My thoughts on LLMs

These are just my current thoughts. Will be updated based on future evidence and experience.

• LLMs are very useful tools especially for coding. They have saved me so much time and allowed me to do things I would never have otherwise done.
  • Therefore, I am immediately suspicious of anyone who says LLMs are “useless”.
• Software Engineering is going nowhere.
  • Everyone wants to say that LLMs will replace software engineers. This seems to be obviously false.
  • If you have ever used LLMs in an established legacy codebase you know how useless it can be.
  • One way jobs may be lost is through the perception that LLMs decrease the need for engineers. Therefore, engineers may be laid off.
    • However, this is a matter of perception not of reality. You can get rid of engineers the same way you can get rid of chairs and get people to hover in place.
  • LLMs may reach a point where they can replace software engineers. But so far we are not close.
  • Due to all this I am immediately suspicious of anyone who talks about LLMs replacing humans, especially software engineers.
• The LLM threat is its use by humans, not the LLM itself.
  • We are not close to LLMs gaining “consciousness” and killing humans.
  • We are close to humans using LLMs to incite revolutions in countries. To inciting people to murder. Spreading lies which cause deaths.
    • All of this has probably already happened and will continue to happen.