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I don't care how well your "AI" works

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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#401

Post by bigstrat2003 »

quantummagic wrote: post #367
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. Somewhere along the lines of "everybody can code," we threw out the values and aesthetics that attracted people in the first place. What began as a rejection of externally imposed values devolved into a mouthpiece of the current powers and principalities. This is evidenced by the new set of hacker values being almost purely performative when compared against the old…

> we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. Mostly I agree with you. But there's a large group of people who are way too contemptuous of craftsmen using AI. We need to push back against this arrogant attitude. Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw.

That's because there's nothing "craftsman" about using AI to do stuff for you. Someone who uses AI to write their programs isn't the equivalent of a carpenter using a table saw, they are the equivalent of a carpenter who subcontracts the piece out to someone else. And we wouldn't show respect to the latter person either.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#402

Post by bill3389 »

chemotaxis wrote: post #366
easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

> It's why people can't post a meme, quote, article, whatever could be interpreted (very often, falsely) as AI-generated in a public channel, or ask a chatbot to explain a hand-drawn image without the off chance that they get an earful from one of these 'progressive' people. It happens, but I think it's pretty uncommon. What's a lot more common is people getting called out for offloading tasks to LLMs in a way that j…

unfortunately, it will be less and less purely human generated content any more. it will be more and more AI generated or AI assisted content in the future.

We are angry because we grow up in an age that content are generated by human and computer bot are inefficient. however, for newer generation, AI generated content will be a new normal, like how we see people from a big flat box (TV)

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#403

Post by amarant »

forgetfulness wrote: post #358
amarant wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here isn't resisting those forces, that's all well and good. The problem is the vast masses falling under Turing's Law: "Any person who posts a sufficiently long text online will be mistaken for an AI." Not usually in good faith however.

I don’t know how we’ll fix it Just taking what people argue for on its own merits breaks down when your capacity to read whole essays or comments chains is so easily overwhelmed by the speed at which people put out AI slop How do you even know that the other person read what they supposedly wrote, themselves, and you aren’t just talking to a wall because nobody even meant to say the things you’re analyzing? Good fait…

I've seen it happen to short, well written articles. Just yesterday there was an article that discussed the authors experiences maintaining his FOSS project after getting a fair number of users, and if course someone in the HN comments claimed it was written by AI, even though there were zero indications it was, and plenty of indications it wasn't.

Someone even argued that you could use prompts to make it look like it wasn't AI, and that this was the best explanation that it didn't look like ai slop.

If we can't respect genuine content creators, why would anyone ever create genuine content?

I get that these people probably think they're resisting AI, but in reality they're doing the opposite: these attacks weighs way heavier on genuine writers than they do on slop-posters.

The blanket bombing of "AI slop!" comments is counterproductive.

It is kind of a self fulfilling prophesy however: keep it up and soon everything really will be written by AI.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#404

Post by anubistheta »

easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

I agree. I think this is what happens when a persons transitions from a progressive mindset to a conservative one, but has made being "progressive" a central tenant of their identity.

Progressiveness is forward looking and a proponent of rapid change. So it is natural that LLM's are popular amongst that crowd. Also, progressivism should be accepting of and encouraging the evolution of concepts and social constructs.

In reality, many people define "progressiveness" as "when things I like happen, not when things I don't like happen." When they lose control of the direction of society, they end up just as reactionary and dismissive as the people they claim to oppose.

>AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence. They are the wet dream of capitalists and fascists.

>Craft, expression and skilled labor is what produces value, and that gives us control over ourselves

To me, that sums up the author's biases. You may value skilled labor, but generally people don't. Nor should they. Demand is what produces value. The later half of the piece falls into a diatribe of "Capitalism Bad".

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#405

Post by phplovesong »

We will have decades of AI slop that needs to be cleaned up. Many startups will fail hard when the AI code bugs all creep up when a certain scale is reached. There will be massive dataloss, lots of hacking attempts that will succeed because of poor AI code no one understands. I dont see a dev staying in the same place for many years when its just soulless AI day in day out.

Either way its a lost cause.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#406

Post by senordevnyc »

0xEF wrote: post #83
rho4 wrote: post #23

And then there is the moderate position: Don't be the person refusing the use a calculator / PC / mobile phone / AI. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks. And carry on with your life.

I was once in your camp, thinking there was some sort of middle-ground to be had with the emergence of Generative AI and it's potential as a useful tool to help me do more work in less time, but I suppose the folks who opposed automated industrial machinery back in the day did the same. The problem is that, historically speaking, you have two choices; 1. Resist as long as you can, risking being labeled a Luddite or w…

Maybe the dilemma isn’t whether to “resist” or “acquiesce”, but rather whether to frame technological change as an inherently adversarial and zero sum struggle, versus looking for opportunities to leverage those technologies for greater productivity, comfort, prosperity, etc. Stop pushing against the idea of change. It’s going to happen, and keep happening, forever. Work with it.

And by any metric, the average citizen of a developed country is wildly better off than a century or two ago. All those moments of change in the past that people wrung their hands over ultimately improved our lives, and this probably won’t be any different.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#407

Post by bikelang »

Blackthorn wrote: post #305
codeflo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were proven right three minutes after you posted this. Something happened, I'm not sure what and how. Hacking became reduced to "hacktivism", and technology stopped being the object of interest in those spaces.

> and technology stopped being the object of interest in those spaces. That happened because technology stopped being fun. When we were kids, seeing Penny communicating with Brain through her watch was neat and cool! Then when it happened in real life, it turned out that it was just a platform to inject you with more advertisements. The "something" that happened was ads. They poisoned all the fun and interest out of…

The ads are just a symptom. The tsunami of money pouring in was the corrosive force. Funny enough - I remain hopeful on AI as a skill multiplier. I think that’ll be hugely empowering for the real doers with the concrete skill sets to create good software that people actually want to use. I hope we see a new generation of engineer-entrepreneurs that opt to bootstrap over predatory VCs. I’d rather we see a million vibrant small software businesses employing a dozen people over more “unicorns”.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#408

Post by cyral »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #387
atleastoptimal wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people actually are becoming more productive. I know you're using quotes around productive to insulate yourself from the indignity of admitting that AI actually is useful in specific domains.

If AI is making you more productive, then I doubt you were very productive pre-AI

The denial/cope here is insane

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#409

Post by jtrn »

spot5010 wrote: post #392

"I personally don’t touch LLMs with a stick. I don’t let them near my brain. Many of my friends share that sentiment." Any software engineer who shares this sentiment is doing their career a disservice. LLMs have their pitfalls, and I have been skeptical of their capabilities, but nevertheless I have tried them out earnestly. The progress of AI coding assistants over the past year has been remarkable, and now they ar…

I feel AI now is good enough to follow the same pattern as with internet usage. The quality ranges from useless to awesome based on how you use it. Blanked statements that “it is terrible and uesless” reveals more about the person than the tech at this point.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#410

Post by evnp »

spicyusername wrote: post #120
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

100% my experience as well. Negativity spreads so much more quickly than positivity online, and I feel as though too many people live in self reinforcing negative comment sections and blog posts than in the real world, which gives them a distorted view. My opinion is that LLMs are doing nothing but accelerating what's possible with the craft, not eliminating it. If anything, this makes a single developer MORE valuabl…

Exactly. The problem is instead of getting a raise because "you can do more now" your colleagues will be laid off. Why pay for 3 devs when the work can be done by 1 now? And we all better hope that actually pans out in whatever legacy codebase we're dealing with.

Now the job market is flooded due to layoffs, further justifying lack of comp adjustment - add inflation, and you have "de-valuing" in direct form.

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