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

I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

claytonwramsey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 105 posts

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#21

Post by flyinglizard »

anonzzzies wrote: post #18
flyinglizard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share the sentiment but the question here is how long can we maintain the balance point where the human in the agentic loop is required. It might be a window lasting only a few years, or for the foreseeable future; I think the answer lies the opaque compute economics of the frontier lab: how well models keep scaling and how economically sustainable is serving those models under the current market conditions.

I use Astra to drive Fable; I drivel into my phone while walking in the forest and it builds. I don’t need to check; I do as clients need to pay, but it always is great. And it surprises me with things I did not know were possible even (never encountered them before so why would I know). We are at the point where our clients send voice messages and they get what they want without humans basically. This costs 10+10 ma…

I find I still add value, but I don't know if my value is real. Am I just biased and expect things to be done a certain way and penalize the model for doing something different? and am I providing the model with enough high quality context to align with my expectations in one-shot?

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#22

Post by hypfer »

burnoutdv wrote: post #10
SadErn wrote: post #2

I like to think of training and improving AIs as bringing freedom to the world. The useless toil and labor associated with rebuilding the same solutions into different contexts is finally at an end. Coding was never the reward. Acting as a translator for a machine is far worse than allowing the machine to solve the mundane parts and leave you with bigger building blocks to play with. After 25 years I have to confess…

You got nothing. Giant corpos hold every sliver of your so called freedom, you dont innovate, you repeat what others created before you. You use a tool that shackles your thoughts and creativity in a never before seen way, what you perceive is an illusion of liberty that is no present. Without others you are nothing and they can take it away any seconds, you are an addict, not an innovator.

I can see where you're coming from, and I share the sentiment and resentment to a large degree, but I think you might be not doing reality justice.

It is true that closed weights models are a big issue. It is also true that LLM-generated solutions usually drift towards a median.

But that is not the dead end you think it might be.

Most coding work is repetitive boilerplate, and most typing is just.. well.. typing. Miserable work I too did not really enjoy. What I did enjoy were the end results, and that was just a necessary step to get there.

Now that's less the case than it was before we had LLMs, and for that I too am glad.

___

I think the article headline might've primed you (and me, fwiw) to reading the comment you're replying to as passive. But if you just look at the words of it, that might not actually be the case.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#23

Post by onion2k »

One of the first things I tell the junior/mid-level developers I mentor is "You can't debug something just by reading the code." We all have a mental model of how our code works, and it's usually a bit wrong. Bugs are the real world manifestations of those mistakes. When you read the code it's all filtered through your model, and that makes you blind to seeing why something unexpected happened. In order to debug something you have to be able to put the system in the state where the bug happens to see why it occurred.

LLMs generally only debug systems by reading the code with whatever information you give them in a prompt. The image in the article is meta-prompt - the prompt is whatever comes from the vision model the AI happens to use to 'understand' the red circle annotation. That won't work. To successfully debug what's going on it will need much better state information. Has the 'shelf' been explained to is? Is the contrast and lack of shadows in the image messing up the vision model? Why isn't the 'lid' in the image? And so on.

LLMs are clever but they're not magical. Treat them like a naive junior dev. Give them enough data about the state of something to understand it properly.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#25

Post by wolfi1 »

hypfer wrote: post #16

I mean there's a reason why we're doing MoCap for video games. If computers were good at this, we wouldn't be needing that. But actual motion and all seems to be much more complex than the systems can predict, apparently. Also.. uh.. isn't this.. good? I thought AI was to steal all our jobs. ___ Beside that, kinda weird self-description. Isn't the computer executing your commands and you're just filling in where it c…

>Also.. uh.. isn't this.. good? I thought AI was to steal all our jobs. the problem is, the CEOs still think AI solves their problems ie minimize paid jobs

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#26

Post by smugglerFlynn »

hypfer wrote: post #16

I mean there's a reason why we're doing MoCap for video games. If computers were good at this, we wouldn't be needing that. But actual motion and all seems to be much more complex than the systems can predict, apparently. Also.. uh.. isn't this.. good? I thought AI was to steal all our jobs. ___ Beside that, kinda weird self-description. Isn't the computer executing your commands and you're just filling in where it c…

   > Also.. uh.. isn't this.. good?
It is weird if you think about it this way: it is AI that waits for you, its ‘eyes’, to provide a feedback so it can continue working. It literally uses you as its organ.

There is a TV show called Person of Interest , where Machine (AI connected to Internet and CCTV networks) has no legs or eyes, so when it needs to go and check something not covered by CCTV feeds, it gives instructions to a real person. In the show it is called an ‘analog interface.’

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#27

Post by dwedge »

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought

He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement.

Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponents were stupid because they disagreed, it was that they were simultaneously intelligent and stupid in the way they spoke in a way that I realised I'd never seen in genuine people, making me realise it was probably different people or bots under one account.

If I realised it 10 years ago it was probably happening for at least 15. He wasn't better than these people he was falling into their trap

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#28

Post by dostick »

LM still can not see and understand the desktop app UI on a level that is acceptable for testing. All the advances in coding are from web dev and thanks to the nature of html UIs. Try to develop a desktop app and it’s like working with a legally blind person who can see some part of the screen is they squint in a certain way but surely will miss all minor details.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#29

Post by hypfer »

smugglerFlynn wrote: post #26
hypfer wrote: post #16

I mean there's a reason why we're doing MoCap for video games. If computers were good at this, we wouldn't be needing that. But actual motion and all seems to be much more complex than the systems can predict, apparently. Also.. uh.. isn't this.. good? I thought AI was to steal all our jobs. ___ Beside that, kinda weird self-description. Isn't the computer executing your commands and you're just filling in where it c…

> Also.. uh.. isn't this.. good? It is weird if you think about it this way: it is AI that waits for you, its ‘eyes’, to provide a feedback so it can continue working. It literally uses you as its organ. There is a TV show called Person of Interest , where Machine (AI connected to Internet and CCTV networks) has no legs or eyes, so when it needs to go and check something not covered by CCTV feeds, it gives instructio…

> It literally uses you as its organ.

But it isn't. That's my point.

I told the clanker "hey do that", and like the intern/junior it emulates, it eventually says "boss! Help! I can't do this alone".

It is I who is in the driver seat.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#30

Post by hliyan »

dwedge wrote: post #27

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement. Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponent…

I've now completely stopped engaging with anyone on that platform that I can't reasonably traced back to a real person. If any non-real-name account says anything that remotely feels bad-faith in replies, I block them. Having been on the Internet since the mid 90's when it was the frontier, and everyone helped/trusted everyone else, the policy feels very wrong. But unfortunately Twitter has given no tools or alternatives to deal with the situation.
Post reply on HN