Stream on 01/31/2025

I found the essay How I Use “AI” by Nicholas Carlini very thoughtful and well approached. It also aligns with some of my recent personal uses of AI for coding (during Recurse Center). This category of writing about personal experiences with AI for coding is super interesting to me lately. As Carlini expresses in the post, it is tough when online conversation seems to only take extreme positions on LLM utility:

Most of the people online I find who talk about LLM utility are either wildly optimistic, and claim all jobs will be automated within three years, or wildly pessimistic, and say they have contributed nothing and never will.

Lord knows that I am concerned about where this field, my field, is going. At the same time, I can acknowledge the astounding achievements and capabilities unleashed over the last ~7 years.

These are real advances. Like where we are today was pure science fiction in my very recent memory.