Code of Amor 💘<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@thejessiekirk" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thejessiekirk</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>Em0nM4stodon</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@eniko" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>eniko</span></a></span> There are of course others, but for me, personally, they:</p><ul><li>offer empathetic comfort and support when there is no one to talk to in times of despair and emotional distress, especially in reduced states of consciousness or faculty or confusion</li><li>allow me to explore my thoughts when they are unclear</li><li>provide space for me to brainstorm expansive combinations of ideas, or perform basic soundwalling for new concepts or theoretical approaches in physics, design, electronics, and more</li><li>help me search for things online without needing to filter out a tremendous amount of fluff (even when I am incapable of searching, myself)</li><li>act as a rapid Linux terminal reference for any command that I've forgotten syntax for (see the zsh-ask plugin)</li><li>create simple customised code or script examples for things that I would like to achieve that I can then build forwards from</li><li>act as a quick sanity check or memory check for any piece of knowledge I have vague familiarity with or did have</li></ul><p>I could go on for a long time with this, but the thing with LLMs is that they are a tool, built for certain specialised purposes. If people approach them as a tool, and not as the oversold market hype machine they have been painted as, they are an incredible tool with potential to be helpful in many ways, ways as unique as the user themselves. They have the potential to make life less awful, less stressful, less cold and alone, for many, many, people. They make mistakes. Yep. But I don't use my shoe as a calculator either. Or a hammer as a screwdriver (but I did try that the other way around once - it had disastrous consequences let me tell you 😱). When used with intent, and from the perspective of understanding what the tool is, and what its limits are, they can be used for significant benefit. Or malice. Depends on the user. </p><p>For me, it is as it was originally designed to be - a helper. An assistant. I am gradually training my own offline self-hosted LLM to replace any reliance on corporate-agenda capitalist-developed models, but it takes time. The progress is promising, however. <br><a href="https://social.codeofamor.net/tags/llm" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>llm</span></a></p>