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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

#591

Post by asdfman123 »

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…

This is the fate that befalls any wildly successful subculture: the MOPs start showing up, fascinated by it, and the sociopaths monetize it to get rich. The original geeks who created the scene become increasingly powerless.

Relevant article: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

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

#592

Post by RHSeeger »

square_usual wrote: post #544
RHSeeger wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never as taxing (mental and physical) as the physical labor I did before I was a programmer I find it... very strange that you think software development is less mentally taxing than physical labor.

Have you done physical labour? I find it odd you think physical labor cannot be as mentally taxing. Having done some myself, I agree with GP.

I've never done anything like road/construction work. But I've done restaurant work, being on my feet for 8+ hours per day... and mentally, it just doesn't compare to software development.

- After a long day of physical labor, I come home and don't want to move.

- After a long day of software development, I come home and don't want to think.

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

#593

Post by miningape »

ttul wrote: post #236

This post raises genuine concerns about the integration of large language models into creative and technical work, and the author writes with evident passion about what they perceive as a threat to human autonomy and craft. BUT… the piece suffers from internal contradictions, selective reasoning, and rhetorical moves that undermine its own arguments in ways worth examining carefully. My opinion: This sort of low-evid…

Claude, summarise this for me

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

#594

Post by jimbokun »

pksebben wrote: post #333
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"…

Likely progressive, but definitely not luddite [0]. Anti-capitalist for sure. I struggle with this discourse deeply. With many posters like OP, I align almost completely - unions are good, large megacorps are bad, death to facists etc. It's when we get to the AI issue that I do a bit of a double take. Right now, AI is almost completely in the hands of a few large corp entities, yes. But once upon a time, so was the i…

Not true for the Internet. It was the open system anyone could join and many people were shocked it succeeded over the proprietary networks being developed.

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

#595

Post by embedding-shape »

skydhash wrote: post #112
embedding-shape wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I want from my tools is reliability. Which is a spectrum, but LLMs are very much on the lower end. "reliability" can mean multiple things though. LLM invocations are as reliable (granted you know how program properly) as any other software invocation, if you're seeing crashes you're doing something wrong. But what you're really talking about is "correctness" I think, in the actual text that's been responded wi…

I’m not a native English speaker so I checked on the definition of reliability the quality of being able to be trusted or believed because of working or behaving well For a tool, I expect “well” to mean that it does what it’s supposed to do. My linter are reliable when it catches bad patterns I wanted it to catch. My editor is reliable when I can edit code with it and the commands do what they’re supposed to do. So f…

> For a tool, I expect “well” to mean that it does what it’s supposed to do

Ah, then LLMs are actually very reliable by your definition. They're supposed to output semi-random text, and whenever I use them, that's exactly what happens. Except for the times I create my own models and software, I basically never see any cases where the LLM did not output semi-random text.

They're not made for producing "correct code" obviously, because that's a judgement only a human can do, what even is "correct" in that context? Not even us humans can agree what "correct code" is in all contexts, so assuming a machine could do so seems foolish.

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

#596

Post by CamperBob2 »

Survived wrote: post #547
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.

A LLM is more like a CNC panel saw; feed a sheet in one end, stack up parts from the other. It reduces craftsmanship to unskilled labor. The design work and thinking happen somewhere else. The operator comes in, punches a clock, and chokes on MDF dust for 8 hours.

No, the idea is that such a CNC saw shouldn't need an operator at all. To the extent it still does, the operator doesn't even need to be in the same town, much less the same building.

This is a GOOD thing.

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

#597

Post by fireflash38 »

cyral wrote: post #408
bluefirebrand wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The denial/cope here is insane

My experience with using AI is that it's a glorified stack overflow copy paster. It'll even glue a handful of SO answers together!

But then you run into classic SO problems... Like the first solution doesn't work. Nor the second one. And the third one introduces a completely different coding style. The last one is implemented in pure sh/GNU utils.

One thing it is absolutely amazing at: digesting things that have bad documentation, like openssl C api. Even then you still gotta be on the watch for hallucinations, and audit it very thoroughly.

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

#598

Post by pirates »

evnp wrote: post #435
acedTrex wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really easy to use LLMs to shift work onto other people. This is so incredibly true.

I'm interested in this. Code review, most egregiously where the "author" neglected to review the LLM output themselves, seems like a clear instance. What are some other examples? Something that should go in a "survival guide" for devs that still prefer to code themselves.

AI-generated docs, charts, READMEs, TOE diagrams. My company’s Confluence is flooded with half assed documentation from several different dev teams that either loosely matches or doesn’t match at all the behavior or configuration of their apps.

For example they ask to have networking configs put into place and point us at these docs that are not accurate and then they expect that we’ll troubleshoot and figure out what exactly they need. It’s a complete waste of time and insulting to shove off that work onto another team because they couldn’t be fucked to read their own code and write down their requirements accurately.

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

#600

Post by k6hkUZtLUM »

I'm really excited that the current AI tools will help lots of people build small and useful projects. Normal people who would otherwise be subject to their OS. Subject to vendor options. Help desk, HR, or finance folks will be able to compose and build tools to help them do their jobs (or hobbies) better. Just like we do.

I think of it like frozen dinners. Frozen dinners are not the same as home cooked meals. There is a place for frozen dinners, fast foods, home cooked meals, and nice restaurants. Plus, many of us spend extra time and money making specialty food that may be as good as anything. Frozen dinners don't take away from that.

I think it's the same for coding and AI use. It might eventually enhance coding overall and help bring an appreciation to what engineers are doing.

Hobby or incidental coders have vastly expanded capabilities. Think of the security guy that needs one program to parse through files for a single project. Those tasks are reasonably attainable today without buying and studying the sed/awk guide. (Of course, we should all do that)

Professionals might also find value using AI tools like they would use a spell checker or auto-complete that can also lookup code specs or refer to other project files for you.

The most amazing and useful software, the software that wows us and moves us or inspires us, is going to be crafted and not vibed. The important software will be guided by the hands of an engineer with care and competence to the end.

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