True, but you're somehow involved in it even though you don't use AI.
Not everyone is using AI for everything
71–80 of 565 posts
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#72On the post-grad job hunt right now - I note that most employers will ask in a technical interview or whiteboard interview "how are you using LLMs?"
It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. I've been responding with a sort of long winded answer about how 'there is clearly a learning curve for how this technology fits into any process and how I always always always double double double check yadayadayada'
I'm probably using the chat/ask functionality on a daily basis for quick debugging / new technology learning questions but I have yet to really use the fully agent or computer-use products because I've had more bad results than good the few times I've tried them (re-factoring a big repo of decades old fortran+C code for modern compiler/OS some things started to work but ultimately I abandoned that effort).
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real best case scenario is using LLMs to help build deterministic systems. Instead of asking an LLM to do some task that you know will be repeated, instead ask the LLM to build a program (Python script or whatever) to do the task.
Or just write it yourself?
Because typing “code” takes time and significant amounts of it.
We are slowly waking up to the fact, which was always true, that “coding” is just a fanciful preparatory task in order to appease the spirits properly so that we may invoke the spirit of what we are actually after: a live, running process that does useful things. Code is completely useless when separated from that fact.
Typing it is a complete waste of time unless getting up close and personal with it will result in some kind of useful and actionable improvement in you or your understanding. Knowing when it does and when it does not have this property is a skill of its own.
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#74Reminds me of this article: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/917029/software-brain-ai-ba... Software engineers are definitely in a bit of a bubble here. Are we just early adopters who see the value sooner, or does it uniquely benefit software engineering, or do we just like cool automation and we're deluding ourselves that this adds value beyond the cost?
Yes I believe software benefits uniquely, just like building tooling and automating software have long been easier in software than other domains. Humans defined all the rules of the world you live in, humans wrote strict rules in methodically parsable formats.
The moment you have to interact with the physical world or humans (psychological, imaginative, aesthetic, etc), there are often undiscovered or changing rules—or no rules at all. Or systems are subject to perturbations beyond a defined scope.
The other thing I believe is software developers are experts at doing the things that allow them to make doing those very things easier and more automated. And they do this in public, perfectly documented online.
Both because of the things I described above and because software developers have created the largest machine-accessible training set for plying their trade of any trade, ML—that is ultimately interpolating massive datasets to do things—is unsurprisingly uniquely successful for software tasks.
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#75everyone might not be using ai.
but i see myself reaching for it for every small thing these days.
it's like every curiousity or lifestyle choice or optimization is something ai can help research.
i am not saying it's really powerful or great. but the lure is undeniable. because of how low friction it has become.
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#76Articles that start with no are inherently biased and only gather reads from people that agree.
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#77On the post-grad job hunt right now - I note that most employers will ask in a technical interview or whiteboard interview "how are you using LLMs?" It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. I've been responding with a sort of long winded answer about how 'there is…
"for entertainment value, when i'd like to see how an enthusiastic 5-year-old would react to the task."
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#78The numbers given in the article are actually consistent with what is usually meant by “everyone” in such statements. Sure, it’s not literally everyone. But it’s a very significant percentage, especially given how quick the adoption has been.
yeah exactly my thoughts.
everyone didn't mean literally everyone.
and for the ones that are using it (especially the paid subs). the lure is undeniable.
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#79I only use AI for software development. For writing, I don't use it at all except to translate source materials. So yes, AI is only for software development in my case. The real question is whether I have any value outside of software development. Sometimes I get the feeling that AI is replacing the value I have in society.
I don't think AI has any real value for software development, personally. The quality just isn't there, unless you invest so much effort that you may as well have written it yourself. But the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, and even though I think the industry will get over the idiocy of having LLMs write software, there's no telling how long that will take. So it's a scary time to work in tech even if I think the trend will ultimately reverse.
Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely frontend (it's what I do, every day, and I enjoy it), but I have a great deal of experience (over 25 years), writing some pretty robust backend stuff. I just don't enjoy it as much.
I'm nowhere near that level of experience, although I've done both as well. I'm more backend oriented. And my experience has been the opposite. When I ask for backend code, footgun after footgun appears on my screen. With frontend code, much less of an issue, as far as I can tell. Part of me believes this is because I'm less skilled at frontend, and I don't bat an eye when the LLM plops down yet another useMemo (I've…
I don't do "megascale" backends, though. My code is generally smaller-scale stuff that's designed to be deployed on a wide variety of cheap hosting, and is pretty conservative. It doesn't "push the limits."
I'm unlikely to run into many of the problems that (for example) the PornHub developers hit, several times an hour.
In that case, I benefit from folks like you, that allow me to have solutions that scale down to my level.