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Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

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Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#51

Post by nunez »

dvt wrote: post #15
afandian wrote: post #2

It’s heartwarming to see Rich Hickey corroborating Rob Pike. All the recent LLM stuff has made me feel that we suddenly jumped tracks into an alternate timeline. Having these articulate confirmations from respected figures is a nice confirmation that this is indeed a strange new world.

This is all just cynical bandwagoning. Google/Facebook/Etc. have done provable irreparable damage to the fabric of society via ads/data farming/promulgating fake news, but now that it's in vogue to hate on AI as an "enlightened" tech genius, we're all suddenly worried about.. what? Water? Electricity? Give me a break. The about-face is embarrassing, especially in the case of Rob Pike (who I'm sure has made 8+ figures…

It's worth mentioning that AI in its current form was not AT ALL a part of Google's corporate strategy until Microsoft and OpenAI forced their hand.

Remember their embarrassing debut of Bard in Paris and the Internet collectively celebrating their all but guaranteed demise?

It's Google+ all over again. It's possible that Pike, like many, did not sign up for that.

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#52

Post by diab0lic »

maplethorpe wrote: post #24
stanleykm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich Hickey designed Clojure.

I asked Claude if it could design Clojure and it said yes. Maybe people like Hickey just aren't needed anymore.

Ironically it may only be able to do this because it has been trained on Hickey’s creation. This was one of his criticisms.

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#53

Post by hintymad »

afandian wrote: post #2

It’s heartwarming to see Rich Hickey corroborating Rob Pike. All the recent LLM stuff has made me feel that we suddenly jumped tracks into an alternate timeline. Having these articulate confirmations from respected figures is a nice confirmation that this is indeed a strange new world.

AI coding tools are effective for many because, unfortunately, our work has become increasingly repetitive. When someone marvels at how a brief prompt can produce functioning code, it simply means the AI has delivered a more imaginative or elaborate specification than that person could envision, even if the resulting code is merely a variation of what has already been written countless times before. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that, as not everyone is fortunate enough to work on new problems and get to implement new ideas. It's just that repetitive work is bound to be automated away and therefore we will see the problems in Rich's rants.

That said, luminaries like Rob Pike and Rich Hickey do not have the above problem. They have the calibre and the freedom to push the boundaries, so to them the above problem is even amplified.

Personally I wish the IT industry can move forward to solve large-scale new problems, just like we did in the past 20 years: internet, mobile, the cloud, the machine learning... They created enormous opportunities (or the enormous opportunities of having software eat the world called for the opportunities?). I'm not sure we will be so lucky for the coming years, but we certainly should try.

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#54

Post by bdangubic »

diab0lic wrote: post #52
maplethorpe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked Claude if it could design Clojure and it said yes. Maybe people like Hickey just aren't needed anymore.

Ironically it may only be able to do this because it has been trained on Hickey’s creation. This was one of his criticisms.

what has hickey been trained on? ;)

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#55

Post by satisfice »

It’s interesting to see AI fanboys desperately trying to shrug off the phenomenon of slop. It makes it clear that AI doesn’t need to take over the world by itself. It will have hundreds of thousands of willing helpers to cooperate in the collapse of human civilization.

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#56

Post by nunez »

ta9000 wrote: post #39

It wasn’t AI that decided not to hire entry level employees. Rich should be smart enough to realize that, and probably has employees of his own. So go hire some people Rich.

False equivalence. He isn't a hiring manager, and AI _has_ been used to justify hiring fewer entry level employees.

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#57

Post by ta9000 »

nunez wrote: post #56
ta9000 wrote: post #39

It wasn’t AI that decided not to hire entry level employees. Rich should be smart enough to realize that, and probably has employees of his own. So go hire some people Rich.

False equivalence. He isn't a hiring manager, and AI _has_ been used to justify hiring fewer entry level employees.

They can justify _their_ decisions all they want. It’d still their decision, not AI’s. This is pure cost cutting nonsense that’s par for the course for poorly run corporations.

Re: Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

#59

Post by kokada »

bdangubic wrote: post #54
diab0lic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically it may only be able to do this because it has been trained on Hickey’s creation. This was one of his criticisms.

what has hickey been trained on? ;)

Years of experience working in Enterprise and complex systems.

And that is all on point with the criticism: while an AI can design a new language based in an existing language like Clojure, we need actual experienced people to design new interesting languages that add new constraints and make Software Engineering as a whole better. And we are also killing with AI the possibility of new people getting up to speed and becoming a future Rich Hickey.

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