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Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

boydkane.com

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Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#21

Post by criddell »

themanmaran wrote: post #18

> Because eventually we’ll iron out all the bugs so the AIs will get more reliable over time Honestly this feels like a true statement to me. It's obviously a new technology, but so much of the "non-deterministic === unusable" HN sentiment seems to ignore the last two years where LLMs have become 10x as reliable as the initial models.

Right away my mind went to "well, are people more reliable than they used to be?" and I'm not sure they are.

Of course LLMs aren't people, but an AGI might behave like a person.

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#23

Post by joomla199 »

kazinator wrote: post #2

> AIs will get more reliable over time, like old software is more reliable than new software. :) Was that a humam Freudian slip, or artificial one? Yes, old software is often more reliable than new.

Neither, you’re reading it wrong. Think of it as codebases getting more reliable over time as they accumulate fixes and tests. (As opposed to, say, writing code in NodeJS versus C++)

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#24

Post by darth_avocado »

ljlolel wrote: post #15
darth_avocado wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that the CEO/executive class already has developed a dislike for us and is trying to use us as “batteries” like in the Matrix.

CEOs (even most VCs) are labor too

Until shareholders treat them as such, they will remain in the ruling class

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#25

Post by giancarlostoro »

joomla199 wrote: post #23
kazinator wrote: post #2

> AIs will get more reliable over time, like old software is more reliable than new software. :) Was that a humam Freudian slip, or artificial one? Yes, old software is often more reliable than new.

Neither, you’re reading it wrong. Think of it as codebases getting more reliable over time as they accumulate fixes and tests. (As opposed to, say, writing code in NodeJS versus C++)

Age of Code does not automatically equal quality of code, ever. Good code is maintained by good developers. A lot of bad code is pushed out by management, and other situations, or just bad devs. This is a can of worms you're talking your way into.

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#26

Post by pavel_lishin »

SalientBlue wrote: post #9
alganet wrote: post #5

> here are some example ideas that are perfectly true when applied to regular software Hm, I'm listening, let's see. > Software vulnerabilities are caused by mistakes in the code That's not exactly true. In regular software, the code can be fine and you can still end up with vulnerabilities. The platform in which the code is deployed could be vulnerable, or the way it is installed make it vulnerable, and so on. > Bug…

You should read the footnote marked [1] after "a note for technical folk" at the beginning of the article. He is very consciously making sweeping generalizations about how software works in order to make things intelligible to non-technical readers.

But are those sweeping generalizations true?

> I’m also going to be making some sweeping statements about “how software works”, these claims mostly hold, but they break down when applied to distributed systems, parallel code, or complex interactions between software systems and human processes.

I'd argue that this describes most software written since, uh, I hesitate to even commit to a decade here.

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#27

Post by izzydata »

joomla199 wrote: post #23
kazinator wrote: post #2

> AIs will get more reliable over time, like old software is more reliable than new software. :) Was that a humam Freudian slip, or artificial one? Yes, old software is often more reliable than new.

Neither, you’re reading it wrong. Think of it as codebases getting more reliable over time as they accumulate fixes and tests. (As opposed to, say, writing code in NodeJS versus C++)

Sounds more like survivorship bias. All the bad codebases were thrown out and only the good ones lasted a long time.

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#29

Post by CobrastanJorji »

themanmaran wrote: post #18

> Because eventually we’ll iron out all the bugs so the AIs will get more reliable over time Honestly this feels like a true statement to me. It's obviously a new technology, but so much of the "non-deterministic === unusable" HN sentiment seems to ignore the last two years where LLMs have become 10x as reliable as the initial models.

They have certainly gotten better, but it seems to me like the growth will be kind of logarithmic. I'd expect them to keep getting better quickly for a few more years and then kinda slow and eventually flatline as we reach the maximum for this sort of pattern matching kind of ML. And I expect that flat line will be well below the threshold needed for, say, a small software company to not require a programmer.

Re: Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI

#30

Post by mikkupikku »

I don't understand the "your boss" framing of this article, or more accurately, the title of this article. The article contents don't actually seem to have anything to do with management specifically. Is the reader is meant to believe that not being scared of AI is a characteristic of the managerial class? Is the unstated implication that there is some class warfare angle and anybody who isn't against AI is against laborers? Because what the article actually overtly argues, without any reading between the lines, is quite mundane.
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