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Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

blog.jakesaunders.dev

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Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#211

Post by jakelsaunders94 »

keybored wrote: post #56

And this one will be different? > At serious risk of sounding like a heretic here, but I’m kinda bored of talking about AI. Umm. > I get it, AI is incredible. I use it every day, it’s completely changed my workflow. I recently started a new role in a tricky domain working at web scale (hey, remember web scale?) and it’s allowed me to go from 0-1 in terms of productivity in a matter of weeks. It’s all positives. So wh…

Hey :)

> And this one will be different? I think you're talking about my blog post here, in which case no, I'm afraid not. Hence the admission at the bottom.

>Umm. ??

> It’s all positives. So what’s the problem? The article is trying to say that these things are great, but the level of conversation leads to a lack of novelty.

> It’s just the discourse around it is “boring”. And the managers are lame about it. Exactly.

> OP can’t even resign himself to being a Type. Sigh. “I know what I just did hehe” Very self-aware.

Is this sarcasm?

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#212

Post by arcxi »

xvector wrote: post #165
arcxi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very comment is measurably more harmful than any AI criticism that annoys you - someone will read this and assume it's appropriate to accept whatever bullshit Claude generates at face value, with terrible consequences. In contrast, what harm do those detractors cause? They don't generate as much code per hour?

By that logic we should all live in air-filtered bubbles. Anyone denying this is causing harm . After all, people might die if you let them out of their air-filtered bubble! The "harm" (if you can call it that) is clear, detractors slow the pace of progress with meaningless and incorrect hand-wringing. A lack of progress harms everyone (as evidenced our amazing QoL today compared to any historical lens.)

> detractors slow the pace of progress

Considering our climate, political and economic situation, I'd say not only is slowing the pace of progress not harmful, it's actually imperative for our long-term survival.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#213

Post by gAI »

_doctor_love wrote: post #153

This might sound like snark, but I truly don’t mean it that way. I think what’s interesting about AI, and why there’s so much conversation, is that in order to be a good user of AI, you have to really understand software development. All the people I work with who are getting the most value out of using AI to deliver software are people who are already very high-skilled engineers, and the more years of real experienc…

Agreed, though I prefer "Fae Folk" to vampires.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#214

Post by cyanydeez »

_doctor_love wrote: post #153

This might sound like snark, but I truly don’t mean it that way. I think what’s interesting about AI, and why there’s so much conversation, is that in order to be a good user of AI, you have to really understand software development. All the people I work with who are getting the most value out of using AI to deliver software are people who are already very high-skilled engineers, and the more years of real experienc…

Isn't that scary though: A bunch of people are going to be forced to use a tool that keeps them ignorant and they absolutely won't know if it's doing correct things, to the point that as you retire, the next crop is going to be much less involved in knowing whats going on.

It's what happened with the internet and computer usage. As Apple made it easier to get online with zero computer knowledge, suddenly we're electing people like donald trump.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#215

Post by teaearlgraycold »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #98
vrganj wrote: post #18

AI is fine . The hype is annoying. What's even worse though are the incredible amounts of money and energy that are being thrown at it, with no regard for the consequences, in times of record inequality and looming climate apocalypse. AI is the red herring that'll waste all our attention until it's too late.

> AI is fine. The hype is annoying. I'm finding the detractors worse than the hype, because it seems like a certain subset of detractors [0] formed their opinion on AI in late 2022/early 2023 when ChatGPT came out (REALLY!? Over 3 years ago!?) and then never updated their opinions since then. They'll say things like "why would I want to consume X amount of energy and Y amount of water just to get a wrong answer?" In…

> Hallucinations are exceptionally rare now

The way we talk about "hallucinations" is extremely unproductive. Everything an LLM outputs is a hallucination. Just like how human perception is hallucination. These days I pretty much only hear this word come up among people that are ignorant of how LLMs work or what they're used for.

I've been asked why LLMs hallucinate. As if omniscient computer programs are some achievable goal and we just need to hammer out a few kinks to make our current crop of english-speaking computers perfect.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#216

Post by jakelsaunders94 »

_doctor_love wrote: post #153

This might sound like snark, but I truly don’t mean it that way. I think what’s interesting about AI, and why there’s so much conversation, is that in order to be a good user of AI, you have to really understand software development. All the people I work with who are getting the most value out of using AI to deliver software are people who are already very high-skilled engineers, and the more years of real experienc…

Hey, I don't think this sounded like snark at all. Super grounded take.

> I think what’s interesting about AI, and why there’s so much conversation, is that in order to be a good user of AI, you have to really understand software development.

This I agree with completely. You can see it in the difference between a prompt where you know exactly what you want and when things are a little woolley. A tool in the hands of a well trained craftsperson is always better used.

> So I think we’re going to keep talking for quite a while Me neither, and to be clear I'm okay with that. This was mostly a rant at the lack of diversity of discourse.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#217

Post by miltonlost »

xvector wrote: post #204
delbronski wrote: post #172

AI is starting to look like a net negative for humanity. I remember the early days of OpenAI. I was super excited about it. There was a new space to uncover and learn about. I was hopeful. Now I have this love/hate relationship with it. Claude Code is amazing. I use it everyday because it makes me so much more efficient at my job. But I also know that by using it I’m contributing to making my job redundant one day. A…

> But I also know that by using it I’m contributing to making my job redundant one day. I don't see how this is the case if you're anything more than a junior engineer... it unlocks so many possibilities. You can do so much more now. We are more limited by our ideas at this point than anything else. Why is the reaction of so many people, once their menial work gets automated, "oh no, my menial work is automated." Why…

Keep marching that automation and tehcnology to an acidified ocean. But hey, at least now we can code faster than we can review!

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#218

Post by graypegg »

thethirdone wrote: post #186
elbasti wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. AI uses ~4% of the US grid, and projections are that it will grow to 10%+ in the next 6 years. And most of that new capacity will be natural gas. That increase would basically whipe out the reduction in CO2 emissions the USA has had since 2018.

Compare that to ~30% of all energy use for transportation. So approximately 40%*4% = 1.6% vs 30%. I find your correction to be more wrong that the initial statement. > And most of that new capacity will be natural gas. That increase would basically whipe out the reduction in CO2 emissions the USA has had since 2018. Emissions in 2018 were ~5250M metric ton and in 2024 it was 4750M. That is a reduction of 10% total em…

> Compare that to ~30% of all energy use for transportation

Transportation, especially ALL transportation, does a LOT. You're looking for ROI not the absolute values. I think it's undeniable that the positive economic effect of every car, truck, train, and plane is unfathomably huge. That's trains moving minerals, planes moving people, trucks transporting goods, and hundreds of combinations thereof, all interconnected. Literally no economic activity would happen without transportation, including the transition to green energy sources, of which would improve the emissions from transportation.

I think it might be more emissions-efficient at generating value than AI by a factor exceeding the 7.5x energy use. Moving rocks from (place with rocks) to (place that needs rocks) continues to be just an insanely good thing for humanity.

Also, I'm not sure about your math. 4% would be 4% of the whole like in a pie chart, not 4% of the remainder after removing one slice. 4% AI, 30% transportation, 66% other. I don't know where that 40% is from.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#219

Post by wrs »

delbronski wrote: post #172

AI is starting to look like a net negative for humanity. I remember the early days of OpenAI. I was super excited about it. There was a new space to uncover and learn about. I was hopeful. Now I have this love/hate relationship with it. Claude Code is amazing. I use it everyday because it makes me so much more efficient at my job. But I also know that by using it I’m contributing to making my job redundant one day. A…

Well, on the other hand, software isn’t all about checking emails.

I know someone who worked for a nonprofit that made pregnancy health software that worked over text messaging. Its clients were women in Africa who didn’t have much, but they had a cell phone, so they could get reminders, track vitals, and so forth.

They had to find enough funding to pay several software engineers to build and maintain that system. If AI allows a single person to do it, at much lower cost, is that bad?

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#220

Post by zer00eyz »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #163
chatmasta wrote: post #103

What I miss is people showing off their hand-crafted libraries or frameworks. That’s become way less common now that everyone is building a layer up the stack. I fear we’ll be stuck in a permanent state of using Tailwind and React and all the LLM-favored libraries as they were frozen in time at the beginning of 2025. Then again, that’ll be the agent’s problem, not mine… All that said, it’s extremely exciting. I’ve be…

Perhaps we're in an AI summer and a tech winter. Winter is always the time when people hole up, dream, and work on whatever big thing is next. We're about due for some new computing abstractions to shake things up I think. Those won't be conceived by LLMs, though they may aid in implementing them.

We have 2 decades of abstraction.

The stacks of turtles that we use to run everything are starting to show their bloat.

The other day someone was lamenting dealign with an onslaught of bot traffic, and having to deal with blocking it. Maybe we need to get back to good old fashioned engineering and optimization. There was a thread on here the other day about PC gamer recommending RSS readers and having a 36gb webpage ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480507 )

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