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That's why I try not to hype it.


Uh... You don't do anything but hype them.

I literally don't know who anyone on HN are except you and dang, and you're the one that constantly writes these ads for your LLM database product.


I think you and I must have different definitions of the word "hype".

To me, it means LinkedIn influencers screaming "AGI is coming!", "It's so over", "Programming as a career is dead" etc.

Or implying that LLMs are flawless technology that can and should be used to solve every problem.

To hype something is to provide a dishonest impression of how great it is without ever admitting its weaknesses. That's what I try to avoid doing with LLMs.


> without ever admitting its weaknesses

I don't think this part is necessary

"To hype something is to provide a dishonest impression of how great it is" is accurate.

Marketing hype is all about "provide a dishonest impression of how great it is". Putting the weaknesses in fine print doesn't change the hype

Anyways I don't mean to pile on but I agree with some of the other posters here. An awful lot of extremely pro-AI posts that I've noticed have your name on them

I don't think you are as critical of the tech as you think you are.

Take that for what you will


You're the biggest hype merchant for this technology on this entire website. Please.


I've been banging the drum about how unintuitive and difficult this stuff is for over a year now: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/

I'm one of the loudest voices about the so-far unsolved security problems inherent in this space: https://simonwillison.net/tags/prompt-injection/ (94 posts)

I also have 149 posts about the ethics of it: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-ethics/ - including one of the first high profile projects to explore the issue around copyrighted data used in training sets: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Sep/5/laion-aesthetics-weekno...

One of the reasons I do the "pelican riding a bicycle" thing is that it's a great way to deflate the hype around these tools - the supposedly best LLM in the world still draws a pelican that looks like it was done by a five year old! https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/

If you want AI hype there are a thousand places on the internet you can go to get it. I try not to be one of them.


I agree - the content you write about LLMs is informative and realistic, not hyped. I get a lot of value from it, especially because you write mostly as stream of consciousness and explains your approach and/or reasoning. Thank you for doing that.


The prompt injection articles you wrote really early in the tech cycle were really good and I appreciated them at the time.


Could a five year old do it in XML (SVG)? Could an artist? In one shot?


It's true that simonw writes a lot about LLMs, but I find his content to be mostly factual. Much of it is positive, but that doesn't mean it's hype.




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