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The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

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Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#221

Post by svachalek »

jcmontx wrote: post #202
Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

This resonates a lot with me. I'm the CTO of a software factory-ish company. I get daily emails from clients running our decisions through LLMs and asking for ridiculous stuff that would multiply the implementation cost for them, just because Claude said so. No, your 3 users app doesn't need to be SOC2 compliant. No, of course we don't have triple zone redundancy while you're paying a 50 USD AWS bill. Most of the tim…

Ugh. To be fair to the LLMs they're trained on industry blogs, and if you spent too much time reading them you'd also think every electronic stamp album needs to scale to a billion users with millisecond regional failover.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#222

Post by mikepurvis »

NichoPaolucci wrote: post #200
Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

Wow, oddly similar thing happened to me. Anecdotally, I was working with a non-developer. She was building a reporting dashboard with Claude. I pointed out that the system she built was using the filesystem to store one line notes about the report, and I said "I would probably tell the agent to use a database for that, but it's not the end of the world if it works". And she replied "Claude said the developer's right,…

I can see how the situation is annoying there; I've had a similar frustration when doing manual code review for someone's obviously AI-slop PR only to have their bot auto-respond to my comments. There's an asymmetry of effort that feels unfair. Like, don't ask for manual review of something that contains lots of things that your own manual review should have caught first, and if I provide human feedback, I expect human responses.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily take it at face value that the person you were working with trusted the bot more than you— at the end of the day, the bot was doing all the implementation anyway, so all the interactions between her and the bot were probably framed in language like "what if we" or "I think it would be better if", so her saying "my programmer colleague thinks X" would naturally generate that "yeah your colleague is right, let's go that direction, makes sense" that she passed back to you, probably thinking it was a complement.

Maybe the real frustration is her not understanding the value-add that still exists there when someone with real expertise and more context can step in and provide that nudge in the right direction.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#223

Post by mikepurvis »

svachalek wrote: post #216
NichoPaolucci wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, oddly similar thing happened to me. Anecdotally, I was working with a non-developer. She was building a reporting dashboard with Claude. I pointed out that the system she built was using the filesystem to store one line notes about the report, and I said "I would probably tell the agent to use a database for that, but it's not the end of the world if it works". And she replied "Claude said the developer's right,…

Yeah I've felt that gut punch all the time. Seems to happen with every technology. In the early days of GPS, people would ask for directions to the gas station then pull it up on their phone map and go "yeah, you're right!" So thanks for wasting my time, insulting my integrity, and killing my faith in humanity all in 3 words. And if you really need two opinions, it's so easy to just reverse the situation, "my GPS say…

I remember fifteen years ago I would tell people leaving my house "oh yeah, ignore your GPS that tells you to go that way, just down the road here and left turn; that'll get you on the highway much faster."

Nowadays obviously Google Maps gets it right, but it was interesting that period where you had to actively preempt everyone's instinct to just rely on the little table hanging off their dashboard.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#224

Post by Forgeties79 »

prepend wrote: post #66
Forgeties79 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A whole idea of a fleet of self driving cars for all of us to use just to further isolate ourselves and clog up our roads is just awful to me.

The same argument was made when elevator operators went away. Some things work well with automation (taxis, washing machines, copy machines) while others work better with humans (chefs, masseuses). 50 years ago, I would have needed to dictate this note to a secretary who would distribute a memo. Does it further isolate ourselves that we can type and communicate directly? Would 1980 uses think it was awful to us?

Private autonomous vehicles are the pinnacle of entitlement. It is one of the single least efficient forms of transportation we could possibly come up with. It is such a perfect example of the public bearing the cost of private gains.

I am not against automation. I am against the idea that we are driving car culture forward in this way.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#225

Post by spyckie2 »

philippemnoel wrote: post #199

The notion that "every human interaction is worth preserving" is probably not right, and Waymos are showcasing this. As the author mentions, many people don't enjoy the forced small talk with Uber drivers. Interacting with people from different backgrounds and perspectives is important, but I doubt the forced interactions like taxi rides are where we were getting those until day.

I think you're missing the point, which is not that every human interaction is worth preserving, but that convenience has a hidden cost.

People would rather not spend time and effort to help their neighbors.

People would rather not pick up trash they see on the side of the road.

People would rather not take accountability.

If these things become the default action, then you've traded something for the convenience, and that something might be non obvious until you feel it is missing.

The neighbors one, I think a lot of people will admit a certain loneliness and desire to have community back. I don't think a lot of people will actually give up the inconvenience for it though, the sedative nature of convenience is one of its core problems. The number of people I hear say with conviction they can't imagine living anywhere other than CA because they couldn't stand the weather anywhere else...

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#226

Post by NotSuspicious »

bayindirh wrote: post #15
s08148692 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I read it by asking an LLM to summarise it

Can you share me the summary? I'd like to read a LLM summary of your summary. Things are bit tight today.

[flagged]

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#227

Post by mitxela »

mikepurvis wrote: post #223
svachalek wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've felt that gut punch all the time. Seems to happen with every technology. In the early days of GPS, people would ask for directions to the gas station then pull it up on their phone map and go "yeah, you're right!" So thanks for wasting my time, insulting my integrity, and killing my faith in humanity all in 3 words. And if you really need two opinions, it's so easy to just reverse the situation, "my GPS say…

I remember fifteen years ago I would tell people leaving my house "oh yeah, ignore your GPS that tells you to go that way, just down the road here and left turn; that'll get you on the highway much faster." Nowadays obviously Google Maps gets it right, but it was interesting that period where you had to actively preempt everyone's instinct to just rely on the little table hanging off their dashboard.

Kind of like getting people to ignore generative AI today, right?

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#228

Post by dalmo3 »

freedomben wrote: post #188
pastel8739 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest these people do instead? I’ve been frustrated by this recently: I pivoted to a new subfield and am working on stuff that I would love to dive deep into and really learn what is going on so I can speak intelligently about the tradeoffs etc. But that would take a long time, and I have tasks that I should get done. So I have found myself working with a pretty vague understanding that, when pressed by…

I'm not GP, but I've been experiencing this too. All my coworkers are in the same boat though, so we don't really have anyone with the deep understanding. Our approach (which has been working pretty well, we've solved a lot of problems and learned some along the way) has been to use AI as an informer who also points us to sources (like documentation, github issues, etc) where we can then read up on something the AI h…

> All my coworkers are in the same boat though

That changes the picture a lot though because OP's whole point was the impedance mismatch between colleagues.

If you're all self aware that you're all winging it, and learning together, that seems a lot more of a healthier culture.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#229

Post by svachalek »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #128
fidotron wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics, and to a large degree pure mathematics, has attracted a critical mass of the personality type that needs to feel like the smartest person in the room in any given situation. It has given them a slightly notorious reputation in academia.

As a mathematician, this is far from my experience of actual professional mathematicians, because they encounter people much smarter than them quite often. Maybe more true among graduate students, however.

I don't know why mathematicians got lumped in with physicists further down the thread. In my experience this is a well known stereotype of physicists and while of course not universal you don't have to look very hard to see where it came from. In my experience mathematicians stay very much in their lane and often seem to be overly modest even within it.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#230

Post by mitxela »

NichoPaolucci wrote: post #200
Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

Wow, oddly similar thing happened to me. Anecdotally, I was working with a non-developer. She was building a reporting dashboard with Claude. I pointed out that the system she built was using the filesystem to store one line notes about the report, and I said "I would probably tell the agent to use a database for that, but it's not the end of the world if it works". And she replied "Claude said the developer's right,…

Annoyingly pedantically speaking, a filesystem is a type of database.
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