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

Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#661

Post by mystifyingpoi »

petra wrote: post #577
rerdavies wrote: post #99

Working on a Spice compiler to convert schematics for classic guitar pedals into real-time executable code. I provided a reference to a The Spice Manual 2nd ed. a page number and an equation number, and asked Claude to implement it (not really expecting it to succeed). It proceeded to implement not only the equation, but the calculation of the Langrangian of the functio, another 30 lines below, which required taking…

That sounds awesome. Do you think claude could help create something like the line6 "software based" guitars?

I think it's possible, but if you mean Variax, the trick was in hardware. I believe it had multiple pickups per each string.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#662

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

chaoxu wrote: post #596

I'm a researcher working in theoretical computer science. Chatgpt found a counterexample of some conjecture I've been trying for 2 years. Also, it one shot many problems I've worked on. It also improved some of my work greatly. I feel quite useless in the sheer brutal proof writing, counterexample generating skill chatgpt is demonstrating, and wonder what would be the future of my profession.

I would have loved to have had ChatGPT when I had to do a few modules in formal methods, I'd say it would have eaten through the BS I had to wade through

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#663

Post by kmfrk »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #626
awbvious wrote: post #592

Not sure, but I can tell you what my "oh s** astroturfing is so bad, it's even in Hacker News" moment. And if I learned GenAI was used to make some of the astroturf, that's more an "ah s* “ than an "oh s* “ thing. I mean, the prominence, ubiquity, and breathlessness. One out of three, sure. Two out of three, maybe. And some corpo shilling definitely happens here. But this is like, well, covering an entire area with a…

TIL what astroturfing is. Moreover I now understand that it is almost impossible to tell the robots from the people in the internet

People might be more prone to referring to "submarines" on HN: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#665

Post by wesselbindt »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #620
awbvious wrote: post #592

Not sure, but I can tell you what my "oh s** astroturfing is so bad, it's even in Hacker News" moment. And if I learned GenAI was used to make some of the astroturf, that's more an "ah s* “ than an "oh s* “ thing. I mean, the prominence, ubiquity, and breathlessness. One out of three, sure. Two out of three, maybe. And some corpo shilling definitely happens here. But this is like, well, covering an entire area with a…

FWIW the OP passes as 100% human in Pangram https://www.pangram.com/history/d33dcbcd-e82b-4ce0-bea5-e4ee... Reddit is definitely overtaken with astroturf at this point. Especially in any subreddit where there is any kind of business interest in doing so.

Artisanal astroturfing, using organic humans, used to be the norm. Could be that OP is an actual human doing astroturfing.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#668

Post by mft_ »

Fomite wrote: post #20

When we had to have a frank discussion about whether to fail someone who obviously used an LLM for parts their dissertation.

I was discussing with a colleague recently that this is becoming more and more of a problem: people delivering significant (sized) pieces of work which are obviously 99% written by LLM.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#669

Post by QuercusMax »

semiquaver wrote: post #445
brntheater wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had something similar this week. Gas dryer started, but wouldn't heat. Gemini suggested it's often a thermal fuse. Took off the back panel and uploaded a photo to Gemini. It pointed me to the fuse (e.g. "the white rectangle above the blue and red cords") and walked me through testing it. Not only that, but it also linked me to the part I needed after I provided the model number of the dryer. Finally, it recommended c…

I can (honestly) tell that exact same story , except offset by three years so it was before AI and I did the same exact steps and had the same insights except with Google results instead of an LLM providing the key unlocks.

...and now you probably won't be able to find that info with regular Google and HAVE to use Gemini.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#670

Post by pmcarlton »

idiotsecant wrote: post #486
jsharf wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related story, while applying a firmware update to my Kawai CA49 piano, I bricked it due to flashing the wrong file (The process was broken, and I got desperate and tried something stupid, which bricked the piano). Claude walked me through looking for signs of life, and since OTA from the phone app wasn't working for me, it downloaded the Kawai Android APK, decompiled the Java, figured out the hardcoded key used for…

I can't imagine where we are headed. You understand every step of what it did and can appreciate the complexity but it'll only take a few generations for this to become something like magic to the tech priests beseeching the machine spirits for blessings

I think it will be just like Dr. Know in Spielberg's "AI" movie from 2001 — I found it amazing how the oracle, though giving mystic-sounding obfuscated answers, was actually intelligent enough to figure out (a) what the kid was asking for and (2) give the correct answer.
Post reply on HN