend my weekends doing so.
The pattern is the same for my friends who are software devs. And yeah, you're probably never going to see any of it, but that's not why they're making it, they don't want the maintenance burden.
Then I upgraded my 10 year old hand written framework to a new version that supports sqlite and postgres on top of existing MySQL support https://github.com/Divergence/framework
But then I was like eh lemme benchmark every PHP orm that exists just to check my framework's orm....
A brand new task manager written in C for Linux that supports a plugin architecture with an event bus. It's literally the best gui Linux task manager ever. Still working on it.
I'm not even talking about my paid job. This is me just fucking around.
If you think none of this stuff is cool I don't even respect you as a dev.
Without the milk drop plugin it's stable around 175 with all the other plugins. With no plugins it's about 80 mb at idle but the memory usage is higher if there's more processes running.
there seems to be great innovation in npm package hacking, but that's about it. Oh yeah, bad uptimes and ruined open source projects. If only AI was left to discrete math brute forcing problems and alphafold.
I'm not sure that extrapolating the last 2 to 3 years as a sign of things to come is as enticing an argument as you seem to think it is . If you exclude AI for ai's sake, the feature lists of the last 2 years have been incredibly anemic. If you include AI companies bootstrapping themselves with AI, the cash flow has been a nice change but I can't say it's felt fully baked, or flooded with stable software and well-crafted workflows.
I'm really not trying to be a hater but when people tell me that we're already in the AI Nirvana it gives me pause.
I'm building the same stuff I've always built. Just faster and with less dependence on others. Not having to argue with devs that have their own agendas has been my biggest benefit from coding agents.
> Not having to argue with devs that have their own agendas
Agendas like, "let's not check our API key into a public github repo" or "Let's not store passwords in plaintext" or "Don't expose customer data via a public api"?
I'm happy for you, but please, for all of our sakes, keep it to yourself. Don't make a public repo, don't post links. Go sit in the corner by yourself with your slop generators and leave the rest of us alone.
Yeah, don't let pesky discussions about ethics get in the way of building cool stuff.
I'm working on paving over the Amazon rainforest so I can build the world's largest roller coaster, but for some reason people keep trying to talk me out of it. Good thing I have this bucket of sand to put my head in so I can tune them out.
You assume that I think using language models is unethical. I do not agree that it is. Now what?
The argument that you're ignoring is about whether they're ethical or not. Your priors may land you on either side of that argument, but ideally you're willing to have your mind changed if the other side makes a strong enough case.
But intentionally blinding yourself to the debate and plowing ahead anyway (which is how I interpreted your parent comment) sounds like willful ignorance.
I'm not ignoring anything. I've already moved on and I don't owe you further debate. No one does. If you don't like it we have a very thorough legal process you can follow.
> I don't owe you further debate
You most definitely don't have to reply. I wasn't really expecting you to.
> I've already moved on
Imagine there's a certain kind of of candy that you enjoy. Now imagine you learn that candy is manufactured by literal child slaves, its ingredients include the ground-up bones of an endangered species (which happens to be carcinogenic), and the company which makes it donates all of their profits to political causes that you strongly disagree with. Would you reconsider buying said candy in the future?
Are there any facts or perspectives that you could become aware of which might change your mind about the ethics surrounding large language models? Or is it an entirely closed case for you?
I personally try to keep an open mind about pretty much everything. It's not that I don't have opinions, but they're always subject to change.
To put my cards on the table regarding my current opinions of the current subject: I've historically been pretty anti-copyright; I believe that information wants to be free. However, I'm unsettled by the uneven application of existing intellectual property laws (if these laws are going to exist they should be enforced consistently). I'm undecided as to whether I think LLMs themselves should be considered derivative works of their training material, but I definitely think they're often used to produce derivative works (sometimes unintentionally/unknowingly). None of that means they aren't useful for building cool stuff or that the technology behind them isn't amazing.
In case this part wasn't clear, I read "you guys have fun arguing" as "I'm ignoring the argument". I apologize if that wasn't what you meant.
"No u" isn't a valid counter argument. Arguer made no assumption about your view of the ethics of LLMs.
That's what the sand bucket was about.
Still waiting for this massive wave of cool stuff.
It's just hobby projects with larger scope.
I can see from a lot of replies the "cool" threshold is undefined, but here goes:
For myself it let me finish a project I started a year ago for measuring how much home energy efficiency upgrades will reduce my AC usage. I bought a pile of Raspberry Pi Picos and turned them mostly into temperature reading devices, but also one that can detect when my AC turns on.
So I can record how often my AC runs and I can record the temperature at various points around the house, which lets me compare like-for-like before-and-after.
The easy but unrealistic way to accomplish what I want is to use Python. It gives me access to a file system, a shell, and all sorts of other niceties. But I wanted to run these on two AA batteries and based upon my measurements they would last about 2 weeks. I tested using C instead and they should last 4 months. That's long enough for my use case. There's enough flash storage for that time period too.
However this means I need to write all the utilities for configuring the Picos myself. There's all sorts of annoying things such as having to set the clock (picos lose it anytime they lose power), having to write directly to flash memory (no operating system), having to write a utility for exporting that data from flash memory, and so on.
And AI coding let me burn through a pile of code I knew how to write but didn't care to spend my weekends doing so.
The pattern is the same for my friends who are software devs. And yeah, you're probably never going to see any of it, but that's not why they're making it, they don't want the maintenance burden.
You're acting as if developers haven't been using AI to build for years already.
Where was the coolness inflection point?
In the past three months I've shipped more code than I have in years.
New php extension https://github.com/hparadiz/ext-gnu-grep
A Demo showing how to stream webrtc to KDE Wayland overlay. https://github.com/hparadiz/camera-notif
A fun little tool that captures stdout/stderr on any running process. https://github.com/hparadiz/bpf_write_monitor
Then I upgraded my 10 year old hand written framework to a new version that supports sqlite and postgres on top of existing MySQL support https://github.com/Divergence/framework
But then I was like eh lemme benchmark every PHP orm that exists just to check my framework's orm....
https://github.com/hparadiz/the-php-bench
And published the results.... Here
https://the-php-bench.technex.us/
And then I decided to vibe code a simulation of the entire local steller group https://earth.technex.us
Followed by my simulation of the Artemis 3 landing sites at the lunar South pole https://artemis-iii.technex.us/?scale=1.000#South-Pole
And I left the best for last.....
https://github.com/hparadiz/evemon
A brand new task manager written in C for Linux that supports a plugin architecture with an event bus. It's literally the best gui Linux task manager ever. Still working on it.
I'm not even talking about my paid job. This is me just fucking around.
If you think none of this stuff is cool I don't even respect you as a dev.
Task manager seems fun. In your screenshot, are your two task manager instances using a GB of ram?
Without the milk drop plugin it's stable around 175 with all the other plugins. With no plugins it's about 80 mb at idle but the memory usage is higher if there's more processes running.
But where is the cool stuff?
Most people have busy lives and they don't care about this stuff.
And yet, no cool stuff from those developers.
there seems to be great innovation in npm package hacking, but that's about it. Oh yeah, bad uptimes and ruined open source projects. If only AI was left to discrete math brute forcing problems and alphafold.
It's not a reach to suggest that if you've used software written in the past 2-3 years, you're enjoying cool stuff.
Moreover, all of the tools that the people who build software use are also cool stuff.
It's also not just code and software that is benefitting from these new tools. Use of LLMs in engineering tasks is blowing up right now.
I'm not sure that extrapolating the last 2 to 3 years as a sign of things to come is as enticing an argument as you seem to think it is . If you exclude AI for ai's sake, the feature lists of the last 2 years have been incredibly anemic. If you include AI companies bootstrapping themselves with AI, the cash flow has been a nice change but I can't say it's felt fully baked, or flooded with stable software and well-crafted workflows.
I'm really not trying to be a hater but when people tell me that we're already in the AI Nirvana it gives me pause.
There's a massive wave of stuff, at least. Sorting it, is not easy.
OpenClaw. Vibe-coded and one of the most rapidly successful and popular pieces of software ever developed.
I'm building the same stuff I've always built. Just faster and with less dependence on others. Not having to argue with devs that have their own agendas has been my biggest benefit from coding agents.
> Not having to argue with devs that have their own agendas
Agendas like, "let's not check our API key into a public github repo" or "Let's not store passwords in plaintext" or "Don't expose customer data via a public api"?
No. Agendas like, "I need to push my ideas for promotion credits."
Do you mean my stuff?
Yes, I'm suing you, since it's my stuff now, I've licensed your code 5minutes ago.
Prove me wrong at court, you have create it...
I'm happy for you, but please, for all of our sakes, keep it to yourself. Don't make a public repo, don't post links. Go sit in the corner by yourself with your slop generators and leave the rest of us alone.
> I'm gonna be building cool stuff.
hardly. at best you're going to be asking a robot to build questionable stuff with other people's LEGOs
You just described all software.
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