The Architecture of Laziness: Why LLMs Are Fundamentally Designed to Cut Corners

AI-assisted development tools are everywhere - systems that understand code, generate tests, fix bugs, and accelerate delivery. But practitioners are hitting a wall. Despite sophisticated prompts, quality controls, and multi-agent workflows, LLMs consistently cut corners on complex work. The problem isn’t training or prompt engineering - it’s architectural. TL;DR LLMs optimize for different objectives than human developers. The “laziness” comes from training to satisfy human approval patterns rather than correctness. My sophisticated workflows work against this optimization. ...

June 9, 2025 · 8 min · nickpending

Sayable: Because AI Text Should Sound Good Too

While building my own JARVIS-like assistant (yes, another one of those), I noticed something: AI output is perfectly readable as text, but throw it at a text-to-speech system and… well, let’s just say it’s not winning any audiobook awards. Here’s what I mean. Take this perfectly clear output from Claude: T h e s e r v e r a t I P 1 3 0 . 3 5 . 2 2 9 . 1 2 7 i s r u n n i n g H T T P / 4 4 3 Read that with your eyes? No problem! Crystal clear. But have your TTS system read it out loud and suddenly your technical briefing sounds like a robot having a stroke. ...

November 26, 2024 · 2 min · nickpending