i do not want to get into the business of posting LLM takes but very briefly:

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

(continued from ^)

Google search doesn't work as well anymore because the results are full of LLM-generated articles? I hear about CEOs putting pressure on their teams to produce more faster because they've been told that AI will increase productivity?

it feels sad. even though I find LLMs useful sometimes, with all of the societal impacts it often feels like it isn't actually improving my life.

(2/?)

[defuneste@fosstodon.org]

@b0rk (me clicking on the refresh buttons to read your idea on those issues! side note: it seems to me than Simon and a lot of LLM coders are experienced programmers and are working mostly alone)

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

@philsherry i have absolutely no interest in trashing people who are anti-AI please let's not go that direction

[karl@infosec.exchange]

@b0rk About searching getting increasingly worse, there's another side of this I've thought was interesting.

A non-negligible amount of people no longer ask their technical questions on public forums, they ask their favorite chatbot. These questions, and their answers, are not publicly displayed for other people sharing similar struggles to search for.

[mensrea@freeradical.zone]

@philsherry @b0rk if by ai you mean llm-as-a-service, then yes, all of them are bad. you may or may not find some utility in them but they are harmful for a multitude of reasons and should be boycotted

[aoanla@hachyderm.io]

@b0rk I still think the asbestos metaphor is useful here - it's possible (in fact, not uncommon) for technologies to be both useful in some ways and damaging in others... and it can be the case that the downsides are impossible to suppress or are very long-lasting.

[nick@sloan.host]

@b0rk I think Google’s problems have more to do with its ad business than the slop at the top, which is a term I think I just coined for when the top of the search results is LLM output.

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

@mensrea @philsherry if people start an AI flamewar I will delete this thread. I don't agree what Phil said but let's handle it by ignoring it please.

[davecb@hachyderm.io]

@karl @b0rk That's rather brilliant. I often use LLMs to find things for me, in subject areas where I know if they're lying. I used to use Google, before it degraded. Occasionally (like weekly) I would have a public discussion about a question.
I'm not doing those now, so I'm not contributing.

[kumarvibe@mastodon.social]

@b0rk I have a feeling that when all the hype dies down we will be left with LLM coding tools. It’s just such a boon for coding.

I think it’s because most coding doesn’t require creativity. There are usually only a few “correct” solutions and, given the right feedback loops (test suites, performance benchmarks), LLMs are good at figuring them out.

[mcr314@todon.nl]

@b0rk many postings from people who say so much value. But a bunch turn out to be microslop

[rpetre@hachyderm.io]

@b0rk I think that the way we perceive the Internet is still in a state of flux and 20 years from now we'll look at now the way we look at the early 2000s web2.0 the way at the time we looked at the early '90s geocities era when we looked weird at the earlier Usenet era and so on: a rather quaint but ultimately doomed to be obsoleted way to use this technology. In any case, there's a strong generational component, see the origins of the "Eternal September" meme.

At this point I feel it's all unescapably converging towards the amorphous yet omnipresent hose of semi-worthless data that's the backdrop of most cyberpunk media. But who knows?

[cwebber@social.coop]

@b0rk Even the enthusiasts seem to be getting the LLM blues https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/deep-blue/

[mcr314@todon.nl]

@b0rk use "web_ on far right. It's hidden. Use Kagi. Include swear words.

[ednl@mastodon.social]

@b0rk Someone else who got value from it and seems to be using it responsibly by training on their own library, reportedly avoiding tech debt dependency, is @adafruit . Who unfortunately got more shit unloaded onto them than Biff in his open top car in Back To The Future.

[philsherry@mstdn.social]

@b0rk @mensrea Deleted it to avoid derailing.

[jorismeys@mstdn.social]

@b0rk

Knowing people, a flame war is likely unavoidable. But please do not delete this thread on behalf of all people like me who are genuinely interested in your take on it.

@mensrea @philsherry

[b0rk@social.jvns.ca]

@philsherry thank you!!

[john@socks.masto.host]

@b0rk Even if I don't always trust Google's motives, I remind myself that a lot of the problems we, and they face, are because "counterparties" are working against both them and us.

If Google had done nothing but try to preserve page rank through the AI onslaught, could that have even worked?

I'm not sure. Page rank worked best with honest pages. As soon as someone wanted to convey the same information that was out there, but with higher page rank, it started to go downhill

[cwebber@social.coop]

@b0rk The origin of writing https://dustycloud.org/blog/a-letter-from-2016-to-2026/ is my bitterness that a decade ago, we heard a lot of promises that "don't worry, we'll automate away the boring stuff, you can focus on being creative!" and now people seem resigned to "well, all that creative stuff, I don't do it anymore"

Honestly, for me, not doing the creative stuff is giving up on the things that bring me the most happiness in life. And we know that what LLMs are bad at right now is anything that is genuinely new... they're very good at doing things that have been done before.

So, celebrate those who continue to be creative, I think. Because ultimately, even the vibecoders / vibeartists rely on their work to advance things.

But it's depressing to me to see the promises of what life would be like vs what it's now like.