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Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

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Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#81

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #63
rambojohnson wrote: post #58

What exhausts me isn’t “falling behind.” It’s watching the profession collectively decide that the solution to uncertainty is to pile abstraction on top of abstraction until no one can explain what’s actually happening anymore. This agentic arms race by C-suite know-nothings feels less like leverage and more like denial. We took a stochastic text generator, noticed it lies confidently, wipes entire databases and hard…

It’s wild that programmers are willing to accept less determinism.

It's wild that management would be willing to accept it.

I think that for some people it is harder to reason about determinism because it is similar to correctness, and correctness can, in many scenarios be something you trade off - for example in relation to scaling and speed you will often trade off correctness.

If you do not think clearly about the difference with determinism and other similar properties like (real-time) correctness which you might be willing to trade off, you might think that trading off determinism is just more of the same.

Note: I'm against trading off determinism, but I am willing to think there might be a reason to trade it off, just I worry that people are not actually thinking through what it is they're trading when they do it.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#82

Post by Aldipower »

threetonesun wrote: post #75
xzkll wrote: post #34

Does any of you bother the fact that now you have to pay money in order to do your job? I mean AI model subscriptions. Somehow it feels wrong for me to pay for tools that are trying to replace me.

Between subscription software and subscription AI and the rising prices of computer hardware, the idea of a "personal computer" is quickly dying.

Not for me.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#83

Post by zephen »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #61

I love that Agile and Scrum is still unmentioned. Can we stick a fork in it yet?

No, no, no.

We need to have a scrum with 3 agents each from the top 4 AI vendors, with each agent adhering to instructions given by a different programmer.

It's kind of like Robot Wars, except the damage is less physical and more costly.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#84

Post by llmslave2 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #78

Wow - can we coin "Slopbrain" for people who are so far gone into AI eventualism that they can no longer function? Liked "cooked" but "slopped" or something. Good grief lol. Talk about getting lost in the sauce...

[flagged]

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#85

Post by globular-toast »

I don't usually post something like this, but this is so fucking stupid. I'm prepared to stand by that. Let's see in a few years if I'm right.

"AI" is literally models trained to make you think it's intelligent. That's it. It's like the ultimate "algorithm" or addiction machine. It's trained to make you think it's amazing and magical and therefore you think it's amazing and magical.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#86

Post by lazystar »

dahcryn wrote: post #65
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s wild that programmers are willing to accept less determinism.

The good ones don't accept. Sadly there's just many more idiots out there trying to make a quick buck

Delving a bit deeper... I've been wondering if the problem's related to the rise in H1B workers and contractors. These programmers have an extra incentive to avoid pushing back on c-suite/skip level decisions - staying out of in-office politics reduces the risk of deportation. I think companies with a higher % of engineers working with that incentive have a higher risk of losing market share in the long-term.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#87

Post by llmslave2 »

ciconia wrote: post #74

I for one am not using AI, will not touch that steaming pile of manure with a 10 yard stick, and I couldn't care less about the so called magnitude 9 earthquake. When this bubble finally bursts into nothingness, I'll be still here practicing my craft and providing real value for my clients.

I'm using it less and less now, since the sheen has worn off and I've been able to more accurately judge its capabilities. It's like an intern at everything it does and unfortunately I'm expected to produce better code than that.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#88

Post by ares623 »

zephen wrote: post #77
ciconia wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cannot be trusted, why would you use them in the first place?

Obviously people perceive value there, but on the surface it does seem odd. "These things are more destructive than your average toddler, so you need to have a fence in place kind of like that one in Jurassic Park, except you need to make sure it absolutely positively cannot be shut off, but all this effort is worthwhile, because, kind of like civets, some of the artifacts they shit out while they are running amok ap…

Love the mix of metaphors.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#89

Post by leecommamichael »

globular-toast wrote: post #85

I don't usually post something like this, but this is so fucking stupid. I'm prepared to stand by that. Let's see in a few years if I'm right. "AI" is literally models trained to make you think it's intelligent. That's it. It's like the ultimate "algorithm" or addiction machine. It's trained to make you think it's amazing and magical and therefore you think it's amazing and magical.

It’s trained to (lossy) compress large amounts of data. The system prompts have leaked and it’s just instructed to be helpful, right? I don’t entirely disagree with your sentiment, though. It’s brute force.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#90

Post by viraptor »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #63
rambojohnson wrote: post #58

What exhausts me isn’t “falling behind.” It’s watching the profession collectively decide that the solution to uncertainty is to pile abstraction on top of abstraction until no one can explain what’s actually happening anymore. This agentic arms race by C-suite know-nothings feels less like leverage and more like denial. We took a stochastic text generator, noticed it lies confidently, wipes entire databases and hard…

It’s wild that programmers are willing to accept less determinism.

It's not something that suddenly changed. "I'll generate some code" is as nondeterministic as "I'll look for a library that does it", "I'll assign John to code this feature", or "I'll outsource this code to a consulting company". Even if you write yourself, you're pretty nondeterministic in your results - you're not going to write exactly the same code to solve a problem, even if you explicitly try.
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