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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

#221

Post by smogcutter »

eru wrote: post #212
remexre wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel like somebody forgot that "from the first sentence or two of the email, you can tell what it's about" was already a rule of good writing...

You sometimes need to want to quickly learn what's in an email that was written by someone less helpful. Eg sometimes the writer is outright antagonistic, because they have some obligation to tell you something, but don't actually want you to know.

Even bending over that far backwards to find a useful example comes up empty.

Those kinds of emails are so uncommon they’re absolutely not worth wasting this level of effort on. And if you’re in a sorry enough situation where that’s not the case, what you really need is the outside context the model doesn’t know. The model doesn’t know your office politics.

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

DSMan195276 wrote: post #40
1313ed01 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old code that has been maintained (bugfixed), but not messed with too much (i.e. major rewrites or new features) is almost certain to be better than most other code though?

"Bugfixes" doesn't mean the code actually got better, it just means someone attempted to fix a bug. I've seen plenty of people make code worse and more buggy by trying to fix a bug, and also plenty of old "maintained" code that still has tons of bugs because it started from the wrong foundation and everyone kept bolting on fixes around the bad part.

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by adastra22 »

saulpw wrote: post #151
adastra22 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older people are generally more reliable than younger people.

I'm not sure that's generally true. However, older people have a track record, and a reliable older person is likely to be more reliable than a younger person without such a track record.

Reliable has different meanings. I think in this case the meaning is closer to "deterministic" and "follows instructions." An older worker will more reliably behave the same way twice, and more reliably follow the same set of instructions they've been following throughout their career.

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

#224

Post by Gigachad »

tehjoker wrote: post #191
cantrevealname wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When AI ends up running everything essential to survival and society, it’ll be preposterous to even suggest pulling the plug just because it does something bad. Can you imagine the chaos of completely turning off GPS or Gmail today ? Now imagine pulling the plug on something in the near future that controls all electric power distribution, banking communications, and Internet routing.

This is the case with capitalism today. I don't like where he took the philosophy, but Nick Land did have an insight that all the worst things we believe about AI (e.g. paperclip optimizing etc) are capitalism in a nutshell.

Just listen to what these CEOs say on the topic and they basically admit something terrible is being built, but that the most important things is that they are the ones to do it first.

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

#225

Post by scuff3d »

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.

Ironically I came to the comments to point out that all over hackernews you see this sentiment repeated, and that's by a group I would consider to be far more technically competent then your average person. And very helpfully there is one just a few comments down from the top.

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

#226

Post by piyh »

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.

Emergent misalignment and power seeking isn't a bug we can squash with a PR and a unit test

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

#227

Post by intended »

tkgally wrote: post #188
Yoric wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time a junior dev graduates to senior, I expect that they'll be more reliable. In fact, at the end of each project, I expect the junior dev to have grown more reliable. LLMs don't learn from a project. At best, you learn how to better use the LLM. They do have other benefits, of course, i.e. once you have trained one generation of Claude, you have as many instances as you need, something that isn't true with h…

> LLMs don't learn from a project. How long do you think that will remain true? I've bootstrapped some workflows with Claude Code where it writes a markdown file at the end of each session for its own reference in later sessions. It worked pretty well. I assume other people are developing similar memory systems that will be more useful and robust than anything I could hack together.

Permanently.

There’s an interplay between two different ideas of reliability here.

LLMs can only provide output which is somehow within training boundaries.

We can get better at expanding the area within these boundaries.

It will still not be reliable like code is.

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

#228

Post by tomhow »

mikkupikku wrote: post #30

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 l…

Indeed, from reading the article I could really see any discussion of "your boss", so I changed the title to something more representative, and a condensed version of a phrase from the article.

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

#230

Post by toledocavani »

N_Lens wrote: post #190
freetime2 wrote: post #122

For a real world example of the challenges of harnessing LLMs, look at Apple. Over a year ago they had a big product launch focused on "Apple Intelligence" that was supposed to make heavy use of LLMs for agentic workflows. But all we've really gotten since then are a couple of minor tools for making emojis, summarizing notifications, and proof reading. And they even had to roll back the notification summaries for a w…

Apple’s typical standards of “polish and control” seem to be slipping drastically if MacOS Tahoe is anything to go by.

You need to reduce the standard to fit the Apple Intelligence (AI) in. This is also industry best practice.
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