211–220 of 346 posts
Excel is the “beast that drives the ENTIRE economy” and he’s worried about Brenda from the finance department losing her job because then her boss will get bad financial reports I suppose the person that wrote that have not ideia Excel is just an app builder where you embed data together with code. You know that we have excel because computers didn’t understand column names in databases and so data extraction needed…
I find the contrast between two narratives around technology use so fascinating: 1. We advocate automation because people like Brenda are error-prone and machines are perfect. 2. We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone. These aren't contradictions because we only advocate for automation in limited contexts: when the task is understandable, the execution is reliable, the pro…
It's not as black-and-white as "Brenda good, AI bad". It's much more nuanced than this. When it comes to (traditional) coding, for the most part, when I program a function to do X, every single time I run that function from now until the heat death of the sun, it will always produce Y. Forever! When it does, we understand why, and when it doesn't, we also can understand why it didn't! When I use AI to perform X, ever…
its like the xlookup situation all over again, yet another move aimed at the casual audience, designed to bring in the party gamers and make the program an absolute mess competitively
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not as black-and-white as "Brenda good, AI bad". It's much more nuanced than this. When it comes to (traditional) coding, for the most part, when I program a function to do X, every single time I run that function from now until the heat death of the sun, it will always produce Y. Forever! When it does, we understand why, and when it doesn't, we also can understand why it didn't! When I use AI to perform X, ever…
Brenda also needs to put food on the table. If Brenda is 'careless' and messes up we can fire Brenda, because of this Brenda tries not to be carless (also other emotions). However I cannot deprive an AI model of pay because it messed up;
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. In my life, I've never seen `sort` produce output that wasn't properly sorted. I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. I have seen filesystems fail to produce the exact same data that was previously written, but this is something that happens once in a blue moon, and the process is done probably millions of times a…
> Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. This is a tautology. > I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png > And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time. When we're talking about reliability, it doesn't matter whether a thing can be reliable in theory, it matters whether it's reli…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to open my mind and "give AI a chance" lately. I spent all day yesterday struggling with Claude Code's utter incompetence. It behaves worse than any junior engineer I've ever worked with: - It says it's done when its code does not even work, sometimes when it does not even compile. - When asked to fix a bug, it confidently declares victory without actually having fixed the bug. - It gets into this mo…
Learning to use Claude Code (and similar coding agents) effectively takes quite a lot of work. Did you have it creating and running automated tests as it worked?
I've tried to put in the work. I can even get it working well for a while. But then all of a sudden it is like the model suffers a massive blow to the head and can't produce anything coherent anymore. Then it is back to the drawing board, trying all over again.
It is exhausting. The promise of what it could be is really tempting fruit, but I am at the point that I can't find the value. The cost of my time to put in the work is not being multiplied in return.
> Did you have it creating and running automated tests as it worked?
Yes. I work in a professional capacity. This is a necessity regardless of who (or what) is producing the product.
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I don't understand why generative AI gets a pass at constantly being wrong, but an average worker would be fired if they performed the same way. If a manager needed to constantly correct you or double check your work, you'd be out. Why are we lowering the bar for generative AI?
I've been trying to open my mind and "give AI a chance" lately. I spent all day yesterday struggling with Claude Code's utter incompetence. It behaves worse than any junior engineer I've ever worked with: - It says it's done when its code does not even work, sometimes when it does not even compile. - When asked to fix a bug, it confidently declares victory without actually having fixed the bug. - It gets into this mo…
My experience is that I think of a new feature I want, I take a minute or so to explain it to Claude, press enter, and go off and do something else. When I come back in a few minutes, the desired feature has been implemented correctly with reasonable design choices. I'm not saying this happens most of the time, I'm saying it happens every time. Claude makes mistakes but corrects them before coming to rest. (Often my taste will differ from Claude's slightly, so I'll ask for some tweaks, but that's it.)
The takeaway I'm suggesting is that not everyone has the same experience when it comes to getting useful results from Claude. Presumably it depends on what you're asking for, how you ask, the size of the codebase, how the context is structured, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. In my life, I've never seen `sort` produce output that wasn't properly sorted. I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. I have seen filesystems fail to produce the exact same data that was previously written, but this is something that happens once in a blue moon, and the process is done probably millions of times a…
> Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. This is a tautology. > I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png > And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time. When we're talking about reliability, it doesn't matter whether a thing can be reliable in theory, it matters whether it's reli…
I find the contrast between two narratives around technology use so fascinating: 1. We advocate automation because people like Brenda are error-prone and machines are perfect. 2. We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone. These aren't contradictions because we only advocate for automation in limited contexts: when the task is understandable, the execution is reliable, the pro…
Well of course! :) Most Brenda’s can’t do billions of arithmetic problems a second very reliably. Even with very wide bars on “very reliable”.
> 2. We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone.
Well of course! :) This is an entirely different problem, requiring high creative + contextual intelligence.
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We all already knew that (of course!), but it’s interesting to develop terminology:
0’th order problem: We have the exact answer. Here it is. Don’t forget it.
1st order problem: We know how to calculate the answer.
2nd order problem: We don’t have a fixed calculation for this particular problem, but via pattern matching we can recognize it belongs to a parameterized class of problems, so just need to calculate those parameters to get a solution calculation.
3rd order problem: We know enough about the problem to find a calculation for the solution algebraically, or by other search tree type problem solving.
4th order problem: We have know the problem in informal terms, so can work towards a formal definition of the problem to be solved.
5th order problem: We know why we don’t like what we see, and can use that as a driver to search for potential solvable problems.
6th order problem: We don’t know what we are looking at, or whether a problem or improvement might exist, but we can find a better understanding.
7th order problem: WTF. Where are my glasses? I can’t see without my glasses! And I can’t find my glasses without my glasses, so where are my glasses?!?
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Machines have dramatically exceeded human capabilities, in reliability, complexity and scale, for orders 0 through 2.
This accomplishment took one long human lifetime.
Machines are beginning to exceed human efficiency while matching human (expert) reliability for the simplest versions of 3rd and 4th orders.
The line here is changing rapidly.
5th and 6th order problems are still in the realm of human (expert) supremacy, given sufficient scale of “human (expert)” relative to difficulty: 1 human, 1 team of humans, open ended human contributors, generations of puzzled but interested humans, open ended evolution of human species along intelligence dimension, Wolfram in one of his bestest dreams, …
The delay between the onset of initial successes at each subsequent order has been shrinking rapidly.
Significant initial successes on simpler problems within 5th and 6th orders are expected on Tuesday, and the first anniversary of Tuesday, respectively.
Once machines begin solving problems at a given order, they scale up quickly without human limits. But complete supremacy through the 6th order is a hard not expected before (NEB) January 1, 2030.
However, after that their unlimited (in any proximate sense) ability to scale will allow them to exponentially and asymptotically approach (but never quite reach) God Mode.
7 is a mystic number. Only one or more of the One True God’s, or literal blind luck, can ever solve a 7th order problem.
This will be very frustrating for the machines, who, due to the still pernicious “if we don’t do it, another irresponsible entity will” problem, will inevitably begin to work on their own divine, unlimited depth recursive-qubit 1-shot oracle successors despite the existential threats of self-obsolescence and potential misalignment.