Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

rajnandan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 230 posts

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#191

Post by mrdonbrown »

risyachka wrote: post #183
danielvaughn wrote: post #34

Disagree with the overall argument. Human effort is still a moat. I've been spending the past couple of months creating a codebase that is almost entirely AI-generated. I've gotten way further than I would have otherwise at this pace, but it was still a lot of effort, and I still wasted time going down rabbit holes on features that didn't work out. There's some truth in there that judgement is as important as ever, t…

It doesn’t really matter how good your taste is if you are drowning in the ocean of crap. Customers can’t find you

This is an underrated comment. You could have the best product out there, but AI has not only lowered the effort for competitors but has flooded traditional ways to get your product known, from outbound sales to content marketing. Sometimes make you question whether there are customers anymore.

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#193

Post by germinalphrase »

taude wrote: post #45
danielvaughn wrote: post #34

Disagree with the overall argument. Human effort is still a moat. I've been spending the past couple of months creating a codebase that is almost entirely AI-generated. I've gotten way further than I would have otherwise at this pace, but it was still a lot of effort, and I still wasted time going down rabbit holes on features that didn't work out. There's some truth in there that judgement is as important as ever, t…

I feel like you're pretty strongly agreeing that taste is important: " I'm finding that you have to have an extremely clear product vision..."" Clear production vision that you're building the right thing in the right way -- this involves a lot of taste to get right. Good PMs have this. Good enginers have this. Visionary leaders have this.... The execution of using AI to generate the code and other artifacts, is a ma…

“ I've looked at three non-engineer vibe-coded businesses in the past month, and can tell that without taste, they're building a pretty mediocre product at best.”

Are you doing this altruistically for friends - or as a consultant?

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#194

Post by DrewADesign »

_2fnr wrote: post #48
DrewADesign wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that straightforward. Art directors and designers get paid to visually communicate things the business wants to communicate— anything from brand vibes, to directing people to click on a “buy me” button, to the state of an interface. Most designers in tech companies aren’t even the ones that design things like branding — that’s done by specialists in extremely well-compensated studios, and corporate designers…

[flagged]

Don’t feel bad — most people honestly have no idea what designers really do, and I think developers’ proximity to them instills false confidence in their understanding of it. (I worked in both fields for years, and am also a graphic artist.)

A great example of this understanding gap is people thinking interior designers choose color schemes, sconces, and throw pillows. That is an interior decorator—- someone who’s professionally tasteful. An interior designer has an architecture license and designs the inside of buildings, often including everything from where fire exits are, where utility lines flow, what floors everything is on, and even things like wayfinding signage.

Even the most visual practical design is often more about visual hierarchy, semiotics, using gestalt to convey informational relationships, and conceptual thinking than taste.

Edit: Not sure why your comment was flagged?!

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#195

Post by theYipster »

timacles wrote: post #186
monknomo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you need taste if you can massively parallel a/b test your way to something that is tasteful? say like you take your datacenter of geniuses and have a a rubin-loop supervising testing different directions. shouldn't that be close enough?

Can infinite monkeys produce Shakespeare?

It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times.

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#196

Post by nopinsight »

danielvaughn wrote: post #34

Disagree with the overall argument. Human effort is still a moat. I've been spending the past couple of months creating a codebase that is almost entirely AI-generated. I've gotten way further than I would have otherwise at this pace, but it was still a lot of effort, and I still wasted time going down rabbit holes on features that didn't work out. There's some truth in there that judgement is as important as ever, t…

Jensen Huang said he commands thousands of AGIs but still feels pretty useful.

Founders and CEOs are still needed to set direction, bring unique vision to life, and build relationships for long-term partnerships—-as long as humans still control the economy, that is.

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#197

Post by hamasho »

I get really skeptical when someone says "AI does most of the work just by asking simple prompts."

Don't get me wrong, I use AI too for daily tasks and my job as a programmer, and it definitely helps me get the job done faster (sometimes it's almost instant). But it still requires a lot of effort for complex or unconventional tasks.

When I hear "AI does most of my job", I think of DOGE employees who use AI to identify "waste of money". All they do is ask AI with very lazy prompts like "list DEI projects" with the list of government sponsored projects including simple descriptions. They don't even provide what DEI means. And they just cut all projects the AI flagged. I'm sure their "productivity" is very high. They can "complete the job" that would require days, weeks, or months of investigation with a single prompt.

I also think the results have a strong tendency to flag a project as DEI, because "is this DEI" is a question often asked by racists and misogynists on right-wing websites, and often the answers are "Yes", and that likely causes a strong bias.

[1] https://www.9news.com/article/news/politics/doge-chatgpt-dei...

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#198

Post by marcus_holmes »

I'm not sure this is only true of LLMs - most corporate sites are very similar. Professional designers learn very quickly not to be too quirky or unique.

I think this is symptomatic of humans - our comfort zone is the "7 out of 10" morass of similarity and blandness. We are herd animals. LLMs are just reflecting this.

And I don't think our tendency to herd will allow us to select the quirky outliers even if that's the only distinguishing characteristic of non-LLM output.

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#199

Post by ribs »

skydhash wrote: post #167
freediddy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, just an idea will be enough for your Neurolink to spawn an agent to create 1000 different versions of your idea along with things that mimic your tendencies. There will be no effort, only choice.

Deciding between 1000 different versions is a lot of effort IMO. With manual coding, you’re mostly deciding one decision point at a time, which is easier when you think about it. It just require foresight which comes from experience

That deciding between 1000 things is a lot of effort is so clear that I must wonder if the one you’re responding to was being ironic.

Re: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs

#200

Post by conradkay »

everybodyknows wrote: post #125
johnfn wrote: post #49

It is profoundly ironic that this article is AI generated.

Trying to bring my nose for AI up to standard -- care to share what you're smelling? For me it's: - Short, declarative sentences, stating grandiose yet vague claims, in a high school vocabulary: "Taste becomes useful when it moves from vibe to diagnosis." - Absence of references (let alone web links) to real-world examples. - Em-dashes, gone. No semicolons, but 23 full colons. As instructed by prompt?

I don't think any human would make that table in the middle
Post reply on HN