When you are skeptical of any technology it's always good to do enemy research so your comments on social media have some truth to them. What is currently being referred to as "Artificial Intelligence" is both a triumph of marketing and changing the software development industry and anyone who is grumpy is going to have to deal with it one way or the other.

In this talk Chris Hartjes will give his take on Large Language Models and how skeptics like himself interact with them as someone actually getting paid to write code. Nobody wants to end up being a "prompt engineer" so understanding how to use these tools to your advantage might be how you find new opportunities and survive waves of layoffs.

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I enjoyed the content and made a lot of great points. A little repetitive at times (beyond reiteration of points). Must watch the timing - running late affects all sessions following (not just the one in the same room).

Everything I want our industry leaders to hear, delivered in classic Grumpy fashion. I really appreciated Chris' vulnerability and approach of "this is what they promised us, this is what they delivered, and this is what we should *want* out of LLMs".

I always appreciate Chris' "say it as he sees it" attitude because you know you're getting raw unfiltered thoughts. This talk reiterated some of the thought I've had about LLMs as well (snake oil in a lot of cases) and it was as always entertaining.

Chris Abbey at 09:41 on 25 Oct 2024

Nailed it as usual Chris!

Korvin Szanto at 15:16 on 25 Oct 2024

Interesting take on the current state of AI and how it relates back to vaporware of the past. I really liked the section about what you actually want from LLMs and generative AI

Great topic, and Chris often quite hilarious. A good perspective for us all to keep in mind, and I agreed with pretty much everything Chris said. Rather repetitive though, and the "Guide" ultimately came down to two bullet point suggestions. I would have appreciated just a little less time on commentary and a little more time on how an AI-skeptical dev can engage with LLMs ethically.

RK at 17:46 on 26 Oct 2024

Lots of really good points with a fresh take. I like that Chris pointed out a lot of concerns with AI, and I did leave with action steps. I also like the back and forth with the audience.