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> I think that LLMs are going to wreck the peer review system for all but hard-experimental papers

I think I may be shadowbanned, but at what point do we start viewing LLMs as a national security threat?


Unfortunately I think that we need to be much more judgmental than is tolerated on this forum if we want to get people to stop writing with AI assistance.

People are not going to stop spamming you with slop text unless the narrative is "Using AI for writing is a mark of poor literacy/low intelligence".


I thought the comment was a positive contribution.


I just mean they verbatim copied it from another comment they wrote in this thread

But it's quite possible I'm being too anal


I didn't see that other comment and I appreciated the presence of the comment in question.


Whatever else it might be, it’s not positive.


From my perspective, the primary end-user selling point of LLM assistants is not having to read or write anymore.

I think a lot of the "AI Addicts" are masking illiteracy, which is why they cling so passionately to the technology.


IMO AGI is a bold-faced lie, backed by the age-old American fantasy of free labor. The whole concept seems quite ugly to me.


In other words, the AGI hype kinda depends on AGI never being achieved. Billionaires don't want the worlds fundamental problems solved overnight for a simple reason: there's no money in that.


Moreso what I'm trying to say is that AGI is a return to the eighteenth/ninetheenth century fantasy of slavery as a business model.

AGI means cruelty-free robot slaves.


Thank you for your comment.

The narrative that LLMs are essential to the future of the trade often feels like an assault on my professional expertise.

Whatever your experience is, mine is that LLMs don't work well for software development. I wish people who use AI would be more willing take that perspective seriously.


You should read this thread and the linked article for a discussion about your last sentence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052023


Could you leave a comment expressing your perspective?


I did actually reply to a few of the threads there. I think you'd find more perspective in reading the article and the author is also there talking about it.


> Think of all the shops that will soon be composed of people that simply can't even get out of bed, if their LLM is not available.

I'm biased because I don't use AI, but I don't understand why you wouldn't fire these LLM-addicted people and replace them with people who can code or write an email without the use of an AI assistant.


They won't. They'll just pay more for the LLM.

I use LLMs all the time, but I'm also a highly capable and experienced engineer that can definitely work without. I have just found that the LLM is a force multiplier, like I haven't had before.


Same, though the types of jobs I’m working on now require the speed I get from LLMs. If I had to take my current projects and switch to hand-coding I’d have to extend the timelines and practically add a zero to the price.


If you don't mind sharing, what types of jobs are you working on now?

I haven't personally seen a speed boost from LLMs, but my experience with them suggests that they could be effective in some domains and inadequate in others. E.G., I have observed that LLM tools are inadequate for generating C++ code.


Sure, it's a real mix. Most recently:

- An electrical component "synthesizer" which takes natural language specifications in (e.g. from an RFQ) and uses material data sheets and core physics calculations to design new components. (Python)

- A transcript processing pipeline which reads what happened on a call, identifies participants from the CRM, drafts structured call notes, and posts them to the CRM with the proper associations after a human-in-the-loop confirmation. Fairly complex server & web app. (Go)

- Interaction design prototypes for a family of smart devices, some with screens. Brought together as an interactive web app to see how each device behaves (vanilla JS). Each prototype generated with the help of an LLM, including 3D animated examples (Claude driving Blender).


I’m writing Swift (native iOS apps), with PHP backends.

I have found it does good PHP code, and Swift code that definitely needs adult supervision.

Also, very good for things like code documentation, debugging, and writing copy for things.


As a C++ developer, AI does not work well for software development in my experience. Maybe LLM developer tools work better if you write React or HTML/CSS, but they have been inadequate for my use case since their arrival.


Casey Muratori, who doesn't use AI, made this point on a podcast. Specifically he said that he doesn't blame web developers for wanting to use AI because it's such a mess of an ecosystem and impossible to keep everything you need to know to be successful in your head.

I'm a web developer to myself who has done zero game or systems programming so I can't speak to that side of it, but you reminded me of it!


I find it bad for generating code but alright for review, I put it as a tool to run along static analysis to catch if I missed something on a code change or merge request (being specifically about C++)


Can you elaborate on what happened that made you look dumb?


A resolute anti-AI perspective is a breath of fresh air compared to the middle-of-the-road "AI made me 10x more productive BUT"-style comments.

My professional opinion is that LLM technology doesn't work very well for software development and I'm not interested in hemming and hawing over its supposed benefits any longer.


Talking with a friend of mine who's been in development for some time and I had been talking a little bit about the skill required to wield AI effectively and that people were expecting it to be something that required less skill than it does.

He said his version of this observation is "your agents are only as good as you are." I think he's right, and the key is to practice and build the skill.


> agents are only as good as you are

that doesn't sound like a net benefit at all. I think mostly people just enjoy playing with these toys, and good developers are still good with them, bad developers still bad


I think there is a distinction between whether or not they require skill and whether or not they are a net benefit.


>> LLM technology doesn't work very well for software development

This comment is so obviously false (in my experience) I'm wondering what sort of niche environment you're working in


Just my personal experience. I'm not really interested in giving up more personal details in this forum, apologies for that.


I'm generally pretty accepting of trust me bro style arguments where we some claims presented without evidence. Especially for AI, sure some model just rm -rf ed your home directy bro sounds bad. It works fine for online discourse.

This is less agreeable. You kind of just made statements without even having claims (even without requirement of evidence or details) to back them up.

This is like the illusion of contribution.


this whole argument is illusory. nobody is arguing in good faith based on repeatable experiments. this debate is 100% based on how this technology makes one feel, and whether one is speculating for or against future economic returns from the technology


As I mentioned in this thread the other day, it's not worth debating AI skeptics anymore in 2026, with step changes like Fable and Sol. Maybe it was the case in 2025 and before but the field has improved rapidly that it doesn't make sense to listen to people with AI experiences prior to that who haven't touched it since. Does AI make mistakes, sure, but increasingly fewer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49051369


> As I mentioned in this thread the other day, it's not worth debating AI skeptics anymore in 2026

This is pretty rude!


Well that's my personal opinion. You might have a different one but I largely found it to be a waste of my own time, because it's just based on personal experiences.


My dude. People like you have been making this same claim for literally years now. We've been getting it for every single model that came out ever since 2023. It's never yet been true. Don't act like it's the fault of your interlocutors when they are skeptical of a claim you make, instead pay attention to the fact that you are following up many people who falsely claimed the same thing. It's perfectly rational to be skeptical under those conditions.


I don't know about "people like me" but I personally only felt the change myself in early 2026, before that I was like many people quite skeptical. Hence why I have the opinion I do, if it could change my mind I'm sure others could too. And anyway the state of affairs is not the same as 2023 so it always bears repeating one's experiences with the topic every year for an actually accurate assessment. Otherwise it's just he said she said as we're engaging in right now.


I swear I’ve seen this exact same thing said every few months for the last couple of years. You’ll keep repeating it when the next model is released too.


remember, how useful LLMs are is inversely proportional to your skills.

i have yet to have an LLM beat me. i am forced to try regularly so i don't look like an AI anti at a company that is very much SV pilled


I don’t think people like Linus Torvalds or Stephen Wolfram feel like language models beat them, just they’ve managed to find specific cases where flawed brainless workhorses serve their needs.


Like so many things in life, It Depends (tm).

Some developers work better with LLMs in their workflows than others. Some problems are easier for LLMs to generate a reasonable solution for than others. Some folks prompt minimally and see what the vibes bring. Others start with a detailed architecture and implementation plan.

The individual results will depend quite a lot on the person, the problem, and the approach. It's not a guaranteed winning formula for everyone.


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