You don't seem to realize that you are undermining what you have written by sharing it with us here. That gives me hope for you. Of course, you can counter my objection by leaving it open in retrospect whether the text was meant seriously or not. Mind ninja! Always one step ahead! In any case, you won't be able to live a good life as a living gradient in a game-theoretical hell, denying your own goal orientation but strangely still interacting strategically with the world.

He doesn't deny that his point of view forms an echo chamber.

Perhaps you have missed the essential point. Who drives the cars? It's not the horses, is it? And a chess computer is just as unlikely to start a game of chess on its own as a horse is to put on its harness and pull a plow across a field. I'm not entirely sure what impact all this will have on the job market, but your comparisons are flawed.

In the case of horses and cars, you need the same number of people to drive both (exactly one per vehicle). In the case of AI and automation, the entire economic bet is that agents will be able to replace X humans with Y humans. Ideally for employers Y=0, but they'll settle for Y<<X.

People seem to think this discussion is a binary where either agents replace everybody or they don't. It's not that simple. In aggregate, what's more likely to happen (if the promises of AI companies hold good) is large scale job losses and the remaining employees becoming the accountability sinks to bear the blame when the agent makes a mistake. AI doesn't have to replace everybody to cause widespread misery.

Yes, I understand that it's about saving on labor costs. Depending on how successful this is, it could lead to major changes in the labor market in economies where skilled workers have been doing quite well up to now.

I don't think it would add any value for you. For me, it adds value because I only have to turn my head to the left to see the computer that contains all my photos since I started taking pictures with a smartphone.

It's not meaningless. What do you do with a person who contradicts you or behaves in a way that is annoying to you? You can't always just shut that person up or change their mind or avoid them in some other way, can you? And I'm not talking about an employment relationship. Of course, you can simply replace employees or employers. You can also avoid other people you don't like. But if you want to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone, for example, a partnership, then you can't just re-prompt that person. You have a thinking and speaking subject in front of you who looks into the world, evaluates the world, and acts in the world just as consciously as you do.

Sociologists refer to this as double contingency. The nature of the interaction is completely open from both perspectives. Neither party can assume that they alone are in control. And that is precisely what is not the case with LLMs. Of course, you can prompt an LLM to snap at you and boss you around. But if your human partner treats you that way, you can't just prompt that behavior away. In interpersonal relationships (between equals), you are never in sole control. That's why it's so wonderful when they succeed and flourish. It's perfectly clear that an LLM can only ever give you the papier-mâché version of this.

I really can't imagine that you don't understand that.

> Of course, you can simply replace employees or employers. You can also avoid other people you don't like. But if you want to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone, for example, a partnership, then you can't just re-prompt that person.

You can fire an employee who challenges you, or you can reprompt an LLM persona that doesn't. Or you can choose not too. Claiming that power - even if unused - makes everyone a sycophant by default, is a very odd use of the term (to me, at least). I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word in such a way before.

But maybe it makes sense to you; that's fine. Like I said previously, quibbling over personal definitions of "sycophant" isn't interesting and doesn't change the underlying point:

"...it's possible to prompt an LLM in a way that it will at times strongly and fiercely argue against what you're saying. Even in an emergent manner, where such a disagreement will surprise the user. I don't think "sycophancy" is an accurate description of this, but even if you do, it's clearly different from the behavior that the previous poster was talking about (the overly deferential default responses)."

So feel free to ignore the word "sycophant" if it bothers you that much. We were talking about a particular behavior that LLM's tend to exhibit by default, and ways to change that behavior.

I didn't use that word, and that's not what I'm concerned about. My point is that an LLM is not inherently opinionated and challenging if you've just put it together accordingly.

> I didn't use that word, and that's not what I'm concerned about.

That was what the "meaningless" comment you took issue with was about.

> My point is that an LLM is not inherently opinionated and challenging if you've just put it together accordingly.

But this isn't true, anymore than claiming "a video game is not inherently challenging if you've just put it together accordingly." Just because you created something or set up the scenario, doesn't mean it can't be challenging.

I think they have made clear what they are criticizing. And a video game is exactly that: a video game. You can play it or leave it. You don't seem to be making a good faith effort to understand the other points of view being articulated here. So this is a good point to end the exchange.

"I'm leaving you for a new context window."

Capital letters come from Roman script. Lowercase letters come from a medieval administrative script (Carolingian minuscule). So you could say that we are mixing two completely different scripts. This becomes very clear when you look at a text written entirely in lowercase letters: the typeface is so uniform that I, at least, find it very pleasant to look at. Unfortunately, this is not the norm. Instead, I am condemned to live in a world where I have to look at writing consisting of two obviously thrown-together scripts day in and day out. Schopenhauer was right: the world is a vale of tears!

Just write 'for' and 'while' yourself if you need it. Here is ‘for’ in Elm/Gren:

    for : Int -> Int -> Int -> (Int -> msg) -> List msg
    for start stop step action =
        let
            range =
                if step > 0
                then List.range start (step) (stop - 1)
                else if step < 0
                then List.range stop (abs step) (start - 1) |> List.reverse
                else []
        in
            List.map action range

It should be just as trivial to write this in Gleam.

Because we basically have none.

The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim (even if implicitly), not with the person questioning the claim.

This has nothing to do with charity. Every employee can contribute to the bottom line. It is the company's responsibility to organize and empower its employees in such a way that added value is created. If this is not achieved, the employees have still given up their time and must be compensated for it.

You are welcome to optimize your processes so that you no longer need any employees. But society will still consist of people who need money. And if you don't pass on the surplus you have accumulated in the form of salaries, they will get what they need from you by other means.