I was interested until I got to the "fascist" line where the author reveals his motives for avoiding AI. Bummer, I was hoping for a level headed technical argument. This post doesn't belong on the front page.
I don't care how well your "AI" works
611–620 of 808 posts
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#613Earlier 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.
Nothing craftsman? The detail required to setup a complex image gen pipeline to produce something the has the consistent style, composition, placement, etc, and quite a bit more-- for things that will go into production and need a repeatable pipeline-- it's huge. Take every bit as much creative vision.
Taking just images, consider AI merely a different image capture mechanism, like the camera is vs. painting. (You could copy.paste many critiques about this sort of ai and just replace it with "camera") Sure it's more accessible to a non professional, in AI's case much more so than cameras wear to years of learning painting. But there's a world of difference between what most people do in a prompt online and how professionals integrating it into their workflow are doing. Are such things "art"? That's not a productive question, mostly, but there's this: when it occurs, it has every bit as much intention, purpose and from a human behind it as that which people complain is lacking, but are referring to the one-shot prompt process in their mind when they do.
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, compare this to other professions, don't look at in isolation, and you'll see why you're still (or will have, seems you're a student still) having a much more pleasant life than others.
This is completely irrelevant. The point is that the profession is being devalued, i.e. losing value relative to where it was. If, for example, the US dollar loses value, it's not a "counterargument" to point out that it's still much more valuable than the Zimbabwe dollar.
It isn't though, none of our lives are happening in isolation, even if you don't believe it, there are other humans out there, with real responsibilities outside of computers.
Even if the competition is fierce, do you think it isn't for other professions, or what's the point? Of course a job that is well-paid, has few drawbacks and let you sit indoors in front of computer, probably doing something you enjoy in general, is popular and has competition.
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a useful thing to look at when you feel like all hope is lost and "wow is so difficult being a programmer" strikes, because it'll make you realize how easy you have it compared to non-programmers/nom-tech people.
Realizing how supposedly “easy” you have it compared to other people is not as encouraging or motivational as you’re implying it is. And how “easy” do you have it if you can’t find a job in your field?
Might be worth investigating why it isn't if so. People stressed about their situation usually find some solace in being helped realize what their position in the world actually is, as everything is always relative, not absolute.
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#616I feel like in a sci-fi world with robots, teleportation and holodecks these people would decide to stay at home and hand wash the dishes. If an amazing world changing technology like LLMs shows up on your doorstep and your response is to ignore it and write blog posts about how you don't care about it then you aren't curious and you aren't really a hacker.
I don't touch dishwashers with a stick. No matter how well they work. I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the dishwasher brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive cleaning circles. Edit: Ha I see you edited "empty the dishwasher" to "hand wash the dishes". My thoughts exactly. There's no hope for these people.
Tbf there are a lot of dishwashers, where I have had to essentially prewash all the dishes to make sure the dishes actually come out clean.
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#617> 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…
YES. The "This is evidenced by the new set of hacker values being almost purely performative" is so incredibly true. I went to a privacy event about Web3, and the event organisers hired a photographer who took photos of everyone (no "no photo" stickers available), and they even flew a drone above our heads to take overarching videos of everyone :D I guess "privacy" should have been in quotes. All the values and aesthetics of the original set of people who actually cared about privacy (and were attracted to it) has been evaporated. All that remained are the hype. It was wild.
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally the worst job you can find as a programmer today (if you lower you standards and particularly, stay away from cryptocurrency jobs) is 10x better than the non-programmer jobs you can find. If you don't trust me, give a non-programming job a try for 1 year and then come back and tell me how much more comfy $JOB was :)
> Literally the worst job you can find as a programmer today (if you lower you standards and particularly, stay away from cryptocurrency jobs) is 10x better than the non-programmer jobs you can find. This is a ridiculous statement. I know plenty of people (that are not developers) that make around the same as I do and enjoy their work as much as I do. Yes, software development is a great field to be in, but there's p…
Huh? I'm not saying there isn't careers out there that are also good, I'm not sure what in my comment made it seem so? Of course there are many great fields out there, wasn't my intention to somehow seem to say software development is the only one.
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
The folks who love command-line and terminals had not been luddites all this time?
lol, no. They're people who think faster. Someone who uses vscode will never produce code faster than someone proficient in vim. Someone who clicks through GUI windows will never be able to control their computer as fast as someone with a command prompt. I'm sure that there are some examples who enjoy it for the interface. I think CRT term/emulator is peak aesthetic. And a few who aren't willing to invest the time to…
> Someone who uses vscode will never produce code faster than someone proficient in vim.
Is this an actually serious/honest take of yours?
I've been using vim for 20 years and, while I've spent almost no time with VS Code, I'd say that a lot of JetBrains' IDEs' built in features have definitely made me faster than I ever was with vim.
Oh wait. No true vim user would come to this conclusion, right?
Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works
#620I feel like in a sci-fi world with robots, teleportation and holodecks these people would decide to stay at home and hand wash the dishes. If an amazing world changing technology like LLMs shows up on your doorstep and your response is to ignore it and write blog posts about how you don't care about it then you aren't curious and you aren't really a hacker.
I feel like the hacker response would be to roll your own models and move away from commercial offerings. Stuff like eleuther.ai is pretty inspirational, but that movements seems to have died down a bit. At least we still have a couple companies believing in doing open-weight stuff.