Post

Benjamin Boorowski 👻
@typeoneerror.com

I don't think LLMs make work easier. They make work faster, and that is "better" for companies and give workers an approximation of ease bc of the apparent lack of labour. You're still accountable for the output, which makes you a details reviewer, which I often find harder w/o the original labour.

3 reposts8 likes

Benjamin Boorowski 👻
@typeoneerror.com

Also LLMs make work harder because now you're racing your ghost, sort of like a ghost car in a racing game. You're now competing not just other labour, but your own labour. If you're not self-replacing, we may have to replace you. Work is perpetually accelerated, you with it.

Benjamin Boorowski 👻
@typeoneerror.com

LLMs also make work harder because your labour is what grants you access to healthcare in certain jurisdictional hells. In much of the world personhood grants access. Work is more fraught under AI governance because now you're always looking over your shoulder while also self-defeating/-competing.

Bryan Marble
@lostmahbles.com

100% - I fear that by the time we're in the "find out" stage where fast code needs to get refactored because everything is breaking, the engineers that could deal with it will either have turned themselves into prompt writers that just add another layer of detritus or have moved on to woodworking.

Benjamin Boorowski 👻
@typeoneerror.com

It feels close, but I am not high confidence. You can certainly use an LLM to find what you missed. I also really like the concept of broadening the scope across related fields or domains. We're able to debug things we've never seen before by prompting relative to something we have experience with.

Bryan Marble
@lostmahbles.com

I think an experienced engineer turned prompt writer can be a hugely valuable asset. The question is how many experienced engineers will stick around as prompt writers, and once they're gone (or prohibitively expensive) a junior prompt writer is going to be like a bull in a china shop.