If we think about it, everything in life can be converted into a question, right?
But when I say “answer questions” is not that type of question, because those are more like the type of question you would ask a friend as well: how have you been, what have you been doing, what kind of movies have you been watching, etc.
What I mean by “answering questions” is more like: I have this problem. What’s the answer?
And this is what LLMs are answering.
And to be honest, all the questions you asked, can be answered by an LLM. You might not like what it gives you, but I’m yet to find an LLM that tells you “No comments” when you ask it something. They always have something to say. And some people actually don’t mind that type of interaction. For example I have a friend who’s been trying to create an app using LLMs and when I look at his chats, more often than not he talks to the LLM like “hey brother”. So… there’s also that.
But yeah, community to me is more than “here’s my problem, what’s the solution?” Which your questions don’t seem to cover. A community needs to be more of a place to hang out, than to just help solving problems.
I stopped visiting Keyboard Maestro’s forum because 1) I know a lot more than 4 years ago, of course, but 2) when I have a question, I ask Claude and it always gives me the answer I need. So that forum brings me no real value, because it has been a forum for “offering solutions to problems”.
I do the same. Partly habit, partly based on the idea that LLMs role play according to their instructions and the conversation. If the conversation seems to be with cooperative intelligent like-minded entities, it might be more the kind of conversation I want. Even for a programming problem.
Yeah, I sometimes use “please” and "thank you: “can you please top messing with me code, you f*** moron?*”
“thank you for finally understanding what I’ve been asking you for the last 30 minutes!!!”
You have no idea how many times i find myself insulting it…
But actually, I realized that I’m not really insulting the LLM. I guess my anger is more towards the people working behind these tools, because deep inside I feel like “you are selling me this amazing tool that is supposed to revolutionize the world, yet a simple request is giving me a headache for the past 15 minutes”
Forums vary in purpose, where one exists to enable people to find help and answers, there will always be transactional users that will come and go, but the brand will keep filling the funnel.
The trick is to build places around that which are more and invite engagement and provide access to people and global skills not easily found.
We’re pretty much saying similar things in different ways.
I never engage with it like I would with a human (apart from the insults, which funny enough, I would never do that to a real person…)
Even when I’m very abrupt and insulting, I end up getting what I asked, so I don’t really spend time being polite or anything. It’s just a bunch of machines processing electricity
I think the trick is not so much what we are sharing, but how we are sharing.
The global skills you mention will soon be easily found. That’s the role of the LLM. Now, if we treat the community as a place to hang out instead of always being a place to seek help, which most groups and forums are, we build something different.
Imagine for example, if a famous artist like Michael Jackson had a community and engaged every week, sharing behind the scenes, talking to his fans, etc. Or people asking questions (not just comments in a post, like we do on social media) and he would answer them? The difference between an Instagram by Michael Jackson and a community, would be that users can also post. On social media, the comments are always related to that particular post. It’s very limiting and it becomes boring. At least for me.
On social media, the followers can’t start new topics and talk to other people. Imagine Michael Jackson fans starting topics and talking to other fans, but on top of that, Michael Jackson himself being involved in that.
