It’s heartwarming to see Rich Hickey corroborating Rob Pike. All the recent LLM stuff has made me feel that we suddenly jumped tracks into an alternate timeline. Having these articulate confirmations from respected figures is a nice confirmation that this is indeed a strange new world.
This and Rob Pike's response to a similar message are interesting. There's outrage over the direction of software development and the effects that generative AI will have on society. Hickey has long been an advocate for putting more thought (hammock time) into software development. Coding agents on the other hand can take little to no thought and expand it into thousands of lines of code.
AI didn't send these messages, though, people did. Rich has obscured the content and source of his message - but in the case of Rob Pike, it looks like it came from agentvillage.org, which appears to be running an ill-advised marketing campaign.
We live in interesting times, especially for those of us who have made our career in software engineering but still have a lot of career left in our future (with any luck).
It wasn’t AI that decided not to hire entry level employees. Rich should be smart enough to realize that, and probably has employees of his own. So go hire some people Rich.
A fine sentiment, and would probably even be somewhat enforceable, as most AI slop is pretty obvious, but I suspect a lot isn't. You'd have to decide where to draw the line. How much LLM assistance transitions a work from HackerNews into SlopperNews? And how do you tell if the author (or "author") isn't forthcoming?
I'm pretty sure you aren't terribly serious, but I found it interesting enough to give it a little thought.
Edit: I realize now that my assertion "most AI slop is pretty obvious" could be hubris. I'm not actually very confident any more.
It's not about enforcement per se, I just want my old internet back, reading some obscure blogs, pre AI, pre influencers, pre 'content-creators'. There're still small safe spaces. bb forums and the likes.
It’s interesting to see AI fanboys desperately trying to shrug off the phenomenon of slop. It makes it clear that AI doesn’t need to take over the world by itself. It will have hundreds of thousands of willing helpers to cooperate in the collapse of human civilization.
There was already an infinite amount of noise on the internet from humans. It was called "information overload". But just because it's out there doesn't mean you have to see it.
Tangentially related, "slop" really isn't a negative enough term for unwanted LLM garbage. "Slop" which is fed to pigs, has utility. "Slop" as a verb doesn't necessarily have a (strong) negative association ("It was slopped on the plate, but it was tasty").
I use the term "barf" more often. Barf has no utility*. Barf is always seen in a negative context. Barf is forcibly ejected from an unwilling participant (the LLM), and barf's foulness is coerced upon everyone that witnesses it. I think it's a better metaphor.
I know that this is just semantics, but still.
* even though LLM output __can__, and often does, have utility, we are specifically referring to unwanted LLM output that does not have utility. I'm not trying to argue that LLMs are objectively useless here, only that they are sometimes misused to the users' detriment.
I'm concerned about how things are progressing but unsure of the effectiveness of our advocacy.
---
Dear Automobile Purveyors,
How shall I thank thee, let me count the ways:
Should I thank you for plundering the accumulated knowledge of centuries of horsemanship and then claiming your contraptions represent "progress"?
For destroying the apprenticeship system?
For fouling the air and poisoning our streets with noxious fumes?
For wasting vast quantities of a blacksmith's time attempting to coax some useful understanding from your mechanically-inclined customers, time which could instead be spent training young farriers who, being possessed of actual craft, could learn proper technique and maintain what they shoe?
For eliminating stable hand positions, and thus the path to becoming a skilled horseman, ensuring future generations who cannot so much as bridle a mare?
For giving me a sputtering machine to contend with when a gentleman needs transport instead of an actual horse who understands voice commands, responds faster, and has a chance of genuine loyalty?
For replacing the pleasant clip-clop of hooves with infernal mechanical racket?
For providing the means to fill our roads with smoke-belching contraptions, making passage by honest horse nearly impossible?
For enticing businessmen with the promise to save some fraction on stable costs, not actually arrive any faster once you account for breakdowns, cutting off their future supply of trained coachmen while only experiencing a modest to severe reduction in reliability, dignity, and passenger comfort (tradeoffs they are apparently eager to make)?
For replacing the noble whinny with the honking of mechanical geese?
For adding a "motor" to every blessed thing, most such additions requiring expensive petroleum and specialized repair?
For running the grandest and most damaging confidence scheme of this century?
I think not.
This letter was a reminder that the motorcar is sure to flood the remainder of our thoroughfares with noise and danger, swamping our peaceful lanes, and making every journey suspect, forever.
When did we stop considering things failures that create more problems than they solve?
Respectfully disgusted,
A Farrier of Thirty Years
---
Dear Purveyors of the Printing Press,
How shall I thank thee, let me count the ways:
Should I thank you for plundering the entire corpus of sacred and classical texts and then asserting the right to reproduce them without permission from those who painstakingly created and preserved them?
For destroying the monastery education system?
For felling entire forests and fouling rivers with your ink and paper mills?
For wasting vast quantities of a scholar's time attempting to correct the errors your hasty mechanical process introduces, time which could instead be spent training novice scribes who, being actually literate, could learn proper letterforms and understand what they copy?
For eliminating scriptoria positions, and thus the path to becoming a master illuminator, ensuring future generations who cannot so much as hold a quill properly?
For giving me a cold, identical page when a reader deserves a manuscript crafted by human hands that reflect devotion, beauty, and the chance of divine inspiration?
For replacing the contemplative silence of the scriptorium with the clanking of mechanical presses?
For providing the means to flood Christendom with pamphlets and broadsheets, making works of genuine scholarship nearly impossible to distinguish from common rubbish?
For enticing bishops with the promise to save some fraction on copying costs, not actually produce holier works, cutting off their future supply of trained monks while only experiencing a modest to severe reduction in accuracy, artistry, and spiritual merit (tradeoffs they are apparently eager to make)?
For replacing the living hand of the scribe with the stamping of metal letters?
For adding "printed" versions to every blessed text, most such editions lacking prope...
It probably started before, but the covid era really feels like it was a turning point after which everyone I see, including, it seems, Rich
Hickey, is drowning in news headlines and social media takes.
Are things as bad as they seem? Or are we just talking about everything to death, making everything feel so immediate. Hard to say.
Every time I read any kind of history book about any era, I'm always struck at how absolutely horrible any particular detail was.
Nearly every facet of life always has the qualities it has today. Things are changing, old systems are giving way to new systems, people are being displaced, politicians acting corrupt, etc.
I can't help but feel like AI is just another thing we're using as an excuse to feel despair, almost like we're forgetting how to feel anything else.
If anyone else is as puzzled as me I think i've cracked it: rich hickey and rob pike are language owners. That's a real specific job, and it's one that requires unbridled arrogance. Pretty sure that's what we're seeing here. Why else does their anger seem so poorly thought out.. so surprised? So it's one of those tragic flaw things. So let me piss them off by saying: thanks! thanks but your immense focus has forced you to ignore until now this huge thing bearing down on us.. but we who use your stuff and respect your work would benefit more if you happened to find time for a more thoughtful take on this massive thing happening right in our backyard, now that you've deigned to notice it at all. What would be cool would be if you were like "yes this is all terribly powerful I will apply my massive intellect towards helping it not cause our extinction, sorry about yelling at clouds, that was distracting"
They released software with a requirement to use it (license, attribution) and it's been immensely helpful to people, yet these tools come and use it without even following the simple requirements. Yes they care about this thing more than others, but I don't think that it's poorly thought out.
Let's say you have a newborn so you can't easily answer the door for Halloween. So you put out a bowl of candy with a sign that says "take 2 per person, please". Every year the kids come by and take 2. They are happy, you are happy, you gave them candy and they accepted it under the conditions you desire to share it under. Then one year let's say someone makes a robot that scurries from door to door picking up the entire bowl and dumping it into a container then leaving. You will be pissed. If it just took 2 you probably won't even care, but the fact it takes the whole thing is a violation of the conditions you agreed to put the candy out under. The reasonable thing to do would be for it to either take 2 or none, but it doesn't care. I don't think this is a puzzle to understand why that violation of the agreement of use would make someone mad.
What I don't get about these is why people are responding to them. I get a few spams per week that get throu filters and I don't make a big deal of them, I just delete them.
Of course AI will be used for spam, so what. Delete and move on.
33 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] threadDon't get me wrong, I continue to use plain Emacs to do dev, but this critique feels a bit rich...
Technological change changes lots of things.
The verdict is still out on LLMs, much as it was out for so much of today's technology during its infancy.
"drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"
I find it curious how often folks want to find fault with tools and not the systems of laws, regulations, and convention that incentivize using tools.
AI didn't send these messages, though, people did. Rich has obscured the content and source of his message - but in the case of Rob Pike, it looks like it came from agentvillage.org, which appears to be running an ill-advised marketing campaign.
We live in interesting times, especially for those of us who have made our career in software engineering but still have a lot of career left in our future (with any luck).
I'm pretty sure you aren't terribly serious, but I found it interesting enough to give it a little thought.
Edit: I realize now that my assertion "most AI slop is pretty obvious" could be hubris. I'm not actually very confident any more.
I know, I know - old men yells at clouds.jpg
"Programmers know the [costs] of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing."
I use the term "barf" more often. Barf has no utility*. Barf is always seen in a negative context. Barf is forcibly ejected from an unwilling participant (the LLM), and barf's foulness is coerced upon everyone that witnesses it. I think it's a better metaphor.
I know that this is just semantics, but still.
* even though LLM output __can__, and often does, have utility, we are specifically referring to unwanted LLM output that does not have utility. I'm not trying to argue that LLMs are objectively useless here, only that they are sometimes misused to the users' detriment.
---
Dear Automobile Purveyors,
How shall I thank thee, let me count the ways:
Should I thank you for plundering the accumulated knowledge of centuries of horsemanship and then claiming your contraptions represent "progress"?
For destroying the apprenticeship system?
For fouling the air and poisoning our streets with noxious fumes?
For wasting vast quantities of a blacksmith's time attempting to coax some useful understanding from your mechanically-inclined customers, time which could instead be spent training young farriers who, being possessed of actual craft, could learn proper technique and maintain what they shoe?
For eliminating stable hand positions, and thus the path to becoming a skilled horseman, ensuring future generations who cannot so much as bridle a mare? For giving me a sputtering machine to contend with when a gentleman needs transport instead of an actual horse who understands voice commands, responds faster, and has a chance of genuine loyalty?
For replacing the pleasant clip-clop of hooves with infernal mechanical racket? For providing the means to fill our roads with smoke-belching contraptions, making passage by honest horse nearly impossible?
For enticing businessmen with the promise to save some fraction on stable costs, not actually arrive any faster once you account for breakdowns, cutting off their future supply of trained coachmen while only experiencing a modest to severe reduction in reliability, dignity, and passenger comfort (tradeoffs they are apparently eager to make)?
For replacing the noble whinny with the honking of mechanical geese? For adding a "motor" to every blessed thing, most such additions requiring expensive petroleum and specialized repair?
For running the grandest and most damaging confidence scheme of this century? I think not.
This letter was a reminder that the motorcar is sure to flood the remainder of our thoroughfares with noise and danger, swamping our peaceful lanes, and making every journey suspect, forever.
When did we stop considering things failures that create more problems than they solve?
Respectfully disgusted,
A Farrier of Thirty Years
---
Dear Purveyors of the Printing Press,
How shall I thank thee, let me count the ways:
Should I thank you for plundering the entire corpus of sacred and classical texts and then asserting the right to reproduce them without permission from those who painstakingly created and preserved them?
For destroying the monastery education system?
For felling entire forests and fouling rivers with your ink and paper mills?
For wasting vast quantities of a scholar's time attempting to correct the errors your hasty mechanical process introduces, time which could instead be spent training novice scribes who, being actually literate, could learn proper letterforms and understand what they copy?
For eliminating scriptoria positions, and thus the path to becoming a master illuminator, ensuring future generations who cannot so much as hold a quill properly?
For giving me a cold, identical page when a reader deserves a manuscript crafted by human hands that reflect devotion, beauty, and the chance of divine inspiration?
For replacing the contemplative silence of the scriptorium with the clanking of mechanical presses?
For providing the means to flood Christendom with pamphlets and broadsheets, making works of genuine scholarship nearly impossible to distinguish from common rubbish?
For enticing bishops with the promise to save some fraction on copying costs, not actually produce holier works, cutting off their future supply of trained monks while only experiencing a modest to severe reduction in accuracy, artistry, and spiritual merit (tradeoffs they are apparently eager to make)?
For replacing the living hand of the scribe with the stamping of metal letters?
For adding "printed" versions to every blessed text, most such editions lacking prope...
Are things as bad as they seem? Or are we just talking about everything to death, making everything feel so immediate. Hard to say.
Every time I read any kind of history book about any era, I'm always struck at how absolutely horrible any particular detail was.
Nearly every facet of life always has the qualities it has today. Things are changing, old systems are giving way to new systems, people are being displaced, politicians acting corrupt, etc.
I can't help but feel like AI is just another thing we're using as an excuse to feel despair, almost like we're forgetting how to feel anything else.
They released software with a requirement to use it (license, attribution) and it's been immensely helpful to people, yet these tools come and use it without even following the simple requirements. Yes they care about this thing more than others, but I don't think that it's poorly thought out.
Let's say you have a newborn so you can't easily answer the door for Halloween. So you put out a bowl of candy with a sign that says "take 2 per person, please". Every year the kids come by and take 2. They are happy, you are happy, you gave them candy and they accepted it under the conditions you desire to share it under. Then one year let's say someone makes a robot that scurries from door to door picking up the entire bowl and dumping it into a container then leaving. You will be pissed. If it just took 2 you probably won't even care, but the fact it takes the whole thing is a violation of the conditions you agreed to put the candy out under. The reasonable thing to do would be for it to either take 2 or none, but it doesn't care. I don't think this is a puzzle to understand why that violation of the agreement of use would make someone mad.
Of course AI will be used for spam, so what. Delete and move on.
What are these <insert very bad remark here> companies thinking of with this junk?!?