In the 1980s, economist Robert Solow made an observation that reminded economists of today’s AI boom: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
I didn’t know how but it seemed possible. I searched and didn’t quickly come up with an answer.
I asked an LLM, and it gave me a confident answer.
I checked the man for the tool and the LLM had used creative writing to create the interface I expected should exist… but it did not exist.
I don’t know how you’re swapping or merging these basic facts:
If you’re told the binary and the flag, the validation of the LLMs output is fast (either with man or executing the command)
If you have a process you’re searching for then the searching can be slow to find the combination of commands and flags (and that’s why so many people, by the sounds of it yourself included, use LLMs)
I do think a “linux tutor” is one of the better use cases for LLMs for beginners, since you can quickly validate when its recommended commands are incorrect (but you still can’t quickly validate if its description of internals is misleading). I just think it falls apart as you start requiring more specialised things, or are at a situation where “this should exist” because the LLMs habitually make things up that sound reasonable to fill in the gaps in what the tools can do. That’s not an issue for beginners / the basics especially if there are lots and lots of tutorials the LLMs are sourcing from (although, that opens ethical issues too)
Oh yeah I’m not sure how niche what you were looking for was, for me my stuff is mostly basic, eg I have a massive text file full of subnets from a routing table, I want a command to remove everything but the subnets, i want to convert png to jpg, i want to convert webp to jpg, how do i search a specific value within 10000 log lines of json etc
just stuff that I could search ecosia -> read up on how X works -> guestimate what i’m looking for with trial and error -> get result or ask claude, run command, it works
if you can lookup an obscure command and work out the regex faster than a 10 second question to claude I don’t know what we’re discussing
I have wanted to transform things
I didn’t know how but it seemed possible. I searched and didn’t quickly come up with an answer.
I asked an LLM, and it gave me a confident answer.
I checked the man for the tool and the LLM had used creative writing to create the interface I expected should exist… but it did not exist.
I don’t know how you’re swapping or merging these basic facts:
I do think a “linux tutor” is one of the better use cases for LLMs for beginners, since you can quickly validate when its recommended commands are incorrect (but you still can’t quickly validate if its description of internals is misleading). I just think it falls apart as you start requiring more specialised things, or are at a situation where “this should exist” because the LLMs habitually make things up that sound reasonable to fill in the gaps in what the tools can do. That’s not an issue for beginners / the basics especially if there are lots and lots of tutorials the LLMs are sourcing from (although, that opens ethical issues too)
Oh yeah I’m not sure how niche what you were looking for was, for me my stuff is mostly basic, eg I have a massive text file full of subnets from a routing table, I want a command to remove everything but the subnets, i want to convert png to jpg, i want to convert webp to jpg, how do i search a specific value within 10000 log lines of json etc
just stuff that I could search ecosia -> read up on how X works -> guestimate what i’m looking for with trial and error -> get result or ask claude, run command, it works