Miscellanea for 2026-01-29
- Hello world!
- I keep meaning to do this style of post on a daily basis, but there are very few things I do on a consistent daily basis. So, enjoy this random occurrence.
- Isn't it super weird that back in 1997, Dave Winer was writing about "Fractional Horsepower HTTP Servers" embedded in every device that matters.
- This, when setting up a web server was still a huge ceremony.
- Now, almost 30 years later, I can run a web server on a microcontroller smaller than my fingernail that cost me less than a buck.
- In fact, I embedded one into a pumpkin for fun, about 8 years ago.
- What if LLMs don't even improve radically, but gradually shed all the ceremony for running them on cheap personal devices?
- Apropos of that, Dave Winer mentions a thing about LLMs & AI in coding: "AI is going to be part of programming forever. There's no way to go back."
- This, after reading "Don't fall into the anti-AI hype" from antirez
- I keep thinking about this and I think it's true.
- Specifically, two things can be true at the same time:
- "AI" as it currently exists is a bubble and most of the high-flying companies pushing slop are going to die messily.
- LLMs that generate code are going to be in the programming toolkit for a great many folks from here on, indefinitely, like calculators and compilers.
- Remember the dot-com crash back in the 2000s? Well, neither the internet nor the web went away. We built Web 2.0 atop the dark fiber - and that could happen again for "AI". Maybe.
- Look, I know technological inevitability is a myth - this stuff isn't self-executing, it still takes people to build it and carry it forward by choice.
- But, like the internal combustion engine and jet aeroplanes, there are a lot of folks who find LLMs convenient & productively useful - even if there are measurable harms and perils in their use.
- See also: smart phones, social media, same-day delivery, plastics, antibiotics, and eating meat.
- While none of these are inevitable, I think more folks than not see more benefit than not. And, thus, it's unlikely we'll swear off them cold turkey anytime soon.
- Like Dave says, "We get so mired in the question of should we do this -- well we're doing it, time to start looking at the next set of questions."
- This is why, for example, I don't think it's entirely off-into-the-weeds for a company like Mozilla to aim at bending the trajectory of this stuff, rather than trying to halt or ignore it.
- For what it's worth, I'm not trying to sell anyone on this stuff. I think, where it's genuinely useful, it sells itself.
- To the extent that I talk about it is mainly me learning out loud.
- And, honestly, being serially enthusiastic about a shiny object as is my wont.
- But, still, I think "AI" is in a space of way higher value than some folks place it.
- And yet, orders of magnitude lower than so many CEOs are hyping it.
- I hope it someday settles down as normal technology, and I think many of us are hoping for that.
- But, again, it's not going to just evaporate. Not even if the bubble pops.
- Anyway. These are thoughts I've had and I felt like brain-dumping them today, like you do on a blog.