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I quit. The clankers won

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Re: I quit. The clankers won

#101

Post by inanutshellus »

Thanemate wrote: post #84

Funnily enough I saw this post as I was placing my HN account on hiatus, because I'm tired pretending that the quality of discourse is on par with what I've been used to read and participate in. We're obviously in an era where "good enough" is taken so far that, what used to be the middle of the fictional line is not the middle point anymore but a new extreme. You're either someone who cares for the output or someone…

Ok but if you're a person that likes HN discourse but thinks "eternal september" has happened ... what's your plan?

You'll still come here, read the comments, see something engaging and want to reply and... feel sad because shakes fist at [datacenter] clouds it's all just bots talking to each other anyway.

Seems lame. Keep talking anyway.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#102

Post by Waterluvian »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #93
titzer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that the vast deskilling that's happening because of this means that most "software engineers" will become incapable of understanding, let alone fixing or even building new versions of the systems that they are utterly dependent on. There should be thousands or tens of thousands people worldwide that can build the operating systems, virtual machines, libraries, containers, and applications that AI is bui…

>But the number will dwindle and we'll ironically be unable to build what our ancestors did, utterly dependent on the AI artifacts to do it for us. That's only a brief moment in time. We learned it once, we can learn it again if we have to. People will tinker with those things as hobbies and they'll broadcast that out too. Worst case we hobble along until we get better at it. And if we have to hobble along and it's i…

I imagine it being a "does anybody know COBOL?!" but much sooner than sixty years rom now.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#103

Post by esafak »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #17

"Generative AI is art. It’s irredeemably shit art; end of conversation." I think most people cannot destinguish between "genuine" creativity and an artificial almalgamation of training data and human provided context. For one, I do not know what already exsists. Some work created by AI may be an obvious rip off of the style of a particular artist, but I wouldnt know. To me it might look awesome and fresh. I think man…

People have been having this debate with popular art forever. Some people do not even believe in taste, and that everyone's artistic opinions have equal merit.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#104

Post by theshrike79 »

tuvang wrote: post #97
titzer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that the vast deskilling that's happening because of this means that most "software engineers" will become incapable of understanding, let alone fixing or even building new versions of the systems that they are utterly dependent on. There should be thousands or tens of thousands people worldwide that can build the operating systems, virtual machines, libraries, containers, and applications that AI is bui…

There is a deadly game of chicken going on. Junior recruiting already stopped for the most part. Only way this doesn’t end in a catastrophe is if AI becomes genuinely as good as the most skilled developers before we run out of them. Which I doubt very much but don’t find completely impossible.

And the irony is that AI usage should make onboarding juniors easier.

Before it was "hey $senior_programmer where's the $thing defined in this project?", which either required a dedicated person onboarding or someone's flow was interrupted - an expected cost of bringing up juniors.

Now a properly configured AI Agent can answer that question in 60 seconds, unblocking the Junior to work on something.

And no, it doesn't mean Juniors or anyone else get to make 10k line PRs of code they haven't read nor understand. That's a very different issue that can be solved by slapping people over the head.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#105

Post by FpUser »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #93
titzer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that the vast deskilling that's happening because of this means that most "software engineers" will become incapable of understanding, let alone fixing or even building new versions of the systems that they are utterly dependent on. There should be thousands or tens of thousands people worldwide that can build the operating systems, virtual machines, libraries, containers, and applications that AI is bui…

>But the number will dwindle and we'll ironically be unable to build what our ancestors did, utterly dependent on the AI artifacts to do it for us. That's only a brief moment in time. We learned it once, we can learn it again if we have to. People will tinker with those things as hobbies and they'll broadcast that out too. Worst case we hobble along until we get better at it. And if we have to hobble along and it's i…

>"That's only a brief moment in time. We learned it once, we can learn it again if we have to. "

Yes we can but there is a big problem here. We will "learn it again" after something breaks. And the way the world currently functions there might not be a time to react. It is like growing food on industrial scale. We have slowly learned it over the time. If it breaks now with the knowledge gone and we have to learn it again it will end the civilization as we know it.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#106

Post by DiscourseFan »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

There are many things the AI can't do.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#107

Post by qsera »

mday-edamame wrote: post #42
EdgeNRoots wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on the over-reliance part, but I don’t think it’s AI itself .It’s how people choose to use it. Most people are outsourcing thinking instead of using it to go deeper. The tools aren’t the problem, the default behavior is.

True, but the tools make the default behavior so tempting. I have a friend who uses Google Maps to find places, then memorizes the route there and closes the app to navigate because he wants to build a better mental map of our city. Meanwhile, I just check the app every five seconds like a dummy, and my hippocampus stays small.

Your friend use google maps, while google maps uses you.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#108

Post by Supermancho »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #98
kstenerud wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI makes the entirety of the software engineering profession available to you. All you have to do is ask the right way, and you can build in days what once took months or years. Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied. Closed source is no longer the moat it was, an…

> Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied. Jesus christ. "The people who wanted everyone to have a home should be happy with the invention of the lockpick. You can just find a nice house and open the lock and move in. Ignore the lockpick company charging essentiall…

> That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either...

Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened.

How one might choose to characterize the reality, is irrelevant. A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open, for better or worse. Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#109

Post by [deleted] »

thepasch wrote: post #77
kasey_junk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worse than that, in the linked “I’ve done my research” they make the tired claim that ai hallucinates api calls. Which while true has not been a practical problem since tool calling was added. I think the position that ai is morally troubling enough that the downsides out way the positives is perfectly defensible. But the entire argument becomes a joke when you can’t accurately catalog the positives.

At this point, I’m pretty sure saying “I’ve done my research” is more of an indicator that someone hasn’t done their research but would like to be taken seriously anyway by pretending they did. The kind of person who’s both smart enough to realize that an issue might be more nuanced than they present it, as well as intellectually dishonest enough to… not care.

[deleted]

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#110

Post by sodapopcan »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

Or, you know, writing some code every day.
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