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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#781

Post by js8 »

daveguy wrote: post #522
js8 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs have lowered the bar for the unskilled person to create shit software. So? Demand the source code. Run your own AI to review the quality of the code base. The contracting company doesn't want to do it? Fine, find one that will.

Add another layer of jank to review the original jank? That doesn't sound like a very helpful solution. But the companies selling AI will love it!

Technical Supervision of the Investor is a thing, for a reason. The fact that IT industry doesn't have it is ridiculous.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#782

Post by Starman_Jones »

pennomi wrote: post #737
archagon wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building a simple marketing website? Probably don’t waste your time - an LLM will probably be faster. This is actually where I would be most reluctant to use an LLM. Your website represents your product, and you probably don’t want to give it the scent of homogenized AI slop. People can tell.

They can tell if you let it use whatever CSS it wants (Claude will nearly always make a purple or blue website with gross rainbow gradients). They can also tell if you let it write your marketing copy. If you decide on your own brand colors and wording, there’s very little left about the code that can’t be done instantly by an LLM (at least on a marketing website).

I just read Claude's front-end design instructions, and it now explicitly bans purple gradients. Curious to see what new pattern it will latch on to.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#784

Post by johntash »

luisgvv wrote: post #194
augusto-moura wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

I'm just using Copilot CLI for mindless stuff and set it to the premium models to meet the quota, as long as they can't see the prompts I think I should be fine

Not sure about copilot, but most enterprise plans do offer a way to export all prompts to a company siem.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#785

Post by komali2 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #778
komali2 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arguably in most cases it's more effective for you to provide the financing and direction but not be directly involved. That's why the EA guys are off beng quants. The EA guys aren't the final word on ethics or a fulfilling life. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that one might, rather than seeking to always better one's life, instead seek to share the burden others are holding. Making a bunch of money to turn around and spe…

To be frank that anti-system logic sounds a lot like. "Why are you taking a shower when there are people dying of thirst in a desert logic? Plumbing is an inherently unjust system for giving more water to those who already have enough!". Yes there are flaws in the system, but smugly opting out of it and declaring yourself morally superior isn't helpful. Instead you need to actually do the work of understanding the sy…

Plumbing doesn't harm the people in the desert. Plumbing isn't an inherent bad.

The system of imperialism that enables some to starve while others eat is inherently bad and is propped up and legitimized when you act within its framework.

Adding plumbing to your house isn't saying "it's normal that people are dying of thirst." Structuring your impact around donations is, meanwhile, saying "though this system results in people starving while others throw away half their food, we can only solve these problems by working really hard within the rules this system defines, and then lending aid within the rules this system defines." After all, there's only one way to make money enough to be "impactful..."

This is a slightly tangential example, I don't want to be mistaken that I'm saying they're equivalent: Buying and freeing slaves is not a good form of activism when trying to overthrow slavery. It's doing the exact opposite: upholding the institution of slavery with every purchase. Legitimizing it and even in fact funding it. You tell yourself you're at least slightly reducing harm but in reality you're motivating slave catchers to go find more people to slave - and meanwhile btw you're doing nothing to address the fact that slave catchers in your own country are just grabbing the slaves you freed.

The only truly ethical choice for activism against slavery is to break chains and use violence against anyone that prevents you from breaking chains.

Again, not exactly equivalent, just an example of how "helping" can actually prop up the thing you think you're trying to take down.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#786

Post by deterministic »

He’s absolutely right. I always wait for the hype to die down before deciding whether to adopt new tech. Because most of the time, I’d just be wasting effort on something that turns out to be underwhelming.

It’s the same with games. I give them a few months for the inevitable bug fixes and balance patches before jumping in. Saves a lot of frustration. And a lot of wasted time.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#789

Post by therealdrag0 »

tastyface wrote: post #621
therealdrag0 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need 100x productivity to be disruptive. In business 10% gain can be quite enormous. My senior engineers are estimating 25-50% gains. That is a far cry from your 100,000% gain, but very real and meaningful.

The last study that came out on this showed that engineers were significantly overestimating their own productivity gains. If a stat like that is not accurately measured, it's useless.

The study from last July or is there something new?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#790

Post by iLemming »

pjmlp wrote: post #28

Agree with the message, coding since 1986, I have learned to not suffer from FOMO and wait for the dust to settle. Ironically one might even get projects to fix the mess left behind, as the magpies focus their attention into something else. In the case of AI, the fallacy is thinking that even if ridding the wave, everyone is allowed to stay around, now that the team can deliver more with less people. Maybe rushing ou…

> wait for the dust to settle.

Yeah, everyone is in panic mode - "they're killing all the horses", but one really needs to consider the similar historical events.

When ATMs were rolled out in the 70s, everyone assumed tellers were on their way out. What actually happened was counterintuitive: the number of bank tellers increased for the next few decades. ATMs lowered the cost of operating a branch, so banks opened more branches, which required more tellers. The teller's job also shifted from cash handling toward relationship-building. The predicted elimination took 40+ years to materialize, and even then it was gradual.

"Paperless office" in another example. Around 1970s futurists confidently predicted - computers would eliminate paper. Companies restructured workflows around that assumption. What happened, really? Paper consumption actually increased dramatically - laser printers and desktop publishing created more paper demand, not less. The prediction wasn't wrong, just half a century early.

US horse population peaked around 21 million in 1915 and crashed to roughly 3 million by 1950. The tragedy wasn't that people prematurely killed off horses - it's that the infrastructure around horses (farriers, feed suppliers, carriage makers, stable hands) was devastated faster than those workers could adapt, but that also took decades.

Imagine if in 1910, someone sold all their horses expecting automobiles to arrive in their rural county within two years, and then cars didn't reach reliable rural infrastructure until 1940. That's what it feels to me when companies lay off thousands of programmers because of AI.

Yes, AI may replace programmers, but what would probably happen is that the meaning of "programmer" would change. Yet that won't happen within a year or two. Even with the unseen advancements in the AI research.

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