I think it's a good thing, because using a LLM like this is the first time most people have used a computer as a computer. It's the first time people have actually made something via an intermediary that executes on their computer as opposed to installing an application built by a developer.

In so many ways, LLMs are the computer revolution realized. A lot of people just don't know how to write a driver, what it is, or how to investigate this. I certainly wouldn't. Nor would a lot of trained mathematicians and scientists. It's not immediately obvious how you'd tackle a problem like this to them and it creates this feeling of learned helplessness.

Now, thanks to the age of magical machines. This person wanted a piece of their chidlhood back and voila, they did and now can share it with the world if they so choose.

I do think that people should get better about attributing the machines though. I wouldn't be comfortable claiming ownership or authorship over code written by a machine entity so I do my best to mark machine-authored code as machine authored code.

An example, I know about snell's law and a little bit about optics. Nothing beyond the standard undergrad stuff (right now). I've tried Apple's liquid glass and I didn't like it. I think a part of it is that it's not translating the physics well and most implementations fall flat. It sort of either exaggerates or doesn't. Two nights ago as a passing fancy, I decided to work with codex and gpt to make it into a library that I can use for a larger research project. https://github.com/areoformed/daphnis-glass https://as-we-may-think.halfdrop.workers.dev/examples/as-we-...

It made me happy to watch a machine go off and do checks + validate the equations I gave it and to watch it write,

    > The numerical checks agree with the central magnification limit and your rainbow equation. An important consequence for the UI is already clear: the distance between the drop and the page can change both magnification and orientation. “Refraction strength” alone won’t describe the effect.

But as I did nothing more than write up a bit of insight, prod the machine, and make a detail request, I made sure that the machine entity got attribution for it, "Developed by Codex in collaboration with areoform. MIT licensed."

I wouldn't have been capable of turning that insight / thought process into code before, but thanks to the machines now I can, and I can even share it under a permissive license so that other people can find some small joy in it?

Is it soulless? Perhaps. But consider this, I found joy in turning a passing thought about physics into something that tangible that I can use for myself. That wouldn't have been a possibility for me in November 2020.

Legocam: My Lego webcam from 2000, working on a modern Mac