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Where I'm at with AI

paulosman.me

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Re: Where I'm at with AI

#11

Post by skydhash »

> that most software will be built very quickly, and more complicated software should be developed by writing the specification, and then generating the code. We may still need to drop down to a programming language from time to time, but I believe that almost all development will be done with generative AI tools

My strongly held belief is that anyone who think that way, also think that software engineering is reading tickets, searching for code snippets on stack overflow and copy-pasting code.

Good specifications are always written after a lot of prototypes, experiments and sample implementations (which may be production level). Natural language specifications exist after the concept has been formalized. Before that process, you only have dreams and hopes.

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#12

Post by skydhash »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #3

Its really hard to take people who say this seriously: "If you asked me six months ago what I thought of generative AI, I would have said that we’re seeing a lot of interesting movement, but the jury is out on whether it will be useful" Like I'm sorry but if you couldn't see that this tech would be enormously useful for millions if not billions of people you really shouldn't be putting yourself out there opining on a…

First car prototypes were useless and it has taken a few decades to have a good version. The first combustion engine was in 1826. Would you buy a prototype or a carriage for transportation at that time?

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#13

Post by everdrive »

Legend2440 wrote: post #2

> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough. You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed. There’s nothing in this article I haven’t heard 100 times before. Open any mainstream news article or HN/Reddit thread and you’ll find all of OP’s talking points about water, electricity, job loss, the intrinsi…

This is a weird quirk that I observe in all sorts of contexts. "No one's talking about [thing that is frequently discussed]!" or, "There's never been [an actor in this identity category] in major movie role before!" (except there has plenty of times) or sometimes "You can't even say Christmas anymore!" (except they just did) The somewhat inaccurate use of hyperbolic language does not mean that there is _nothing_ to the particular statement or issue. Only that the hyperbole is just that; an exaggeration of a potentially real and valid issue. The hyperbole is not very helpful, but neither is a total refutation of the issue based on the usage of hyperbole.

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#14

Post by KptMarchewa »

candiddevmike wrote: post #10
ivanstojic wrote: post #4

> If you asked me six months ago what I thought of generative AI, I would have said It’s always this tired argument. “But it’s so much better than six months ago, if you aren’t using it today you are just missing out.” I’m tired of the hype boss.

I think the rapid iteration and lack of consistency from the model providers is really killing the hype here. You see HN stories all the time around how things are getting worse, and it seems folks success with the major models is starting to heavily diffuse. The model providers should really start having LTS (at least 2 years) offerings that deliver consistent results regardless of load, IMO. Folks are tired of the…

There is a difference between quantization of SOTA model and old models. People want non-quantized SOTA models, rather than old models.

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#15

Post by sharifhsn »

rootnod3 wrote: post #6
Legend2440 wrote: post #2

> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough. You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed. There’s nothing in this article I haven’t heard 100 times before. Open any mainstream news article or HN/Reddit thread and you’ll find all of OP’s talking points about water, electricity, job loss, the intrinsi…

And most of those concerns being wildly dismissed by the AI shills, even here on HN. Mention anything about the water and electricity wastage and embrace the downvotes.

Because those criticisms misses the forest for the trees. You might as well complain about the pollution caused by the Industrial Revolution. AI doesn’t use nearly as much as water as even a small amount of beef production. And we have cheap ways of producing electricity, we just need to overhaul our infrastructure and regulations.

The more interesting questions are about psychology, productivity, intelligence, AGI risk, etc. Resource constraints can be solved, but we’re wrestling with societal constraints. Industrialization created modernism, we could see a similar movement in reaction to AI.

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#16

Post by leoedin »

skydhash wrote: post #11

> that most software will be built very quickly, and more complicated software should be developed by writing the specification, and then generating the code. We may still need to drop down to a programming language from time to time, but I believe that almost all development will be done with generative AI tools My strongly held belief is that anyone who think that way, also think that software engineering is readin…

I've been playing around with "vibe coding" recently. Generally react front end and Rust back end. Rust has the nice benefit that you only really get logic bugs if it compiles.

In the few apps I've built, progress is initially amazing. And then you get to a certain point and things slow down. I've built a list of things that are "not quite right" and then, as I work through each one all the strange architectural decisions the AI initially made start to become obvious.

Much like any software development, you have to stop adding features and start refactoring. That's the point at which not being a good software developer will really start to bite you, because it's only experience that will point you in the right direction.

It's completely incredible what the models can do. Both in speed of building (especially credible front ends), and as sounding boards for architecture. It's definitely a productivity boost. But I think we're still a long way off non-technical people being able to develop applications.

A while ago I worked on a non-trivial no-code application. I realised then that even though there's "no code", you still needed to apply careful thought about data structures and UI and all the other things that make an application great. Otherwise it turned into a huge mess. This feels similar.

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#17

Post by JBAnderson5 »

skydhash wrote: post #11

> that most software will be built very quickly, and more complicated software should be developed by writing the specification, and then generating the code. We may still need to drop down to a programming language from time to time, but I believe that almost all development will be done with generative AI tools My strongly held belief is that anyone who think that way, also think that software engineering is readin…

I think part of the issue here is that software engineering is a very broad field. If you’re building another crud app, your job might only require reading a ticket and copy/pasting from stack overflow. If you are working in a regulated industry, you are spending most of your time complying with regulations. If you are building new programming languages or compilers, you are building the abstractions from the ground up. I’m sure there’s dozens if not hundreds of other sub fields that build software in other ways with different requirements and constraints.

LLMs will trivialize some subfields, be nearly useless in others, but will probably help to some degree in most of them. The range of opinions online about how useful LLMs are in their work probably correlates to what subfields they work in

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#18

Post by s-macke »

Legend2440 wrote: post #2

> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough. You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed. There’s nothing in this article I haven’t heard 100 times before. Open any mainstream news article or HN/Reddit thread and you’ll find all of OP’s talking points about water, electricity, job loss, the intrinsi…

> ... emitting a NYC worth of CO2 in a year is dizzying

Simplified comparisons like these rarely show the full picture [0]. They focus on electricity use only, not on heating, transport, or meat production, and certainly not on the CO2 emissions associated with New York’s airports. As a rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate, a flight from Los Angeles to New York with one seat is on the order of 1,000,000 small chat queries CO2e.

Of course we should care about AI’s electricity consumption, especially when we run 100 agents in parallel simply because we can. But it’s important to keep it in perspective.

[0] https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#19

Post by mkw5053 »

The Uber comparison feels weak because their lock-in came from regulatory capture and network effects, neither of which LLMs have once weights are commoditized (are we already there?).

Re: Where I'm at with AI

#20

Post by happytoexplain »

Legend2440 wrote: post #2

> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough. You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed. There’s nothing in this article I haven’t heard 100 times before. Open any mainstream news article or HN/Reddit thread and you’ll find all of OP’s talking points about water, electricity, job loss, the intrinsi…

Yes, it's being discussed a lot. No, it's not being discussed enough, nor by all the right people. It has the potential to cause untold suffering to the middle class of developed nations, since it's moving too fast for individual humans to adjust. On the Problem Scale that puts it on the "societal emergency" end, which basically can not be discussed enough.
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