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Have a Coherent AI Policy

brianmeeker.me

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Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#31

Post by kenferry »

16bitvoid wrote: post #27
drodgers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'If you can't build a TODO list app using only punchcards, then you can't do your job...' Obviously our ambitions expand due to better tools. I now commit to and deliver much more work than before LLMs, and — before then — ditto for frontend frameworks, generation 4 languages etc. There are projects I now start without thinking twice that I never would have considered a few years ago. That's what productivity looks l…

It makes you less valuable and your job less secure because as LLMs improve, the level of knowledge/skill required goes down, thus putting more people at the level of "good enough", which is generally what companies optimize for over time with regards to hiring (least amount for good enough). > There are projects I now start without thinking twice that I never would have considered a few years ago. I'm sick of seeing…

Most people making this argument aren’t saying they were incapable of doing the project without AI, they’re saying the cost benefit equation was unfavorable because it would take too long.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#32

Post by bormaj »

djoldman wrote: post #15

Is anyone actually at a company that is purposely trying to use a ton of tokens? It gets expensive really fast.

Yes, but also this particular company has the means to justify the expense. I think there's enough opportunity at scale in the industry to really change the business landscape.

Aside from that (and assuming a large enough sample size) I think it's a safe experiment to at least bet on finding profitable use cases. In 1-2 years, after this experiment runs its course, not everyone will have "unlimited" usage.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#33

Post by adonovan »

djoldman wrote: post #24
jwilliams wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally had people talk about token leaderboards at their work. Amazon and Meta did have ones, but I'd take with a decent grain of salt. We all know it's such an insanely gameable metric you'd be insane to actually use it...

I came across a comedy clip where the employees are fighting over how many billion tokens they were using and assumed it was a joke.

It seems quite common for the infrastructure teams to put up a dashboard just to keep a sense of what is going on, but it is then misinterpreted as a “leaderboard” and encourages the most prolific users to find creative ways to squander more to stay the “winner”. Management is slightly disappointed by the waste but also happy that staff are engaging with their future replacements.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#34

Post by glhaynes »

ergonaught wrote: post #7
mikestorrent wrote: post #4

> You must understand what your AI generated code does Absolutely yes. > You must be able to do your job if your AI tooling disappears Absolutely not. Look, I'm an alright programmer. Not good, far from great. Interpreted languages work for me; add all that strong typing and compilation and it starts to go beyond what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, pre-AI, I have shipped many very functional, production-grade applic…

If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.

Why? This doesn't follow at all.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#36

Post by SeanAnderson »

sublinear wrote: post #20
SeanAnderson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your competition's behavior necessarily affects you unless your company has an unassailable moat. If other companies are able to tolerate larger amounts of tech debt while shipping new features faster then you'll be out of a job at some point when your company loses market share. It's fine if you disagree with the idea that AI lets established companies ship faster. I'm not here to argue that. But I think it's pretty…

> unless your company has an unassailable moat Is not working in SV enough of a moat? > If other companies are able to tolerate larger amounts of tech debt while shipping new features faster then you'll be out of a job at some point when your company loses market share. I'm saying that B2B services are very common outside of SV and more focused on stability, compliance, long-term maintenance, and the operational know…

Well, I'm commenting from a place of bias, as I'm Head of AI at our company and am in charge of rolling out agentic coding throughout the engineering org. So, bear with me a bit.

We're B2B SaaS in the Ed Tech space. It's very sales-driven. There's only so many players in the space, customers come with a laundry list of things they've seen others do and expect you to have those features, too. There are basic expectations that need to be met, some of those are compliance, but, sadly, a lot of what actually drives sales is just... flashy shit that looks good to those signing the checks not those using the underlying software. We lost a sale recently because someone was upset we didn't have the ability to give digital stickers to children - seriously.

You're more than welcome to tell the customer they're wrong and not give them their stickers. Or you can ask Claude to build stickers for you in two days and keep up with the Joneses.

Don't get me wrong. Customers aren't retained long-term with flashy shit. People churn out because of poor UX, security fears, pricing hikes, etc. Those frustrations tend to build over years and pain has to get pretty high because it's effortful to shift software providers. But, for getting new customers, sales is driven by flashy features and, at least in our experience, we need to be able to build those as quickly as our competitors or we lose out.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#37

Post by physPop »

drodgers wrote: post #11
ergonaught wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.

'If you can't build a TODO list app using only punchcards, then you can't do your job...' Obviously our ambitions expand due to better tools. I now commit to and deliver much more work than before LLMs, and — before then — ditto for frontend frameworks, generation 4 languages etc. There are projects I now start without thinking twice that I never would have considered a few years ago. That's what productivity looks l…

false dichotomy.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#38

Post by physPop »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #36
sublinear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless your company has an unassailable moat Is not working in SV enough of a moat? > If other companies are able to tolerate larger amounts of tech debt while shipping new features faster then you'll be out of a job at some point when your company loses market share. I'm saying that B2B services are very common outside of SV and more focused on stability, compliance, long-term maintenance, and the operational know…

Well, I'm commenting from a place of bias, as I'm Head of AI at our company and am in charge of rolling out agentic coding throughout the engineering org. So, bear with me a bit. We're B2B SaaS in the Ed Tech space. It's very sales-driven. There's only so many players in the space, customers come with a laundry list of things they've seen others do and expect you to have those features, too. There are basic expectati…

Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#39

Post by pixl97 »

rsoto2 wrote: post #17
esafak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI allows you to do things you could not do before so it is fair to say they can't do the new job without AI.

What if I can do everything the AI can like read, interpret, and implement code(and not in a likely copyright-breaking way) but also reason about it better.

What if you get hit by a bus?

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#40

Post by pixl97 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #25
potsandpans wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you're working in a coding sweatshop You are obviously unaware of what the silicon valley companies are asking for and commiting to.

The same shit they've always been asking for, judging by what OpenAI and Anthropic are pumping out surrounding their models: bloated, buggy Electron apps that consume gigabytes of memory to display fucking <1kb of text. We are not witnessing better software, even from the people who have unlimited capital and unlimited access to frontier models and are true believers in its potential to replace engineers.

Better software means nearly nothing at the end of the day.

The software that gets used is the metric that really matters.

You can write 'perfect' software that runs at 100% efficient and never makes a mistake, but if no one ever downloads it and uses it, you've just engaged in a bout of intellectual masturbation.

And honestly I've seen the 'write better software' people complain for years as Microsoft just absolutely financially decimates them. And yea, Microsoft loves writing bloated electron crap. And "one of these days Alice, people are going to rise up and use less bloated software and Microsoft is going to die", lol, just fucking kidding, people will never do that.

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