[conspire] Discussion: Using LLMs the Right Way: 10/1/2025 7pm Eastern Daylight time

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ivan Sergio Borgonovo (mail at webthatworks.it):

> The failure of your AI is mostly due to  Mercurial having a market
> share of 0.17-2% (according to AI).

I don't think that makes any sense.  The failure Deirdre described had
very little to do with the particular SCM's semantics or data model.

> You couldn't expect a LLM model to "understand" your problem, but to
> match your description with a template of an existing solution in
> the corpus.

It seems to me like a minimal expectation to not have the LLM tool back
out and lose the coder's changes, as a colossal and unpleasant surprise.
I'm thinking, here, of Feynmann's comments about failure rates of
O-rings on the Space Shuttle:  When the spec says something should
happen never under any circumstance, it's not OK to shrug that it
happens rarely.

> That's mainly a social and economical problem rather than a 
> technological one.

True but not relevant to Deirdre's point.  You knew that, right?
The profligate overuse of drinking water (to name just one squandered
resource) for server farm cooling for, lately, huge LLM installations 
(previously cryptocurrency mining) may not be a problem in climates with
year-round watercourses everywhere (like Dad's native Norway), but it's
already horribly damaging in, say, the American West.

That is a real problem, and saying it somehow doesn't matter being it's
"social and economical" rather than technological misses the point that
-- again, sticking only to water as an example -- humans, crops, etc. 
being edged out for fresh water is a big issue.

Now, you could say that my country ought to have better protections of
key resources against depredation via greater buying power, and I would
agree.  But the point remains, that the immediate effects are
pernicious, which I believe was Deirdre's point.

-- 
Cheers,                         "A lot of good arguments are spoiled by 
Rick Moen                       some fool who knows what he is talking about."
rick at linuxmafia.com                                 -- Miguel de Unamuno
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