LLMs... Do you use them?

[broccoli]

LLM chatbots are basically instant gratification machines, with all the benefits and detriments that entails.

I use it to decipher the abbreviations in doctor's notes that are difficult to google. For image generation, it's just a novelty, something that I might say "How funny that a computer could make this" to but nothing that I would want to look at seriously. With fiction, it's useful for making me feel confident in my own ideas because it just repeats my ideas back to me, but then when it offers to write those ideas I find the prose severely lacking and prefer to do it myself. For code, I prefer to give it something I already wrote and ask "What went wrong here?" because it is good at saying something like "You accidentally deleted a comma on line 3 million" that I would never have caught. I tried to get it to write code for me out of nothing and ended up having to fix it so extensively that the end product was entirely my own work...

That being said I think LLMs are pretty good at clustering documents based on context in the text so at work it's very useful for determining in 600,000 doctor's notes which ones had the provider actually discuss the screening questionnaire and which ones the provider performed the screening questionnaire and then didn't follow up on the results, because everyone writes it a little differently and it's nightmarish to regex it and NLP performs slightly worse.

I'm really into algorithmic composition and generative art but the current state of AI-generated stuff is such that I actually wish it had a little more of the machine's touch instead of falling into that weird uncanny valley where it tries to look and sound realistic.

It's just a (inconsistently useful) tool and novelty for me. I couldn't imagine using an LLM as a friend or therapist or lover the way some people online do. Guess that's part of the instant gratification machine thing though.

[Capybara]

Update on my job's AI assistant: It started out useful, but is now shitting itself and nothing comes up for basic searches. (To keep it vague, I work at a store and use it for inventory.) This is making me mad, because I've been on the boat of "AI is flawed but can be good if regulated camp"... until now. Are models hallucinating en masse now? (More on that later)

I really like your reply, and the issues regarding mental health services and how they can make AI chatbots tempting are something I hadn't thought about. I will say that «AI therapy» is something I completely disagree with, as most chatbots tend to just confirm what the user already believes- I don't think therapy is for everyone, but AI can be especially dangerous to those who are prone to magical thinking.

I should've mentioned the AI-induced psychosis that comes from people using it for emotional support, but I figured everyone knew that since there's a new story constantly  I stay quiet about this because I do think OpenAI (etc.) should be sued and change their models for this, but I've also had human therapists do these exact same things with enabling unhealthy behavior. Well, I guess it had to be trained off something...
Besides using AI to "talk to", AI therapy is dangerous for medical advice. (!?!??!) On a Dreamwidth community I reluctantly browse, someone mentioned using ChatGPT for therapy and medication advice... No. NO!!!!

Side note, but I decided to enable Visual Studio Code's built-in Copilot and it's... Really really bad! I've been going back to edit every page for grammar issues, and it literally hallucinated (?) an episode of a TV show that doesn't exist. It's also made up historical events that never happened. My experience using ChatGPT and Grok are similar, they'll claim random bullshit and then go "Oops! Sorry!" when I correct them... I can't believe this... I was hoping VSC Copilot could be an accessibility tool for making coding easier, but it's creepy to see it suggest edits pretending to be me.

I might disable it, but has anyone had decent experiences with VSC Copilot as a tool? I tried to make it fix a broken layout, and it broke it further..... 

[fablefound]

well, folks, i regret to announce i had to use an ai chatbot to make something at work. and it was spectacularly infuriating and incompetent, but i can also see why people think they're so convenient and get straight-up hooked. you can ask these things, over and over again, to explain and zoom in and zoom out on problems. even if it has no idea what it's talking about, it'll hype you up and praise you for asking questions and try again and again.
didn't like it one bit :/

[devils]

Update on my job's AI assistant: It started out useful, but is now shitting itself and nothing comes up for basic searches. (To keep it vague, I work at a store and use it for inventory.) This is making me mad, because I've been on the boat of "AI is flawed but can be good if regulated camp"... until now. Are models hallucinating en masse now? (More on that later)

They do seem to be hallucinating more frequently now, I've noticed that too! Or maybe people just got better at manipulating the machines. Regardless, genAI does need to be regulated at the very least. It's burning the planet, and each day I'm turning more and more against genAI and LLMs.

i can also see why people think they're so convenient and get straight-up hooked. you can ask these things, over and over again, to explain and zoom in and zoom out on problems. even if it has no idea what it's talking about, it'll hype you up and praise you for asking questions and try again and again.

I think the reason they are programmed to hype people up is precisely so people get hooked on it. The more people get hooked on it, the more they're willing to give them data and buy their subscriptions. It's sad, really. OpenAI et al are using technology that could make humanity better (yes, even in creative fields) to just get as much money possible while damaging our species and the world at large. [elongated sigh]

[st3phvee]

Side note, but I decided to enable Visual Studio Code's built-in Copilot and it's... Really really bad! I've been going back to edit every page for grammar issues, and it literally hallucinated (?) an episode of a TV show that doesn't exist. It's also made up historical events that never happened. My experience using ChatGPT and Grok are similar, they'll claim random bullshit and then go "Oops! Sorry!" when I correct them... I can't believe this... I was hoping VSC Copilot could be an accessibility tool for making coding easier, but it's creepy to see it suggest edits pretending to be me.

I might disable it, but has anyone had decent experiences with VSC Copilot as a tool? I tried to make it fix a broken layout, and it broke it further..... 

This is one of the main reasons why I discourage new / hobby web developers from using LLMs to help with coding solutions. LLMs are incapable of actual reasoning, and their algorithms make incorrect predictions on a regular basis (I hate calling this phenomenon "hallucinating," as that's an anthropomorphism that implies these systems have actual intelligence -- they don't). I would never trust Copilot, Claude, or any other LLM to fix something that I don't already know how to fix. I'd rather learn how to do it myself, by reaching out to human coders who actually know what they're talking about.

[fablefound]

I think the reason they are programmed to hype people up is precisely so people get hooked on it. The more people get hooked on it, the more they're willing to give them data and buy their subscriptions. It's sad, really. OpenAI et al are using technology that could make humanity better (yes, even in creative fields) to just get as much money possible while damaging our species and the world at large. [elongated sigh]

EXACTLYYYYYYY they're going straight for our dopamine and trying to get us in the same nasty feedback loop as every other algo fine-tuned to maximize doomscrolling. more data, more engagement, more money. also more servers and more environmental damage but they don't care.

[kurohaato]

Not now, and NEVER for coding. I can write my own bad code thank you very much.


I try my damndest to avoid it but it seems more and more unavoidable on my phone ( thanks google). Bye Bye Google AI is a huge help on desktop though. I highly recommend it if you still want to use Google search without Gemini's garbage. I also recommend Chris Titus' windows tool if you want to use Windows without Microsoft Microslop pushing Copilot down your throat.

[virtualpet2001]

LLMs are a very costly party trick at best but they are constantly being pushed as being able to solve everyone's problems when they very clearly Cannot. thats my opinion

my mom insisted I use chatgpt to write my resume, which i obviously didnt do. apart from the fact that it would go against my morals it seemed obvious to me that any potential employers would very easily be able to tell that it wasn't written by humans. turns out I was right!

[azalea]

i feel like i'm so "old fashioned" despite the rapid rise of llms in the last... half-decade or so (????) that my brain just can't register ever using an LLM for anything. not for writing, not for academic purposes.... anything, really. i cannot fathom having a llm think for me when i've been thinking for myself for like my whole life? idk i guess that's how i see it.

[mortaki]

i cannot fathom having a llm think for me when i've been thinking for myself for like my whole life? idk i guess that's how i see it.

THIS. like I know that, in theory, genAI could be useful. But in the world we live in right now, I can't help but think that outsourcing our thinking is very, VERY dangerous. not to mention that this is a well very easily poisoned even if it were working perfectly fine now. already people treat anything from google's AI as gospel when I know that it could be straight up lying bc it "sounded good". one of my siblings (younger than me) already thinks that chatgpt is infalliable even though I have explained over and over why it isn't.

I once heard someone say google was like outsourcing our memory, which was fine except in cases where it changed the information we needed to remember. if we ALSO outsource our thinking, then we won't even have the safety of saying "wait a minute, that doesn't sound right" bc we won't be practicing the skills that trigger that thought process.

[mini]

I have found them mildly useful for my daily job as a fullstack dev but barely use them at all because when they don't work, they REALLY don't work and just make me lose a lot of time so I'd rather just do everything myself.

Also recently tried to set up a local LLM just to spellcheck my writings without feeding info to any AI companies and uhhhh it juust sucks ass? I settled on Ministral-Instruct-14B-Q2 which is the only one I found with good Spanish support that ran on my hardware and yeah it just sucks? Like it KINDA worked as a spellchecker (let me be clear, it wasn't even GOOD at it, several "corrections" were wrong) but also gave me some other feedback that was completely unnecesary and bad and started making up quotes from people I talked about in my article without me even asking for it? LMFAO

sooo yeah I'm not really using them. also I hate all of the AI companies sooo I wish them all a very bad day.

[RNotteLovesOwls]

you won’t catch me DEAD using LLMs. they are inherently anti-human, not to mention posing a national security risk, and its users are mostly the worst demographics of people. this technology has flooded the web with uncontrollable noise. believe me, i don’t hate many things, but if generative AI has one hater, it’s me. if it has no haters, i’m dead. if the word “HATE” was engraved on my billions of cells, it would not equal one OUNCE of the hate i have for LLMs. HATE   HATE

ahem… sorry. i got really heated there. anyway, in conclusion, the day i start actually using AI in my work is the day i start seeing my art as “content” instead of “art”. and i have too much respect for my work to do that

[Rubbereon]

I avoid LLMs as best as I possibly can on moral grounds. My 2 biggest use of ai are for censoring my voice and protecting my identity (and this technology existed before ai, it's just now more widespread and better) and speelchecking, sometimes I'm drunk and Imay come off as incoerent, so I do use something like grammarly, but the problem is they make your text too formal, almost ai-like, so I don't touch this stuff either most of the time.

At the beginning I'll admit I did try out a few free ais out of curiosity (even back then I was fiercly anti-chatgpt which costs money and the company behind it is scummy), first one was crayion because of vinesauce, then it was later deepseek and the last one I don't remember what it's called, just looked through a website called "easy with ai" to find it again, but still can't. All I remember is it was a chatbot or multiple chatbots I'm not sure. Anyway never touched any of these since and told myself if it's generative ai I will not approach it since they've harmed artists the most.

I know for a fact artists use ai to generate references, but otherwise only post real art to their galleries, but then there are the ones who straight up generate image after image and post them unedited to their gallery. this is the stuff I hate. Deviantart was already a stinker, but now why would anybody bother using it over anything else? Professionals can use Artstation, hobbyists and comic artists can use tumblr, twitter or instagram.

What I HATE about ai is the way it's getting added into everything and anything. Firefox was already in pretty terrible shape, but when they insisted on adding 10 different ai features nobody asked for I snapped and just switched to something else. Brave also has an ai, despite that I still use the browser because the ai is tucked into a corner, it's the fact Ai in Firefox is so intrusive it singlehandedly ruined the browser for me. I HATE Firefox now. most ai websites are unethical and predatory, anytime I see the words "tokens" or "credits" I immediately leave, meanwhile I can't even find older non-ai tools that basically achieves the same things. I can guarantee no one will find lunapic, XBR upscaler or toyls by accident which I use to either edit background images or check how they will look on my website. I struggled just to find picmix, 3dthis.com, 3dgifmaker.com and all those funky text animated gif makers for a blog post on my website.

Sorry for venting./

[Yoylecake420]

Firefox was already in pretty terrible shape, but when they insisted on adding 10 different ai features nobody asked for I snapped and just switched to something else. Brave also has an ai, despite that I still use the browser because the ai is tucked into a corner, it's the fact Ai in Firefox is so intrusive it singlehandedly ruined the browser for me. I HATE Firefox now. most ai websites are unethical and predatory, anytime I see the words "tokens" or "credits" I immediately leave,

The AI discussion had made me kinda berserk as of lately, and I know my reponses in regards to this is kinda fucked up and not the best, but I've been so frustrated over the AI discussion that I resort to less than savory solutions. I understand your frustration in regards to AI and wanting to avoid it, and I'm not gonna drop the "there's not way to void it" because I find it to be kinda defeatist, but if you can get your hands on AI filters I recommend taking advantage of them. And focusing on human-made creations.

And if it makes you better, Firefox just recently added a toggle to turn off AI. Either turn them off or use LibreWolf/Waterfox.  Sincerely, someone who used to use LLMs but dropped it due to ethical and environmental issues.

[pepper]

if the word “HATE” was engraved on my billions of cells, it would not equal one OUNCE of the hate i have for LLMs. HATE   HATE

First off, nice reference 

Second, you might be interested in this article, I found it a little bit ago and it sums up how I feel about genAI pretty well: https://anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/haterdom/2025/08/26/i-am-an-ai-hater.html

But yea I personally really hate the prevalence of AI usage (I do not like using the word hate usually, but it applies here). I think it's doing real harm to peoples' ability to think critically and creatively. I legitimately think it poses a real threat to democracy and free thinking (people are ok giving up their thinking to machines that are trained by corporations  ), not to mention how it has poisoned so much of the internet.

I have several filters installed on uBlock Origin (here's a few that I rely on), and still I get AI spam when searching for solutions to questions. If I see a site using an AI image in an article, or if I don't see an author listed and I check the text and it reads like AI, I don't engage further. Not just on principle, but genAI doesn't actually write anything. It's just random text generated that passes a confidence threshold, and if I'm trying to solve a technical problem I need to read a solution presented by an expert not text generated by a random number generator that sounds good enough at first glance.

To top it all off I have OSDD and experience derealization frequently, and when I'm browsing the internet and I'm not sure if what I'm reading is written by a person or not I begin questioning things and that can often trigger an episode, which just really sucks.

blegh ok rant over.    More of my AI rant can be found on my blog I have a post there explaining how I feel.