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AI makes you boring

marginalia.nu

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Re: AI makes you boring

#171

Post by imiric »

elif wrote: post #140
imiric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there should be 10x more hardcore AI denialists and doomers to offset the obnoxiousness and absurdity of the other side. As usual, the reality is somewhere in the middle, perhaps slightly on the denialist side, but the pro-AI crowd has completely lost the plot.

I'm all for well founded arguments against premature AGI empowerment.. But what I'm replying to, and the vast majority of the AI denial I see, is rooted in a superficial, defensive, almost aesthetic knee jerk rejection of unimportant aspects of human taste and preference.

The article does not fit the description of blind AI denialism, though. The author even acknowledges that the tool can be useful. It makes a well articulated case that by not putting any thought into your work and words, and allowing the tool to do the thinking for you, the end product is boring. You may agree or disagree with this opinion, but I think the knee jerk rejection is coming from you.

Re: AI makes you boring

#172

Post by hexaga »

tptacek wrote: post #142
fhd2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users typically don't read code, developers (of the software) do. If it's not worth reading something where the writer didn't take the time to write it, by extension that means nobody read the code. Which means nobody understands it, beyond the external behaviour they've tested. I'd have some issues with using such software, at least where reliability matters. Blackbox testing only gets you so far. But I guess as opp…

Developers do not in fact tend to read all the software they use. I have never once looked at the code for jq, nor would I ever want to (the worst thing I could learn about that contraption is that the code is beautiful, and then live out the rest of my days conflicted about my feelings about it). This "developers read code" thing is just special pleading.

You're a user of jq in the sense of the comment you're replying to, not a developer. The developer is the developer _of jq_, not developers in general.

Re: AI makes you boring

#173

Post by taude »

AstroBen wrote: post #112
taude wrote: post #11

AI writing will make people who write worse than average, better writers. It'll also make people who write better than average, worse writers. Know where you stand, and have the taste to use wisely. EDIT: also, just like creating AGENT.md files to help AI write code your way for your projects, etc. If you're going to be doing much writing, you should have your own prompt that can help with your voice and style. Don't…

Here's my definition of good writing: it's efficient and communicates precisely what you want to convey in an easy to understand way AI is almost the exact opposite. It's verbose fluff that's only superficially structured well. It's worse than average (waiting for someone to reply that I can tell the AI to be concise and meaningful)

Here's AI responding to you:

"You're describing the default output, and you're right — it's bad. But that's like judging a programming language by its tutorial examples.

The actual skill is in the prompting, editing, and knowing when to throw the output away entirely. I use LLMs daily for technical writing and the first draft is almost never the final product. It's a starting point I can reshape faster than staring at a blank page.

The real problem isn't that AI can't produce concise, precise writing — it's that most people accept the first completion and hit send. That's a user problem, not a tool problem."

Re: AI makes you boring

#174

Post by tptacek »

hexaga wrote: post #172
tptacek wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers do not in fact tend to read all the software they use. I have never once looked at the code for jq, nor would I ever want to (the worst thing I could learn about that contraption is that the code is beautiful, and then live out the rest of my days conflicted about my feelings about it). This "developers read code" thing is just special pleading.

You're a user of jq in the sense of the comment you're replying to, not a developer. The developer is the developer _of jq_, not developers in general.

We're talking about Show HN here.

Re: AI makes you boring

#175

Post by kouru225 »

This issue exists in art and I want to push back a little. There has always been automation in art even at the most micro level.

Take for example (an extreme example) the paintbrush. Do you care where each bristle lands? No of course not. The bristles land randomly on the canvas, but it’s controlled chaos. The cumulative effect of many bristles landing on a canvas is a general feel or texture. This is an extreme example, but the more you learn about art the more you notice just how much art works via unintentional processes like this. This is why the Trickster Gods, Hermes for example, are both the Gods of art (lyre, communication, storytelling) and the Gods of randomness/fortune.

We used to assume that we could trust the creative to make their own decisions about how much randomness/automation was needed. The quality of the result was proof of the value of a process: when Max Ernst used frottage (rubbing paper over textured surfaces) to create interesting surrealist art, we retroactively re-evaluated frottage as a tool with artistic value, despite its randomness/unintentionality.

But now we’re in a time where people are doing the exact opposite: they find a creative result that they value, but they retroactively devalue it if it’s not created by a process that they consider artistic. Coincidentally, these same people think the most “artistic” process is the most intentional one. They’re rejecting any element of creativity that’s systemic, and therefore rejecting any element of creativity that has a complexity that rivals nature (nature being the most systemic and unintentional art.)

The end result is that the creative has to hide their process. They lie about how they make their art, and gatekeep the most valuable secrets. Their audiences become prey for creative predators. They idolize the art because they see it as something they can’t make, but the truth is there’s always a method by which the creative is cheating. It’s accessible to everyone.

Re: AI makes you boring

#176

Post by ossa-ma »

minimaxir wrote: post #159
ossa-ma wrote: post #135

Sorry to hijack this thread to promote but I believe it's for a good and relevant cause: directly identifying and calling out AI writing. I was literally just working on a directory of the most common tropes/tics/structures that LLMs use in their writing and thought it would be relevant to post here: https://tropes.fyi/ Very much inspired by Wikipedia's own efforts to curb AI contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

This is a very bad idea unless you have 100% accuracy in identifying AI generated writing, which is impossible. Otherwise, your tool will be more-often used to harass people who use those tropes organically without AI. This behavior has already been happening with Pangram Labs which supposedly does have good AI detection.

I agree with the risks. However the primary goal of the site is educational not accusatory. I mostly want people to be able to recognise these patterns.

The WIP features measure breadth and density of these tropes, and each trope has frequency thresholds. Also I don't use AI to identify AI writing to avoid accusatory hallucinations.

I do appreciate the feedback though and will take it into consideration.

Re: AI makes you boring

#177

Post by darod »

"You don’t get build muscle using an excavator to lift weights. You don’t produce interesting thoughts using a GPU to think." Great line!

Re: AI makes you boring

#178

Post by Refreeze5224 »

doublerabbit wrote: post #125
ryandrake wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of freeing to put a software project together and not have to sweat the boilerplate and rote algorithm work. Boring things that used to dissuade me. Now, I no longer have that voice in my head saying things like: "Ugh, I'm going to have to write yet another ring buffer, for the 14th time in my career."

The boring parts where you learn. "Oh, I did that, this is now not that and it does this! But it was so boring building a template parser" - You've learnt. Boring is suppose to be boring for the sake of learning. If you're bored then you're not learning. Take a look back at your code in a weeks time and see if you still understand what's going on. Top level maybe, but the deep down cog of the engine of the applicatio…

> The boring parts where you learn.

Exactly this. Finding that annoying bug that took 15 browser tabs and digging deep into some library you're using, digging into where your code is not performant, looking for alternative algorithms or data structures to do something, this is where learning and experience happen. This is why you don't hire a new grad for a senior role, they have not had time to bang their heads on enough problems.

You get no sense of how or why when using AI to crank something out for you. Your boss doesn't care about either, he cares about shipping and profits, which is the true goal of AI. You are an increasingly unimportant cog in that process.

Re: AI makes you boring

#179

Post by j2kun »

josefresco wrote: post #62

While I agree overall, I'm going to do some mild pushback here: I'm working on a "vibe" coded project right now. I'm about 2 months in (not a weekend), and I've "thought about" the project more than any other "hand coded" project I've built in the past. Instead of spending time trying to figure out a host of "previously solved issues" AI frees my human brain to think about goals, features, concepts, user experience a…

Can you elaborate on the implied claim that you've never built a project that you spent more than two months thinking about? I could maybe see this being true of an undergraduate student, but not a professional programmer.

Re: AI makes you boring

#180

Post by zinodaur »

Using AI to write your code doesn't mean you have to let your code suck, or not think about the problem domain.

I review all the code Claude writes and I don't accept it unless I'm happy with it. My coworkers review it too, so there is real social pressure to make sure it doesn't suck. I still make all the important decisions (IO, consistency, style) - the difference is I can try it out 5 different ways and pick whichever one I like best, rather than spending hours on my first thought, realizing I should have done it differently once I can see the finished product, but shipping it anyways because the tickets must flow.

The vibe coding stuff still seems pretty niche to me though - AI is still too dumb to vibe code anything that has consequences, unless you can cheat with a massive externally defined test suite, or an oracle you know is correct

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