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It's not empowering to hand off the details

davidnicholaswilliams.com

21–30 of 154 posts

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#21
This same argument could be applied to anything. Layers of abstraction exist for a reason, because at a certain point, we can only deal with so many things at once. We have to be able to delegate "the details" to others -- be that a person, a company, or an AI model.

Does "not getting into the details" mean you have to understand how the GCC compiler works when you write C code? Do you need to be an expert in machine code, or how SSE and pipelined instruction caches work to write your little bit of code? Do you need to understand how Ethernet frames work to write an API route for a web server?

Knowing how these things work can be helpful in a broader sense, and perhaps when encountering weird edge cases or dealing with exotic implementation but are generally not required to get the job done. The details, simply put, don't matter because someone else has already thought through the problem and solved it in a way that is good enough for the vast majority of use cases.

The same goes with AI. It's helpful to know how things work, but as the models continue to get better and better, it doesn't matter. As long as they are trained properly by someone who does know the details, that's a far better place to be than training a million different people on it who will each have their own biases, levels of understanding and misconceptions.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#22
post #19

I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…

Agree.

Creating products with AI is like creating a tightly packed ball of wool. Then, to try to understand what happened you have to somehow pick a strand and pull it out to have a look. Very difficult with tightly packed wool.

I've run some experiments in the past month that get me closer to being able to work with this opaque bundle.

It's the main thing I think about every day, how to solve this problem.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#23
post #3

Every word of this seems objectively false. AI is more than capable of handling the details. I have generated countless tools for myself without needing to know or care about the details.

The pro argument is always quantity based, yet we never get to see the actual gain in quality. It's always "I'm doing SO MUCH more". Never "I'm doing better, with less effort."

It's also what we see in the wild. There are so many things going on, so many news about "AI". Are things getting better in any meaningful way? Why are we getting so much from "AI" yet things keep getting worse? The only real, objective and verifiable gain has been the stock price of a handful of companies, most of them heavily into infrastructure and manufacturing hardware.

Seems like a pretty clear pattern. There's so much output, but everything is worse. And the only argument we hear for why this is actually a good thing is just how much more output there is. Hmmm

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#24
post #19

I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…

> Here's what I want: I want AI as an assistant that helps me make decisions, and ensures that I'm in the driver's seat.

You aren't going to get that. Why would they even offer you that? You're going to be the meatbag peripheral to an AI.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#25
post #19

I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…

> Here's what I want: I want AI as an assistant that helps me make decisions, and ensures that I'm in the driver's seat. You aren't going to get that. Why would they even offer you that? You're going to be the meatbag peripheral to an AI.

Plus it would reduce token counts. Careful use is almost directly opposed to their financial goals.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#26
post #3

Every word of this seems objectively false. AI is more than capable of handling the details. I have generated countless tools for myself without needing to know or care about the details.

The pro argument is always quantity based, yet we never get to see the actual gain in quality. It's always "I'm doing SO MUCH more". Never "I'm doing better, with less effort." It's also what we see in the wild. There are so many things going on, so many news about "AI". Are things getting better in any meaningful way? Why are we getting so much from "AI" yet things keep getting worse? The only real, objective and ve…

> The pro argument is always quantity based, yet we never get to see the actual gain in quality. It's always "I'm doing SO MUCH more". Never "I'm doing better, with less effort."

For me, it's "I can do this now; yesterday I could not."

I am not a developer - I am a hack with some experience in a smattering of languages who hits very real obstacles very quickly. AI has allowed me to overcome those obstacles and build things that literally I could not do before.

Yesterday I could not differentiate quake 3 matches within a single demo file.

Today I can split them into separate files and have the server stream them to me so I can watch them on demand.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#27

All details are not created equal. Some details are boring. My AI dream (that I’m living happily) is getting to focus on the details that I find interesting and ignoring all the boilerplate details that modern software requires.

So what? Jobs aren't supposed to be fun. Lots of people depend on those boring details.

Some of us just wouldn't work if it wasn't fun. I'd let myself starve in the streets. (I have some experience with starvation from an eating disorder phase in my twenties, it's only unbearable if you have to work).

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#28

All details are not created equal. Some details are boring. My AI dream (that I’m living happily) is getting to focus on the details that I find interesting and ignoring all the boilerplate details that modern software requires.

So what? Jobs aren't supposed to be fun. Lots of people depend on those boring details.

I hope we can save “jobs aren’t supposed to be fun” for stuff like undertaker and grief counselor.

My feeling is making things should be mentally stimulating, and as many tedious parts that can be automated should be, so we can spend precious human thought on thinking instead of recitation.

I don’t know what you mean by the last part. Do you mean programmers depend on busy work to eat or the users depend on the human touch on the boring details?

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#30
post #19

I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…

> Here's what I want: I want AI as an assistant that helps me make decisions, and ensures that I'm in the driver's seat. You aren't going to get that. Why would they even offer you that? You're going to be the meatbag peripheral to an AI.

So don't look to "them" to offer it, look elsewhere.
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