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The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#141

Post by pixl97 »

monooso wrote: post #122
john_strinlai wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm simply quoting Ofcom no, you are doing more than that. you are saying that everyone who has a different interpretation of the parts you are quoting is misinformed. that is an opinion, which you are stating as fact, as someone unaffected by the outcome.

A valid point, and maybe I should have phrased it differently. I've deleted the comment which used the word "misinformed", so as not to cause any confusion. My point is simply that the Ofcom quote clearly states that user comments on an article are not subject to the Online Safety Act. I assume this is a fact, as it's from the horse's mouth. Some people appear to be basing their opinions on the assumption that the OS…

>Please note: The outcome of this checker is indicative only and does not constitute legal advice. It is for you to assess your services and/or seek independent specialist advice to determine whether your service (or the relevant parts of it) are subject to the regulations and understand how to comply with the relevant duties under the Act.

I mean even the site itself says it really shouldn't be used for legal advice...

On top of that, none of this matters until said law is settled under a case. Most often it's the first judge and the set of appeals after that point that define how the law is actually implemented. Everything before that is bluster and potential risk.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#142

Post by asdfman123 »

> I can imagine a future in which some or even most software is developed by witches, who construct elaborate summoning environments, repeat special incantations (“ALWAYS run the tests!”), and invoke LLM daemons who write software on their behalf.

This sort of prompting is only necessary now because LLMs are janky and new. I might have written this in 2025, but now LLMs are capable of saying "wait, that approach clearly isn't working, let's try something else," running the code again, and revising their results.

There's still a little jankiness but I have confidence LLMs will just get better and better at metacognitive tasks.

UPDATE: At this very moment, I'm using a coding agent at work and reading its output. It's saying things like:

> Ah! The command in README.md has specific flags! I ran: . Without these flags! I missed that. I should have checked README.md again or remembered it better. The user just viewed it, maybe to remind me or themselves. But let's first see what the background task reported. Maybe it failed because I missed the flags, or passed because the user got access and defaults worked.

AI is already developing better metacognition.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#143

Post by ryandrake »

echelon wrote: post #72
jerf wrote: post #37

The interesting question to me at the moment is whether we are still at the bottom of an exponential takeoff or nearing the top of a sigmoid curve. You can find evidence for both. LLMs probably can't get another 10 times better. But then, almost literally at any minute, someone could come up with a new architecture that can be 10 times better with the same or fewer resources. LLMs strike me as still leaving a lot on…

> The interesting question to me at the moment is whether we are still at the bottom of an exponential takeoff or nearing the top of a sigmoid curve. Even using the models we have today, we have revolutionized VFX, video production, and graphics design. Similarly, many senior software engineers are reporting 2-10x productivity increases. These tools are some of the most useful tools of my career. I don't even think t…

> Similarly, many senior software engineers are reporting 2-10x productivity increases.

But are they making 2-10x compensation compared to before these tools? If not, these tools are not really useful to you, they are useful to your employer. The most shocking thing I find about LLM-assisted development is how gleefully we are just handing all this value over to our employers, simultaneously believing that they are great because we're producing more. Totally bonkers!

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#145

Post by bsmith »

chaps wrote: post #88
tossandthrow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very strong on the "slop" bias. Why? In managing a large to enterprise sized code base, I experience the opposite. I can guarantee a much more homogenous quality of the code base. It is the opposite of slop I am seeing. And that at a lower cost. Today,I literally made a large and complex migration of all of our endpoints. Took ai 30 minutes, including all frontends using these endpoints. Works flawlessly, deb…

Which company do you work at so we can avoid your migrated endpoints?

All big tech companies are mandating employees to use AI for tasks. Unless there's a similar movement to open source that is AI-free, you're going to need to be tech-free of you want to avoid companies that use AI.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#146

Post by ofjcihen »

acoard wrote: post #139
hliyan wrote: post #126

> One of her key lessons is that automation tends to de-skill operators I recently discovered an example of this phenomenon in a completely unrelated area: navigation. About a week ago, I realized that I couldn't remember the exact turns to reach a certain place I started driving to recently, even after having driven there about 3-4 times over a period of a month. Each time I had used Google Maps. When I used to driv…

Plato on how reading and writing make us more forgetful as we rely on this new technology: > And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longe…

I see this copy-pastad everywhere these days but it misses a huge point which is that written things don’t read or understand themselves.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#147

Post by apsurd »

tossandthrow wrote: post #128
apsurd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not debate that it's possible to make very large very safe changes. It is possible that you did that. This is about "slop bias". I'd wager that empowering everyone, especially power-positions to ship 50x more code will produce more code that is slop than not. You strongly oppose this because it's possible for you to update an API? I'm stuck on the power-position thing because I'm living it. I'm pro-AI but there…

> Maybe AI will address everything at every level. I think this is the idea you need to entertain / ponder more on. I largely agree with you, what I don't agree with is the weighting about the individual elements. My point was that I could do a 30 minutes cleanup in order to streamline hundreds of endpoints. Without AI I would not have been able to justify this migration due to business reasons. We get to move faster…

Yeah, the more I debate the AI-lovers the more I can empathize with the possibility it may very well turn out to be everything is an Agent. Encodable.

I'm not a doomer either, but I do think this arc is a human arc: there's going to be a lot of collateral damage. To your point, Agents with good stewardship can also implement hygiene and security practices.

It's important we surface potential counter metrics and unintended side effects. And even in doing so the unknown unknowns will get us. With that said, I like this positive stewardship framing, I'll choose to see and contribute to that, thanks!

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#148

Post by fellowniusmonk »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #86
forgetfreeman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"given 10-ish years at least to adapt, we probably can" Social media would like a word...

We can adapt by shutting down social media. We don't really need that. It's been pretty bad since before the AI wave took off.

We needed a better phone book we ended up in a world where most of our fellow citizens fucking casino.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#149

Post by echelon »

ryandrake wrote: post #143
echelon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The interesting question to me at the moment is whether we are still at the bottom of an exponential takeoff or nearing the top of a sigmoid curve. Even using the models we have today, we have revolutionized VFX, video production, and graphics design. Similarly, many senior software engineers are reporting 2-10x productivity increases. These tools are some of the most useful tools of my career. I don't even think t…

> Similarly, many senior software engineers are reporting 2-10x productivity increases. But are they making 2-10x compensation compared to before these tools? If not, these tools are not really useful to you, they are useful to your employer. The most shocking thing I find about LLM-assisted development is how gleefully we are just handing all this value over to our employers, simultaneously believing that they are g…

> handing all this value over to our employers, simultaneously believing that they are great because we're producing more.

You could turn the table and say that you can now launch your own business with far fewer resources.

Who needs financial capital if you can do it all with solo / small team labor capital?

Gossip Goblin ditched his studio and now a16z is trying to throw him money, which he's turned down. He's turning everyone down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rzl7nUdEs4

Dude is legit talented and doesn't need studio capital anymore.

This is the end of the Hollywood nepotism pyramid, where limited production capital was available to only a handful of directors.

We're kind of at the start of a revolution here. I'd be way more worried if I were Disney or Paramount.

Couldn't you take a sabbatical and end it with a brand new SaaS you own and control? That's entirely within reach now.

The people this is going to hurt are the ICs that don't have a go-getting type personality where they take full-stack ownership: marketing, branding, design, customer relationships, etc. If you can do those things, you're going to be a rock star with total autonomy.

You ought to see what the indie game devs are doing with AI (when they aren't getting yelled at on Steam by the haters). It's legitimately incredible. Game designers are taking on full-stack ownership over the entire experience, and they're making some incredible stuff.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

#150

Post by omega3 »

The answer has always been the same: self-regulated profession and trade unions. Instead the ever efficient software engineers have efficiently dug their own grave. The regulated professions aren't going to be affected by the AI because their members understand that preservation of job security[0], their pay and QOL is more important than automating themselves out of existence.

[0] https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/medical-degree-appre...

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