Well... look at the behavior, it is bad. They use the things you say here to justify it, soo... yes.
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The last alternative, to think if you still can, is not tied to AI at all (which is not to say it can't make some use of or explore it).
We use LLMs extensively on the projects I work in. We don't "vibe code", and we understand every commit.
The result will be an overall increase in turbulence and the normalization of steadily intensifying security crises in nearly all software systems.
The only projects that will escape this fate are those which have either been already developed from ground up with rigorous and principled, verified (or verifiable) design, or those which are rewritten to gain this.
This is what declarative programming gives us, not what LLM-based generation offers.
> I love being able to quickly bring out the program that is already running in my head without having to worry about the grind of typing it into a format that the compiler understands.
Using natural instead of a formal language to get probabilistic results based on token fields is not bypassing arbitrary constraints of the compiler, it is dereliction of the responsibility to know and articulate precisely what you are specifying.
The people in the most inflated parts of bubbles don't tend to have the most clear eyed assessment of the real impact and potential of the dynamics contributing to the bubble: their perception is warped by the bubble, and they cannot help but see everything filtered thru it.
> Such intensive use of AI doesn't come cheap. In a post on X, LisanBench, an LLM benchmark evaluator, estimated that the output tokens alone would cost about $6.5 million at OpenAI's average consumer price. Including the far larger volume of input tokens, the post estimated the total could reach $10 million to $40 million.
https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-math-problem-solved-t...
True. The cost is probably much higher, since they are still subsidizing as part of the first phase of the enshitification playbook.
Instead, we get slop proofs that are technically correct as PR stunts to enable corrupt kleptocrats, and most likely will drive research into culs-de-sac.
Regarding LLMs specifically, my view is that the current state of LLM-based AI is leading us more towards '"write" our thoughts "in water"', because
* what we write to LLMs does not catalyze a transformation in understanding of them as systems, nor drive them to evolve in a sustainable way towards truth,
* and their outputs are the result of potent patterns in the turbulence of humanity's discourse, rather than an understanding or systematization that could "teach the truth adequately to others"
While I think their potency cannot be questioned, their sustainability and correctness certainly can be. IMO, AI in the vein of theorem provers and semantic webs are much more in line with a text that can actually speak back with integrity and genuine responsiveness, "teaching truth adequately". But I also guess
* the LLM profusion will likely catalyze some important developments and advances in those other approaches (and some use of LLMs will persist even after advances on a difference basis take over) and
* probabilistic methods are here to stay and will likely be more integrated into symbolic systems and
* we are at real risk of totally loosing the plot, or perhaps reenacting the plot of [Echo and Narcissus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_and_Narcissus#Story), and seeing the warning of utter thoughtless wrought by irresponsible writing (as claimed in https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/platos-war...)
There is another charge against writing in the Phaedrus, which is that texts cannot answer for themselves (contrary to spoken interlocutors) or adjust their communication to the needs and character of the reader:
> when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves
An interesting thing about computation is that it is a writing and re-writing that can indeed be responsive and, in a non-trivial sense, "answer for itself". LLMs do this in a form that is obviously very successful for engagement (and for hype) and for producing a lot of compelling output.
I think the Phaedrus also has something to say here:
> Soc. Then [they who who knows the just and good and honourable] will not seriously incline to "write" his thoughts "in water" with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?
>
> Phaedr. No, that is not likely.
>
> Soc. No, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent.
> yet I have no doubts that this looping future is going to be our future despite the fact that I presently resent it
Why would anyone concluded this? LLMs are just one kind of application of MLs to software production. There is a vast solution space for automating parts of software production. The idea that slop loops are the inevitable future because they happen to be accelerating output at the moment just seems profoundly short-sighted and lacking in vision.