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Devin: AI Software Engineer

cognition-labs.com

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Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#491

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

dukeyukey wrote: post #376
ramesh31 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've personally seen teams working nights and weekends, implementing solutions to never before seen problems in a few weeks, and still getting a thumbs down when they cross the finish line. This is an important lesson that all SWEs should take to heart. Nobody cares about your novel algorithm. Nobody cares about your high availability architecture. Nobody cares about your millisecond network latency optimizations.…

I wish this were the case. The amount of time I spend trying to talk principal engineers out of massive refractors because we want to get this out soon is near criminal.

Sure, there's a tendency, even among relatively senior developers, to want to rewrite things to make them better, and it's certainly faster to put a band aid on it if you need to ship something fast.

The thing is though that technical debt and feature creep (away from flexibility anticipated by original design) are real, and sometimes a rewrite or refactor is the right thing to do - necessary so that simple things remain simple to add, and to able to continue shipping fast. It just takes quite a bit of experience to know when to NOT rewrite/refactor and when to do it.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#492

Post by EForEndeavour »

dakiol wrote: post #225

Don't get it. If we have this amazing AI why don't we make good use of it? 90% of my job is not to write code (as a senior software engineer), is to: - deobfuscate complex requirements into well divided chunks - find gaps or holes in requirements so that I have to write the minimal amount of code - understand codebases so that the implementation fits nicely I don't need an "AI software engineer", I need an "AI people…

> If we have this amazing AI why don't we make good use of it?

Aren't we all commenting on Devin's initial announcement published yesterday? Give it some time. It's a safe bet that a lot of companies which employ software engineers are currently tripping over themselves to get on the Devin waitlist, and the inevitable superior iterations on the idea of an LLM-powered dev that will absolutely be coming out probably starting later this week.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#493

Post by notpachet »

xcv123 wrote: post #350
notpachet wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ, that's horrible. It's something a clever fourth-grader would write. > my first stint with a hard-on over a clever metaphor That's all it is.

> It's something a clever fourth-grader would write. This level of cope and denial is amazing to witness. The most powerful (multi trillion dollar) companies on the planet are pouring practically infinite resources into developing systems that will ultimately make you redundant. An early version of AGI is staring you in the face while you call it a "fourth-grader". It won't stay in fourth grade forever.

I don't think I'm particularly in denial about the prospects of AI. I think it's going to be hugely disruptive and could possibly put me out of a job.

But I'd like to posit a hypothetical counterpoint, just to get you thinking. So far, all of the work on AGI has been the result of brute forcing. We've tried to develop a structural understanding of how the human brain works, and we've failed. So we've fallen back to torturing circuits into reorienting themselves into compression algorithms for human knowledge. The mechanisms that these tortured circuits used for doing so, the structures they produced in N-dimensional space to embody that knowledge -- we have very little understanding of how these things actually work under the hood.

I think a lot of the grandoise hypotheses about the future of AGI emerging from this avenue of invention are overly optimistic. Why are we so confident that this brute force approach will continue to bear fruit for us? At what point will it overcome the long tail of inadequacy that it's currently exhibiting?

The 20th century bears several notable examples of would-be-transformative technologies that have since stalled, and failed to live up to their promise. Nuclear power. Space travel. Industries buckling under the weight of their own complexity, suffering from the human inability to keep the emergent externalities in check. Why would AI be any different?

I predict a future where increasing global hardship, conflict and scarcity renders the current type of energy-intensive AI approaches infeasible.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#494

Post by the-mitr »

epolanski wrote: post #227
ThalesX wrote: post #73

As a developer but also product person, I keep trying to use AI to code for me. I keep failing, because of context length, because of shit output from the model, because of lack of any kind of architecture etc etc etc. I'm probably dumb as hell, because I just can't get it to do anything remotely useful, more than helping me with leetcode. Just yesterday I tried to feed it a simple HTML page to extract a selector, I…

I'll give you examples of how it helps me: 1) copilot is a terrific auto complete, and writes tremendous amounts of repetitive boilerplate 2) copilot can help me kickstart writing some complex functions starting from a comment where I tell it what is the input and expected output. Is the implementation always perfect or bug free? No. But in general I just need to review and check rather than come up with the instruct…

some of my work involves copyediting/formatting ocred text, for that it works quite well and saves me a lot of time. Especially if it involves completing/guessing badly ocred text.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#496

Post by Jensson »

ThalesX wrote: post #343
mediaman wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are quite good at text based tasks such as summarization and extracting entities. These generally don't require advanced logic or thought, though they can require some moderate reasoning ability to summarize two slightly conflicting text extracts. Lots of corporate work would be enhanced by better summarization, better information dissemination, and better text extraction. Most of it is pretty boring work, but t…

Summarize this for me please: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-...

HN doesn't allow posting AI content, but I tried pasting that in gemini and it did fine. Saw no errors, maybe it missed some important details but everything I checked matched the article and those details seemed like a good summary.

Here is what it wrote, didn't have enough tokens for the last 20% of the article though:

A Longstanding Partnership: The collaboration began in 2014 after the pro-Russian government was ousted in Ukraine. The CIA was initially cautious due to concerns about trust and provoking Russia.

Building Trust: Ukrainian intelligence officials gradually earned the CIA's trust by providing valuable intel, including on Russia's involvement in the downing of MH17 and election interference.

Hidden Network: The CIA secretly funded and equipped a network of 12 spy bases along the Ukrainian border used for intelligence gathering.

Training and Operations: The CIA trained Ukrainian special forces (Unit 2245) and intelligence officers (Operation Goldfish) for missions behind enemy lines.

Friction and Red Lines: The Ukrainians sometimes disregarded CIA restrictions on lethal operations, leading to tensions but not severing the partnership.

Current Importance: This intelligence network is now crucial for Ukraine's defense, providing critical intel on Russian troop movements and enabling long-range strikes.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#497

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

sarkhan wrote: post #408
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean exactly to be an amateur at "submarine engineering"? It certainly doesn't mean you know how to build a submarine.

Perhaps, amateur could engineer a submarine that goes and stays at 10 feet deep? And it does not carry a nuc load?

Maybe there's a future for AIs designing narco-subs ?

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#498

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

isaac_okwuzi wrote: post #369
CipherThrowaway wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. I started out excited about LLMs and eager to use them everywhere, but have become steadily disillusioned as I have tried to apply them to daily tasks, and seen others try and fail in the same way. Honestly, LLMs can't even get language right. They produce generic, amateurish copy that reads like it's written by committee. GPT can't perform to the level of a middle market copywriter or content marketer. I am c…

Are you saying LLMs are officially mid?

Dario Amodei (Anthropic) pretty much acknowledged exactly that - "mid" - on his Dwarkesh interview, while still all excited that they'd be up to killing people in a couple of years.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#499

Post by famouswaffles »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #462
famouswaffles wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and low information density of the text. Personally, I group all these things under 'style'. Perhaps, i should have used, 'presentation' instead. You've latched on that specific word and gone off. Point is that the post-training of these models, especially GPT from Open ai is doing a lot to how the writing (the default at least) presents long strings of text. Like how GPT-4 is almost compelled to end bouts of fictio…

> You've latched on that specific word and gone off. No, I haven't. I'm not talking about style, but something deeper. What I'm talking about is something you don't even seem to realize exists in professional writing - which is why you keep thinking I'm misunderstanding you when I am not. I've worked with professional writers, and nothing in the LLM space even comes close to them. It's not a matter of low quality vs…

>What I'm talking about is something you don't even seem to realize exists in professional writing

I've read hundreds of books, fiction and otherwise. This isn't a brag, it's just to say, believe me, I know what professional writing looks like and I know where LLMs currently stand because I've used them a lot. I know the quality you can squeeze out if you're willing to let go of any presumptions.

You'll notice that not once did I say current LLMs could wholesale replace professional writers anymore than they can currently replace professional software devs. I just disagree on the "not a good writer" bit.

If it's the opinion of professional writers you're looking for then you can find some who disagree too.

Rie Kudan won an award on a novel she used GPT to verbatim ghostwrite (no edits essentially) 5% of. Her words, not mine. Who knows how much more of the novel is edited GPT.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#500

Post by mecsred »

sesm wrote: post #469
mecsred wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things AI is "excellent" at, includes "explaining concepts (kinda hit or miss)". Did you use an AI assistant while making that list?

This looks silly, I admit. I made this correction after reviewing what I’ve written, but should have corrected in 2 places. The list is handwritten, but English is not my native language.

That's entirely fair, but illustrates one of the problems I and others in the thread are having. Code or otherwise, I can't tell if a discontinuity is human or machine generated. Only one of those two things learn from feedback right now; if someone uses AI sometimes it can be hard to tell when they're not using it.
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