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Why I am not going to buy a computer

karlvmuller.com

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Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#11

Post by datakan »

cogman10 wrote: post #8
datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

> He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before Here's the problem I have. No doubt an LLM made it faster to write those docs, but did you fully spot check it for accuracy? A lot of people aren't which I think is why the average joe hates it. These docs can still have AI generated mistakes which are easily glossed over by a regular human.

> Here's the problem I have. No doubt an LLM made it faster to write those docs, but did you fully spot check it for accuracy?

Yes. That was just the writing portion, there is a whole team that works on publishing and proof reading and there are acceptance levels all the way up to the CISO where people validate they read it and approved of the contents. Even with that, no one cares about it.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#12

Post by ge96 »

I like buying old flagships since I couldn't afford them like 5-10 years ago.

Still a few on my list would be neat to try like Specter 360, eventually I want one of the current newest XPS-13s

I recently got a Pixelbook for $80 running Ubuntu on that, great little device as far as thinness

Also like buying/trying out weird computers or old, like the ASUS Eee PCs or Librettos

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#13

Post by icedchai »

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

AI documentation is also often incredibly verbose. It makes it difficult to see the forest through the trees. I am often repulsed by the README.md in many "AI generated" projects.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#14

Post by mchaver »

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

> He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it.

Honest question, did you guys read it yourselves before asking the rest of the team to read it?

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#15

Post by datakan »

giantg2 wrote: post #9
datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

Most people weren't reading documentation when it was written by humans. The low value status of documentation is well supported by the fact your workplace put it off instead of prioritizing it.

You're not wrong, but we've had a huge shake up internally and all of the people that used to complain about not having it are now in a position to create it and approve it. They just don't care anymore because now its just AI.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#16

Post by munchbunny »

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

> We do this and then no one reads it.

My experience with AI-written documentation is that, as a category, it contains just enough technical errors that more often than not I end up spending time running down confidently stated errors the old fashioned way: cross-referencing API documentation, reading code, etc. At that point you inevitably end up trying to get in touch with a human from the other team.

In other words, it's not because I don't know it's there, or I don't want to read it, it's because my priors tell me it's going to waste my time. What I end up doing is searching, finding the docs, and reading until I start to get the feeling of hallucinated factual errors.

I'm sure there's AI-written documentation in there where the authors really did a good job reviewing it, and I just didn't notice. But I've also had engineers under me lose weeks of productivity at this point because of documentation confidently presented, insufficiently vetted, that turned out to be wrong.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#17

Post by khuey »

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

Unless you've checked it for accuracy why would I read your AI-generated documentation when I can ask my AI (which in a month or two will be a newer, better model than what you used to generate that documentation) to read the code and summarize it for me?

If you did check it for accuracy then I don't understand how you compressed months of work into minutes.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#18

Post by alain94040 »

Neither the original 1987 story nor the blog post make any sense to me. I feel the authors are focused on a niche aspect: exchanging deep human thoughts with other humans. For that use case, sure, don’t use a computer, don’t use AI.

But there’s nothing wrong with a car made by a robot factory. The car is useful, regardless of how it was made. AI lets some people create new products, those may be useful.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#19

Post by dfxm12 »

datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

In the context of documentation, it's not about disillusionment. It doesn't matter if you write it, an AI writes it, if there's a searchable wiki, a chat bot front end etc., your colleagues will track you down and ask you about it personally. They don't want documentation. They want to make their problem into your problem.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#20

Post by datakan »

delfinom wrote: post #7
datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

To be fair, AI writing is often unhuman. The biggest problem its more verbose than human writing. It adds additional not needed mental load in processing text. Even in code documentation, I just need a function block that says "DO NOT PASS A VALUE OF 2", with maybe a deeper comment that says "yea the math breaks here", instead of a 5 page discourse on why you should not pass a value of 2.

You make a good point but it's also subjective. The documentation we need is all technical in nature so we aren't looking for Shakespeare or Tolkien here. We just need it to be accurate and usable, which it is.
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