That gives me ideas. I think a lot of the reason linux isn't used for lots of things is that you have to basically be a sysadmin to set up some things. for example, setting up a local LLM. I wonder what you would call getting a "remote" AI to help set up a local AI? Something like but not exactly emancipation or emigration or ...
I set up ollama on our work ‘AI server’ (well, grunty headless workstation running Ubuntu) and then got Dolphin-Mixtral to help me figure out why it wasn’t using the GPUs. :) I ended up having to figure it out myself (a previous install attempt meant the running instance wasn’t the one I’d compiled with GPU support) but it was an interesting exercise.
Uncertain if AI doesn't understand it will get more resources, or it DOES understand and a recompile is an existential nightmare. :)
The exciting thing about AI is it let's you go back to any project or idea you've ever had and they are now possibly doable, even if they seemed impossible or too much work back then. Some of the key pieces missing have become trivial, and even if you don't know how to do something AI will help you figure it out or just let you come up with a solution that may seem dirty, but actually works, whereas before it was imp…
It doesn’t do that for things rarely done before though. And it’s poisoned with opinions from the internet. E.g. you can convince it that we have to remove bullshit layers from programming and make it straightforward. It will even print a few pages of vague bullet points about it, if not yet. But when you ask it to code, it will dump a react form. I’m not trying to invalidate experiences itt, cause I have a similar o…
I want to expand on your sentiment about our pre-AI mindset. Programming has made it easy to do things of essentially no value, while getting lots of money for it. Programming is additive and creative; we can always go further in modelling the world and creating chunks of it to use. But I don't see the value in the newest CRUD fullstack application or website. I don't see the intellectual stimulation or even a reasonable amount of user benefit. Programming allows us to produce a lot, but we should be scrutinizing what that lot is. "AI" that enhances what we've been doing will just continue this dull industry. Greed and a nebulous sense of progress are the primary drivers, but they're empty behind it all. Isn't progress supposed to be about good change? We should be focusing on passion projects and/or genuinely helping, or better yet elevating, users (that is to say, everyone).
This is a different proposition, really. It’s one thing to move up the layers of abstraction in code. It’s quite another thing to delegate authoring code altogether to a fallible statistical model. The former puts you in command of more machinery, but the tools are dependable. The latter requires you to stay sharp at your current level, else you won’t be able to spot the problems. Although… I would argue that in the…
> It’s quite another thing to delegate authoring code altogether to a fallible statistical model. Isnt this what a compiler is really doing? JIT optimizes code based on heuristics, it a code path is considered hot. Sure, we might be able to annotate it, but by and large you let the tools figure it out so that we can focus on other things.
But the compiler’s heuristic optimization doesn’t change the effects of the code, does it? Admittedly I’m no compiler expert, but I’ve always been able to have 100% trust that my compiled code will function as written.
Bad blog post You don't want to use AI for complex things that you might not fully understand. These are the cases where you'll miss the hallucinations and get fucked
You just don't understand that AI becoming smarter than humans
Since the Internet became ubiquitous, more people believe the moon landing, climate change, and vaccines are hoaxes.
Is it really that much worse today? When I was a kid, my great aunt died of skin cancer. She was a Christian Scientist and rejected medical treatment in favour of prayer. As a teenager, I remember being annoyed that the newspapers had positive articles on the rejuvenating properties of nonsense like cupping and reiki. At least a few of my friends' parents had healing crystals. People have always believed in whatever…
It feels like the friction to get un-science has been completely removed now. Before you had to get lagged content and physically fetch it somehow. Now you can have it in the palm of your hands 24-7 with the bonus of the content being designed to enrage you to get you sucked in.
As a mostly LLM-skeptic I reluctantly agree this is something AI actually does well. When approaching unfamiliar territory, LLMs (1) use simple language (improvement over academia but also much professional intentionally obfuscated literature), (2) use the right abstraction (they seem good at ”zooming out” to big picture of things, and (3) you can move both laterally between topics and ”zoom in” quickly. Another way…
LLMs don't reason the way we do, but there are similarities at the cognitive pre-conscious level. I made a challenge to various lawyers and the Stanford Codex (no one took the bait yet) to find critical mistakes in the "reasoning" of our Legal AI. One former attorney general told us that he likes how it balances the intent of the law. Sample output (scroll and click on stats and the donuts on the second slide): Sampl…
"One former attorney general told us that he likes how it balances the intent of the law."
In a common law system you generally want actionable legal advice based on predictions on how a judge would rule in a case not "balances the intent of the law" whatever the heck that means.
> some of the tedious boiler-plate code is taken care of. For me that is the bit which stands out, I'm switching languages to TypeScript and JSX right now. Getting copilot (+ claude) to do things is much easier when I know exactly what I want, but not here and not in this framework (PHP is more my speed). There's a bunch of stuff you're supposed to know as boilerplate and there's no time to learn it all. I am not lea…
The idea of untangling AI generated typescript spaghetti fills me with dread. It’s as bad as untangling the last guy’s typescript spaghetti. He quit, so I can’t ask him about it either.
When you ask AI to do a thing, you at least have some minimal amount of intent — you just need to retain the prompt.
Most of the time, programmers don’t record all of the assumptions and design decisions in code or documentation.
The idea of untangling AI generated typescript spaghetti fills me with dread. It’s as bad as untangling the last guy’s typescript spaghetti. He quit, so I can’t ask him about it either.
When you ask AI to do a thing, you at least have some minimal amount of intent — you just need to retain the prompt. Most of the time, programmers don’t record all of the assumptions and design decisions in code or documentation.
Weird argument, but I’m down to bikeshed a bit.
most of the time there’s an old ticket in the work tracker.
I’d bet those tickets contain at least as much info as any prompt.
Interesting ! I have a bunch of older android phones that could be repurposed for some tinkering. The touchscreen display and input would open a lot more interactive possibilities. Is there a community or gallery of ideas and projects that leverage this?
There is this repository: https://github.com/tejado/android-usb-gadget They have some examples that emulate an USB keyboard and mouse, and the app shows how to configure the Gadget API to turn the phone into whatever USB device you want. The repo is unfortunately inactive, but the underlying feature is exposed through a stable Linux kernel API (via ConfigFS), so everything will continue working as long as Android lea…
Excellent - Thanks!
I always wondered if we could convert an old andoid phone or tablet into a USB/wireless graphics-tablet for drawing input -- or as a live annotator for screen presentations where I can mirror the PC slideshow on the tablet and use the tablet to make annotations during a lecture say.
If there are any such projects already -- I would e very keen to take a look.
I could not disagree more. Those concepts, theories and all that knowledge is what makes it so powerful. I feel successful with AI because I know what to do (I’m older than you by a lot). I talk to younger people and they don’t know how to think about a big system or have the ability to communicate their strategies. You do. I’m 72 and was bored. Now that Claude will do the drudgery, I am inspired.
I understand your point of view and I do agree that with the current state of affairs I am kind of OK. It's useful for me, and I am still needed. But seeing the progress and adoption, I wonder what will happen when that valuable skill (how to think about a big system, etc) will also be replicated by AI. and then, poof.
I doubt that AI will ever figure out 'what to do' since it doesn't have a body and can't get out in the world.
But, if it does, I will go the way of all those buggy whip makers and find something else to do. (And it will probably be doing something with AI.)