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Everyone in Seattle hates AI

jonready.com

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Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#151

Post by sleepybrett »

empressplay wrote: post #88
kg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of at least one bigco that will no longer hire anyone, period, who doesn't have at least 6 months of experience using genai to code and isn't enthusiastic about genai. No exceptions. I assume this is probably true of other companies too. I think it makes some amount of sense if you've decided you want to be "an AI company", but it also makes me wary. Apocryphally Google for a long period of time struggled to h…

Like any tool, the longer you use it the better you learn where you can extract value from it and where you can't, where you can leverage it and where you shouldn't. Because your behaviour is linked to what you get out of the LLM, this can be quite individual in nature, and you have to learn to work with it through trial and error. But in the end engineers do appear to become more productive 'pairing' with an LLM, so…

So far, for me, it's just an annoying tool that gets worse outcomes potentially faster than just doing it by hand.

It doesn't matter how much I use it. It's still just an annoying tool that makes mistakes which you try to correct by arguing with it but then eventually just fix it yourself. At best it can get you 80% there.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#152

Post by ajkjk »

ajkjk wrote: post #124

> like building an AI product made me part of the problem. It's not about their careers. It's about the injustice of the whole situation. Can you possibly perceive the injustice? That the thing they're pissed about is the injustice? You're part of the problem because you can't. That's why it's not about whether the tools are good or bad. Most of them suck, also, but occasionally they don't--but that's not the point.…

I feel like this is a textbook example of how people talk past each other. There are people in this world who operate under personal utility maximization, and they think everyone else does also. Then there are people who are maximizing for justice: trying to do the most meaningful work themselves while being upset about injustices. Call it scrupulosity, maybe. Executives doing stupid pointless things to curry favor is massively unjust, so it's infuriating.

If you are a utilitarian person and you try to parse a scrupulous person according to your utilitarianism of course their actions and opinions will make no sense to you. They are not maximizing for utility, whatsoever, in any sense. They are maximizing for justice. And when injustices are perpetrated by people who are unaccountable, it creates anger and complaining. It's the most you can do. The goal is to get other people to also be mad and perhaps organize enough to do something about it. When you ignore them, when you fail to parse anything they say as about justice, then yes, you are part of the problem.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#153

Post by dwaltrip »

suprjami wrote: post #104
hectdev wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the latest tech holy war. Tabs vs Spaces but more existential. I'm usually anti hype and I've been convinced of AI's use over and over when it comes to coding. And whenever I talk about it, I see that I come across as an evangelist. Some people appreciate that, online I get a lot of push back despite having tangible examples of how it has been useful.

I don't see it that way. Tabs, spaces, curly brace placement, Vim, Emacs, VSCode, etc are largely aesthetic choices with some marginal unproven cognitive implications. I find people mostly prefer what they are used to, and if your preference was so superior then how could so many people build fantastic software using the method you don't like? AI isn't like that. AI is a bunch of people telling me this product can do…

You can vibe-code a throwaway UI for investigating some complex data in less than 30 minutes. The code quality doesn't matter, and it will make your life much easier.

Rinse and repeat for many "one-off" tasks.

It's not going away, you need to learn how to use it. shrugs shoulders

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#154

Post by IAmBroom »

lukev wrote: post #123

Interesting that this talks about people in tech who hate AI; it's true, tech seems actually fairly divided with respect to AI sentiment. You know who's NOT divided? Everyone outside the tech/management world. Antipathy towards AI is extremely widespread.

And yet there are multiple posts ITT (obviously from tech-oriented people) proclaiming that large swaths of the non-tech world love AI.

An opinion I've personally never encountered in the wild.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#155

Post by bwfan123 »

bccdee wrote: post #41

> Engineers don't try because they think they can't. This article assumes that AI is the centre of the universe, failing to understand that that assumption is exactly what's causing the attitude they're pointing to. There's a dichotomy in the software world between real products (which have customers and use cases and make money by giving people things they need) and hype products (which exist to get investors excite…

> There's a dichotomy in the software world between real products (which have customers and use cases and make money by giving people things they need) and hype product

I think there is a broader dichotomy between the people-persuation-plane, and the real-world-facts plane. In the people-persuation plane, it is all about convincing someone of something, and hype plays here, and marketing, religion and political persuation too. In the real world plane, it is all about tangible outcomes, and working code or results play here, and gravity and electromagnetism too. Sometimes there is a reflex loop between the two. I chose the engineering career because, what i produce is tangible, but I realize that a lot of my work is in the people-plane.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#156

Post by mr_toad »

pjmlp wrote: post #84
bccdee wrote: post #41

> Engineers don't try because they think they can't. This article assumes that AI is the centre of the universe, failing to understand that that assumption is exactly what's causing the attitude they're pointing to. There's a dichotomy in the software world between real products (which have customers and use cases and make money by giving people things they need) and hype products (which exist to get investors excite…

In European consulting agencies the trend now is to make AI part of each RFP reply, you won't go through the sales team, if AI isn't crammed there as part of the solution being delivered, and we get evaluated for it. This takes all the joy away, even traditional maintenance projects of big corps seems attractive nowadays.

I remember when everything had a have the word ‘digital’ in it. And I’m old enough to remember when ‘multimedia’ was a buzzword that was crammed into anywhere it would fit.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#157

Post by pixl97 »

mingus88 wrote: post #95
throwout4110 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a dichotomy in the software world between real products (which have customers and use cases and make money by giving people things they need) and hype products (which exist to get investors excited, so they'll fork over more money). AI is not both of these things? There are no real AI products that have real customers and make money by giving people what they need? > LLMs are a more substantive technology t…

Not OP but for starters LLMs != AI LLMs are not an intelligence, and people who treat them as if they are infallible Oracles of wisdom are responsible for a lot of this fatigue with AI

>Not OP but for starters LLMs != AI

Please don't do this, make up your own definitions.

Pretty much anything and everything that uses neural nets is AI. Just because you don't like how the definition has been since the beginning doesn't mean you get to reframe it.

In addition, if humans are not infallible oracles of wisdom, they wouldn't be an intelligence in your definition.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#158

Post by IAmBroom »

par wrote: post #86

I think reading the room is required here. You and your friend can both be right at the same time. You want to build an AI-enabled app, and indeed there's plenty of opportunity for it I'm sure. And your friend can hate what it's done to their job stability and the industry. Also, totally unrelated, but is the meaning or etymology behind the app name Wanderfugl? I initially read it as Wanderfungl.

I "spoke" it to myself while reading, and instantly heard "Wonderfuckle".

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#159

Post by jfalcon »

nickff wrote: post #11
mips_avatar wrote: post #2

Author here if anyone has thoughts

I was under the distinct impression that Seattle was somewhat divided over 'big tech', with many long-term residents resenting Microsoft and Amazon's impact on the city (and longing for the 'artsy and free-spirited' place it used to be). Do you think those non-techies are sympathetic to the Microsofties and Amazonians? This is a genuine question, as I've never lived in Seattle, but I visit often, and live in the PNW.

It depends on how AI affects your economy.

If you are a writer or a painter or a developer - in a city as expensive as Seattle - then one may feel a little threatened. Then it becomes the trickle down effect, if I lose my job, I may not be able to pay for my dog walker, or my child care or my hair dresser, or...

Are they sympathetic? It depends on how much they depend on those who are impacted. Everyone wants to get paid - but AI don't have kids to feed or diapers to buy.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#160

Post by tptacek »

pesus wrote: post #137
tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine reasons why non-tech people in SF would hate all tech. I work in tech and living in the middle of that was a big part of why I was in such a hurry to get out of there.

Frankly, tech deserves its bad reputation in SF (and worldwide, really). One look at the dystopian billboards bragging about trying to replace humans with AI should make any sane human angry at what tech has done. Or the rising rents due to an influx of people working on mostly useless AI startups, 90% of which won't be around in 5 years. Or even how poorly many in tech behave in public and how poorly they treat serv…

I don't agree with any of this. I just think it's aggravating to live in a company town.
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