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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

#551

Post by jimbokun »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #484
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 talk seriously and plainly about the spiritual and existential damage done by LLMs. I'm tempted to say "You're not helping," as my eyes roll back in their sockets far enough to hurt. But I can also understand how threatening LLMs must appear to programmers, writers, and artists who aren't very good at their jobs. What I don't get is why I should care.

The question about why you should care about others and not just yourself has literature stretching back thousands of years. Maybe start with one of the major world religions?

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

#552

Post by tbrownaw »

idiotsecant wrote: post #476
everdrive wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Somewhere along the lines of "everybody can code," we threw out the values and aesthetics that attracted people in the first place. At some point people started universally accepting the idea that any sort of gatekeeping was a bad thing.I think by now people are starting to realize that this was a flawed idea. (at best, gatekeeping is not a pure negative; it's situational) But, despite coming to realize this I think…

Your point is that the hacker ethos involved ... Fewer people being excited about programming? I don't think we experienced this on the same planet. Web 1.0 was full of weirdos doing cool weird stuff for the pure joy of discovery. That's the ethos we need back, and it's not incompatible with AI. The wrong turn we took was letting business overtake joy. That's a decision we can undo today by opting out of that whole e…

You get a very different crowd if something is a (unprofitable but) fun hobby vs being a well-paying profession.

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

#553

Post by thewebguyd »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #401
quantummagic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Where do you draw the arbitrary line of what is craftmanship and what's not?

Using that line of reasoning I could also argue "Using libraries isn't craftmanship, a real craftsman implements all functionality themselves."

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

#554

Post by JohnBooty »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #311
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"…

> 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.
I don't think that is at ALL at odds with using AI as a coding assistant!

I am not going to tell you I am a coding god, but I have been doing this for nearly 30 years and I feel I'm pretty competent craftsman.

AI has helped me to be a better craftsman. The big picture ideas are mine, but AI has helped immensely with some details.

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

#555

Post by stalfie »

fileeditview wrote: post #319
afro88 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll be waiting a while for the "crashing down". I was a kid when manufacturing went off shore and mass production went into overdrive. I remember my parents complaining about how low quality a lot of mass produced things were. Yet for decades most of what we buy is mass produced, comparatively low quality goods. We got used to it, the benefits outweighed the negatives. What we thought mattered didn't in th…

While a general "crashing down" probably will not happen I could imagine some differences to other mass produced goods. Most of our private data lives in clouds now and there are already regular security nightmares of stolen passwords, photos etc. I fear that these incidents will accumulate with more and more AI generated code that is most likely not reviewed or reviewed by another AI. Also regardless of AI I am more…

I think one major lesson of the history of the internet is that very few people actually care about privacy in a holistic, structural way. People do not want their nudes, browsing history and STD results to be seen by their boss, but that desire for privacy does not translate to guarding their information from Google, their boss, or the government. And frankly this is actually quite rational overall, because Google is in fact very unlikely to leak this information to your boss, and if they did it would more likely to result in a legal payday rather than any direct social cost.

Hacker news obviously suffers from severe selection bias in this regard, but for the general public I doubt even repeated security breaches of vibe coded apps will move the needle much on the perception of LLM coded apps, which means that they will still sell, which means that it doesn't matter. I doubt even most people will pick up the connection. And frankly, most security breaches have no major consequences anyway, in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps the public conscioussness will harden a bit when it comes to uploading nudes to "CheckYourBodyFat", but the truly disastrous stuff like bank access is mostly behind 2FA layers already.

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

#557

Post by Avicebron »

latexr wrote: post #501
andai wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about an architect who outsources the bricklaying? A designer who outsources manufacturing?

Brick laying isn’t architecture and manufacturing isn’t design. Those are separate fields and crafts.

It's very telling when someone invokes this comparison..I see it fairly often. It implies there is this hirearchy of skill/talent between the "architect" and the "bricklayer" such that any architect could be a bricklayer but a bricklayer couldn't be an architect. The conceit is telling.

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

#558

Post by Perepiska »

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"…

There's a simple solution: anyone who posts AI-generated content can label it as "AI-generated" and avoid misleading people.

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

#559

Post by small_scombrus »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #473
layer8 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Blindly” is the operative word here.

That’s almost an oxymoron You can’t be data driven and also blind to the data You might be optimizing for the wrong thing, but it’s not blind, it’s just a bad “model”

> You can’t be data driven and also blind to the data

"Tickets closed" is an amazing data driven & blind to the data metric. You can have someone closing an insane number of tickets, looking amazing on the KPIs, but no one's measuring "Tickets reopened" or "Tickets created for the same issue a day later".

It's really easy to set up awful KPIs and lose all sight of what is actually happening while having data to show your bosses

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

#560

Post by jimbokun »

JohnBooty wrote: post #549
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"…

This was very insightful. It made me think about how "hacker culture" has changed. I'm middle-aged. 30 years ago, hacker culture as I experienced it was about making cool stuff. It was also about the identity -- hackers were geeks. Intelligent, and a little (or a lot) different from the rest of society. Generally speaking, hackers could not avoid writing code. Whether it was shell scripts or HTML or Javascript or ful…

Well there are a lot of us very clear that our identities are being threatened and scared shitless we will lose the ability to pay our rent or buy food because of it.
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