You only remember the jackpots
This article is a response to The Futzing Fraction.
The LLMs are compared to slot machines. People who speak highly of them are maybe falling prey to similar cognitive biases. You remember the notable event when it saved you time.
You don’t remember futzing with it for 10 minutes, that’s normally how coding works. It is unremarkable.
When you write a prompt and then it spits out a bunch of code you think “wow it saved me so much time”. But, you don’t consider the 20 prompts before that where it didn’t really help so much.
Biases by name from article:
- Availability heuristic - striking things are easier to remember
- Salience heuristic - big things are easier to remember
There’s also a note that LLM providers charge per prompt. Just like a slot machine, they charge per pull of the lever. Their incentive is not to get you results. Their incentive is to make it seem like you’re getting closer to the result you want.