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Please stop the AI confidence theater

elenaverna.com

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Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#81

Post by intended »

john_strinlai wrote: post #32
cautiouscat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i dont think there is any software on the planet that i would consider "truly life changing", so i find it a bit weird to hold ai up to that standard. I think the author made this point because earlier they mention how people tell them AI changed their life. > So I started asking a simple question whenever someone told me AI had changed their life: ‘Cool. Show me.’

> how people tell them AI changed their life yeah but people say that in casual conversation all the time. my wife, not long ago, said her new facewash changed her life. its a figure of speech.

People are chucking trillions into data centers and AI. It’s the end of work, or that they don’t write code anymore.

Every week there is some new method to make LLMs produce code, ranging from Langchain, MCP, Agents, Ralph loops, gas town, just loops.

You are stating its hyperbole, when people are walking around without closing their laptops, or are awake all night running agents.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#82

Post by adiabatichottub »

ghusto wrote: post #59
algoth1 wrote: post #14

As someone who has worked closely to the marketing space, there’s a saying that goes something like: ‘then the marketers found about it and ruin everything’. Quick example: when amazon launched kindle self publishing, there was a golden age where wannabe writers could self-publish their books, and let the market dictate what survived and became successful. Eventually, some people got good money out of it. Then market…

There's an old Bill Hicks bit where during his already awkward standup, he takes a moment to somehow dial the awkwardness up further: If you're of a certain age, you'll know the bit: https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-a... It's awkward because you can feel how much he means every word. Of course it's part of the act and you're supposed to find it funny, but at the same time, he very much means…

Ah, the plea for sanity dollar! Huge Market!

Sadly, he was never able to rid the world of all these fevered egos tainting our collective unconscious and making us pay a higher psychic price than we imagine.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#83

Post by ModernMech »

ghusto wrote: post #72

> But show me something that has become so critical in your day that if I took it away tomorrow, your work would actually fall apart. Show me something truly life changing. - I no longer look at log files. If there's an MCP that gets access, I don't even download them - I don't look up implementation details, just say "I want this bit to do X". In general, I don't concern myself with technical details anymore - I don…

> show me something that has become so critical in your day that if I took it away tomorrow, your work would actually fall apart

> Of course I could still do my job if AI disappeared tomorrow

So then you agree with TFA, it’s not so critical that if taken away your work would not fall apart.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#84

Post by Planktonne »

nailer wrote: post #27

> But show me something that has become so critical in your day that if I took it away tomorrow, your work would actually fall apart. Show me something truly life changing. Descript. I edit video for work and I am not ever going back to manually seeking to edit video. I am about 8x faster with Descript. This isn’t even a raw praise post: Descript is wildly unstable and shitty at times but I STILL won’t use anything t…

Do you earn 8 times as much now?

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#85

Post by toddmorey »

algoth1 wrote: post #14

As someone who has worked closely to the marketing space, there’s a saying that goes something like: ‘then the marketers found about it and ruin everything’. Quick example: when amazon launched kindle self publishing, there was a golden age where wannabe writers could self-publish their books, and let the market dictate what survived and became successful. Eventually, some people got good money out of it. Then market…

I value both great devs and great marketers because I’ve seen dev teams build awesome tech that never found its audience.

It’s the culture of the org and that decides how the ammo is used. What you want is good devs AND good marketers building and promoting great product.

Anyone in any role who works at facebook holds culpability. Marketers aren’t building all those user hostile features.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#86

Post by intended »

munksbeer wrote: post #55
dgellow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are those people and businesses?

What sort of proof are you expecting from another poster on hn?

Anything that someone would think answers the question or moves the needle forward.

Sure, HN has changed over time, but this tends to be a place where people field technical questions and get technical answers.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#87

Post by hedbdbf »

AaronAPU wrote: post #38
algoth1 wrote: post #14

As someone who has worked closely to the marketing space, there’s a saying that goes something like: ‘then the marketers found about it and ruin everything’. Quick example: when amazon launched kindle self publishing, there was a golden age where wannabe writers could self-publish their books, and let the market dictate what survived and became successful. Eventually, some people got good money out of it. Then market…

I’ve long considered marketing to be one of the purest forms of evil in existence. It truly does envelop and destroy everything good.

[flagged]

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#88

Post by no-name-here »

nailer wrote: post #27

> But show me something that has become so critical in your day that if I took it away tomorrow, your work would actually fall apart. Show me something truly life changing. Descript. I edit video for work and I am not ever going back to manually seeking to edit video. I am about 8x faster with Descript. This isn’t even a raw praise post: Descript is wildly unstable and shitty at times but I STILL won’t use anything t…

Link to the product, apparently has a free tier: https://www.descript.com

(I'm unaffiliated with them.)

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#89

Post by adamors »

ghusto wrote: post #72

> But show me something that has become so critical in your day that if I took it away tomorrow, your work would actually fall apart. Show me something truly life changing. - I no longer look at log files. If there's an MCP that gets access, I don't even download them - I don't look up implementation details, just say "I want this bit to do X". In general, I don't concern myself with technical details anymore - I don…

> - I don't try to debug

Just today I wanted to add to my nvim setup some validation for Kubernetes YAML. Asked Claude why it wasn’t looking at schemas correctly. After 30 minutes of prompts and nudges, during which it went on multiple wild goose chases, I just gave up and did it myself.

Other times I did have more success but it’s not rare to encounter this infinite loop style drill-down, which ultimately wastes more time than if I did it myself from the beginning.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#90

Post by jdgoesmarching »

adi_pradhan wrote: post #15

There is a lot of demand for articles like this. The sort of revenge of the humans. I do think a small number of people have totally transformed themselves and their business using AI. But that doesn't overlap with the people who are loudest about it on LinkedIn, X, and other channels.

Elena is one of those people who was loudest about AI on other channels and now she writes this when, as you say, there’s a demand for articles like this.

It’s marketers doing marketing all the way down.

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