My AI skeptic friends are all nuts • Hacker News Board

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#11

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

Damn. Well I'll spend a few bucks trying it out and I'll ask my employer if they're okay with me using agents on company time, but

But I'm not thrilled about centralized, paid tools. I came into software during a huge FOSS boom. Like a huge do it yourself, host it yourself, Publish Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, all the power to all the people, borderline anarchist communist boom.

I don't want it to be like other industries where you have to buy a dog shit EMR and buy a dog shit CAD license and buy a dog shit tax prep license.

Maybe I lived through the whale fall and Moloch is catching us. I just don't like it. I rage against dying lights as a hobby.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#12

Post by mouse_ » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

> Extraordinarily talented people are doing work that LLMs already do better, out of spite.

So what, people should just stop doing any tasks that LLMs do subjectively better?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#13

Post by csallen » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #6

One thing that I find truly amazing is just the simple fact that you can now be fuzzy with the input you give a computer, and get something meaningful in return. Like, as someone who grew up learning to code in the 90s it always seemed like science fiction that we'd get to a point where you could give a computer some vague human level instructions and get it more or less do what you want.

It's mind blowing. At least 1-2x/week I find myself shocked that this is the reality we live in

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#14

Post by metalliqaz » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

Can someone explain to me what this means?

> People coding with LLMs today use agents. Agents get to poke around your codebase on their own. They author files directly. They run tools. They compile code, run tests, and iterate on the results. ...

Is this what people are really doing? Who is just turning AI loose to modify things as it sees fit? If I'm not directing the work, how does it even know what to do?

I've been subjected to forced LLM integration from management, and there are no "Agents" anywhere that I've seen.

Is anyone here doing this that can explain it?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#15

Post by jsheard » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

> But all day, every day, a sizable chunk of the front page of HN is allocated to LLMs: incremental model updates, startups doing things with LLMs, LLM tutorials, screeds against LLMs. It’s annoying!

You forgot the screeds against the screeds (like this one)

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#16

Post by csallen » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

ofjcihen wrote: post #7

I feel like we get one of these articles that addresses valid AI criticisms with poor arguments every week and at this point I’m ready to write a boilerplate response because I already know what they’re going to say. Interns don’t cost 20 bucks a month but training users in the specifics of your org is important. Knowing what is important or pointless comes with understanding the skill set.

Can you direct me somewhere with superior counterarguments? I'm quite curious

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#17

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

mouse_ wrote: post #12

> Extraordinarily talented people are doing work that LLMs already do better, out of spite. So what, people should just stop doing any tasks that LLMs do subjectively better?

I don't know the full answer to this question, but I have a partial answer: they should at least stop doing tedious tasks that LLMs do better.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#18

Post by j-bos » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

cobertos wrote: post #8

It's been so much more rewarding playing with AI coding tools on my own than through the subtle and not so subtle nudges at work. The work AI tools are a walled garden, have a shitty interface, feel made to extract from me than to help me. In my personal stuff, downloading models, playing with them, the tooling, the interactions, it all been so much more rewarding to give me stable comfortable workflows I can rely on…

Exactly, seems much skepticism comes from only scratching the surface of what's possible.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#19

Post by philosophty » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

"they’re smarter than me" feels like false humility and an attempt to make the medicine go down better.

1. Thomas is obviously very smart.

2. To be what we think of as "smart" is to be in touch with reality, which includes testing AI systems for yourself and recognizing their incredible power.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#20

Post by cosmic_cheese » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #6

One thing that I find truly amazing is just the simple fact that you can now be fuzzy with the input you give a computer, and get something meaningful in return. Like, as someone who grew up learning to code in the 90s it always seemed like science fiction that we'd get to a point where you could give a computer some vague human level instructions and get it more or less do what you want.

Though I haven’t embraced LLM codegen (except for non-functional filler/test data), the fuzziness is why I like to use them as talking documentation. It makes for a lot less of fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out the magic combination of search keywords to surface the information needed, which can save a lot of time in aggregate.