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AI is a horse (2024)

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Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#221

Post by rkagerer »

throw310822 wrote: post #75
kylec wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tractor does exactly what you tell it to do though - you turn it on, steer it in a direction, and it goes. I like the horse metaphor for AI better: still useful, but sometimes unpredictable, and needs constant supervision.

The horse metaphor would also do, but it's very tied to the current state of LLMs (which by the way is already far beyond what they were in 2024). It also doesn't capture that horses are what they are, they're not improving and certainly not by a factor of 10, 100 or 1000, while there is almost no limit to the amount of power that an engine can be built to produce. Horses (and oxen) have been available for thousands…

What metrics show 100X or 1000X improvement trends?

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#222

Post by famouswaffles »

ffsm8 wrote: post #181
famouswaffles wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be so far ahead of someone, their input (if you act on it) can only make things worse. That's it. If a human 'teams up' with chess AI today and does anything other than agree with its moves, it will just drag things down.

But how specifically in Chess? These human in the loop systems basically lists possible moves with likelihood of winning, no? So how would the human be a demerit? It'd mean that the human for some reason decided to always use the option that the ai wouldn't take, but how would that make sense? Then the AI would list the "correct" move with a higher likelihood of winning. The point of this strategy was to mitigate tra…

>So how would the human be a demerit? It'd mean that the human for some reason decided to always use the option that the ai wouldn't take, but how would that make sense? Then the AI would list the "correct" move with a higher likelihood of winning.

The human will be a demerit any time it's not picking the choice the model would have made.

>While that might work in a few cases, the human would quickly learn that his ability to overrule the optimal choice is flawed, thus reverting it back to baseline where the human is essentially a non-factor and not a demerit

Sure, but it's not a Centaur game if the human is doing literally nothing every time. The only way for a human+ai team to not be outright worse than only ai is for the human to do nothing at all and that's not a team. You've just delayed the response of the computer for no good reason.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#223

Post by easeout »

doener wrote: post #220

> It is way slower and less reliable than a train but can go more places I‘m not able to follow. So AI is a horse in this metaphor, what is a train then? Still a train?

Hi, that's my website and my wisecrack article. It was a while ago, but I think the metaphor was that a train is traditional deterministic-ish software, whose behavior is quite regular and predictable, compared to something generative which is much less predictable.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#224

Post by easeout »

nomilk wrote: post #94

The metaphor makes sense in comparing a human walking (SWE w/o AI) to a human riding on a horse (SWE w/ AI), except for: > (The horse) is way slower and less reliable than a train but can go more places What does the 'train' represent here? A guess: perhaps off-the-shelf software? - rigid, but much faster if it goes where (/ does what) you want it to.

I wrote this a long time ago, but I think the metaphor was about generative AI applications vs. traditional software applications, not about AI coding agents vs. writing code yourself.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#225

Post by vict7 »

soperj wrote: post #188
simonw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been calling LLMs "electric bicycles for the mind", inspired by that Jobs quote. - some bicycle purists consider electric bicycles to be "cheating" - you get less exercise from an electric bicycle - they can get you places really effectively! - if you don't know how to ride a bicycle an electric bicycle is going to quickly lead you to an accident

Most people I see on their electric bikes aren't even pedaling. They're electric motorcycles, and they're a plague to everyone using pedestrian trails. Some of them are going nearly highway speeds, it's ridiculous.

There are 3 classes of e-bikes in the US, with class 3 topping out at 28mph—anything above that is illegal or in some weird legal grey area. You are thinking of e-motos which are an entirely different beast.

e-motos are a real problem; please don’t lump legitimate e-bikes in with those. It’s simply incorrect.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#226

Post by chr15m »

jpalepu33 wrote: post #212

This metaphor really captures the current state well. As someone building products with LLMs, the "you have to tell it where to turn" part resonates deeply. I've found that the key is treating AI like a junior developer who's really fast but needs extremely clear instructions. The same way you'd never tell a junior dev "just build the feature" - you need to: 1. Break down the task into atomic steps 2. Provide explici…

This is exactly my experience too, thanks for sharing.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#227

Post by jonplackett »

eightys3v3n wrote: post #66
jonplackett wrote: post #6

All true apart you can only lead it to water - it drinks ALL the water regardless of anything else.

Except when you want it to improve something in a particular way you already know about. Then god forbid it understands what you have asked and makes only that change :/ Some times I end up giving up trying to get the AI to build something following a particular architecture or fixing a particular problem in it's provious implementations.

Totally. I just meant literally, AI servers need a lot of water to work.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#228

Post by [deleted] »

throw310822 wrote: post #56

Famously Steve Jobs said that the (personal) computer is "like a bicycle for the mind". It's a great metaphor because- besides the idea of lightness and freedom it communicates- it also described the computer as multiplier of the human strength- the bicycle allows one to travel faster and with much less effort, it's true, but ultimately the source of its power is still entirely in the muscles of the cyclist- you don'…

[deleted]

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#229

Post by DANmode »

aaronharnly wrote: post #162
simonw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been calling LLMs "electric bicycles for the mind", inspired by that Jobs quote. - some bicycle purists consider electric bicycles to be "cheating" - you get less exercise from an electric bicycle - they can get you places really effectively! - if you don't know how to ride a bicycle an electric bicycle is going to quickly lead you to an accident

To keep torturing the metaphor, LLMs might be more like those electric unicycles (Onewheel, Inmotion, etc) – quite speedy, can get you places, less exercise, and also sometimes suddenly choke and send you flying facefirst into gravel. And some people see you whizzing by and think "oh cool", and others see you whizzing by and think "what a tool."

Also: you can ride 8 of them, slowly, asynchronously.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#230

Post by DANmode »

robrain wrote: post #164
matthewkayin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this analogy. I'll add that, while electric bicycles are great for your daily commute, they're not suited for the extremes of biking (at least not yet). - You're not going to take an electric bike mountain biking - You're not going to use an electric bike to do BMX - You're not going to use an electric bike to go bikepacking across the country

Whistlerite here. My Strava stats for last year suggest half and half eMTB and road riding. Tiny bit of fully self-powered MTB work. As a 56-year old, eBikes are what make mountain biking possible and fun for me.

E-bikes keep people out riding for more hours.

Cooldown capability, and no fear of outriding your energy.

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