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This time is different

shkspr.mobi

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Re: This time is different

#101

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

thesmart wrote: post #64
CompoundEyes wrote: post #53

I’m doing enterprise coding tasks that used to take a month of whole team coordination from mockups to through development and testing in 3 days now. It’s all test driven development, codex 5.3 and a small team of two people who know how to hold it right orchestrating the agents. There’s no reason not to work this way. The sociotechnical engineering aspects of this change are fascinating and rewarding to solve.

[flagged]

> "I am able to push 30-40K lines of nearly perfect code a day now."

It is physically and physiologically impossible for anyone to be reviewing "30-40K lines of nearly perfect code a day" to the extent needed to push it with confidence in a sensible development process.

Re: This time is different

#102

Post by JuniperMesos »

edent wrote: post #14
troosevelt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really saying anything, though. For every tech hype that has failed, there is another that's changed the world. This IS changing the world and our industry, regardless of whether it reaches the heights of the hypers. I mean you're just stating that sometimes tech doesn't meet it's hype. What's insightful about that? It's a given; cherry-picking examples doesn't prove your case.

The thing is, the successful tech rarely get the excessive hype. MRNA vaccines. Where are the countless breathless articles about these literal life saving tech? A few, maybe, but very few dudes pumping out asinine "white papers" and trying to ride the hype train. Solar and battery. Again, lots of real world impact but remarkably few unhinged blowhards writing endless newsletters about how this changes everything. I'…

Why do you think that solar+battery technology or MRNA vaccines haven't been written about in excited, hype-filled ways? If a technology is successful, then looking at past accounts of that technology and why it will change the world don't come across to you reading it now as hype, they come across as a description of something normal about the world.

Re: This time is different

#103

Post by cladopa »

A very cynical article.

Actually IT IS different. Actually if they manage to create a viable small nuclear reactors or Quantum computers the world will change like it changed with the Watt thermal engine.

Why he is not talking about the Internet, trains, electricity, nuclear bombs, rockets,aviation or engines? Because they worked, like AI works today.

All of them were bubbles at the time and they changed the world forever. AI is changing the world AND it is a bubble.

AI is here to stay. It will improve and it will have consequences. The fact that a robot could do things with its hands is actually significant, whenever you like it or not.

Re: This time is different

#104

Post by CompoundEyes »

shimman wrote: post #59
CompoundEyes wrote: post #53

I’m doing enterprise coding tasks that used to take a month of whole team coordination from mockups to through development and testing in 3 days now. It’s all test driven development, codex 5.3 and a small team of two people who know how to hold it right orchestrating the agents. There’s no reason not to work this way. The sociotechnical engineering aspects of this change are fascinating and rewarding to solve.

Can you give an example of such features?

Porting tons of untyped js legacy front end code to vue with typescript and figma designs. Highly configurable business to business app (i.e lots of permutations). Everyone seems to have a “system”. I recommend looking at the OpenAI Cookbook for long running plans and do TDD to the extreme. https://developers.openai.com/cookbook/articles/codex_exec_p...

Re: This time is different

#105

Post by fragmede »

tomlue wrote: post #90
seertaak wrote: post #87

To my mind at least, it is different. I lean heavily on AI for both admin and coding tasks. I just filled out a multipage form to determine my alimony payments in Germany. Gemini was an absolute godsend, helping answer questions in, translate to English, draft explanations, emails requesting time extensions to the Jugendamt case worker. This is super scary stuff for an ADHDer like me. I have an idea for a programming…

"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors were different. Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Enterprise spend went from $1.7B to $37B since 2023. Hyperscalers are spending $650B this year on AI infra and are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. There is no…

The four technologies I look at are 3D televisions, VR, tablets, and the electric car. 3D televisions and VR have yet to find their moment. Judging tablets by the Apple Newton and electric cars by the EV1, this time is different turns out to be the correct model looking at the iPad and Tesla, but not for 3d televisions or VR (yet). So, it could be, but my time machine is as good as yours (mine goes 1 minute per minute, and only forwards, reverse is broken right now.), so unless you've got money on it, we'll just have to wait and see where it goes.

Re: This time is different

#106

Post by Etheryte »

rawling wrote: post #77
ozgung wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you know they are nearly perfect?

My 20k lines of unit tests say so?

Just because tests pass does not mean that they're testing the right thing to begin with. Reviewing tests is as important, if not even more important than reviewing code.

Re: This time is different

#107

Post by smitty1e »

This Andrew Klavan interview on AI is worth your time, if not an independent submission:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZFhFGpDWGw

"Today, I'm speaking with Stephen C. Meyer, Director of The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and and George D. Montañez, Director of the AMISTAD Lab at Harvey Mudd College–both of whom are extremely knowledgable on the topic of artificial intelligence. During the course of our conversation, they discuss the asymmetry between human intelligence & AI, the inability of AI to ascribe meaning to raw data, and the limitations of large language models. The real question though is: are we screwed? Let's find out."

Re: This time is different

#108

Post by skeeter2020 »

MaybiusStrip wrote: post #93
thomassmith65 wrote: post #69

The hype around AI is admittedly annoying - especially from the Wall St crowd who don't know how to pronounce 'Nvidia' correctly, and who haven't managed to internalize the fact that the chatbots they use hallucinate. It really is 'different' , though, in the same way the Internet was. It took about 20 years (ie: since The World ISP) for the Internet to work its way into every facet of life. And the dot com bubble po…

The only people underwhelmed by AI in February 2026 are people who have formed an identity around being AI skeptics over the last couple years and are struggling to shed it. I haven't met anyone who has seriously used the new models who isn't a at least a bit awed and disturbed.

This statment is really annoying and getting boring. There are A LOT of us who have built careers evaluating technology with healthy skepticism, finding where it works and were it doesn't, excited to share & learn - and we've heard "this time it's different" many times. Now because we refuse to jump in without that same nuance and thought, and proclaim "everything's different over night!" we're branded as ludites when we're really trying find a balance.

I don't hear people saying "nothing is going to change", but I do hear questions about the timeline and if the current levels of investment match returns. Branding these people as stuck in some sort of negative identity is bullshit.

Re: This time is different

#109

Post by magicalist »

voiper1 wrote: post #62

>Blockchain... NFTs >The problem is, the same dudes who were pumped for all of that bollocks now won't stop wanging on about Artificial Intelligence. I was firmly in the camp that blockchain was not a viable solution to any problem, and that NFTs sound stupid. I think AI is much different than that list. So, there goes your argument?

> I was firmly in the camp that blockchain was not a viable solution to any problem, and that NFTs sound stupid. I think AI is much different than that list. So, there goes your argument?

Squares are rectangles. The existence of rectangles that aren't squares doesn't negate that.

Re: This time is different

#110

Post by legulere »

tomlue wrote: post #90
seertaak wrote: post #87

To my mind at least, it is different. I lean heavily on AI for both admin and coding tasks. I just filled out a multipage form to determine my alimony payments in Germany. Gemini was an absolute godsend, helping answer questions in, translate to English, draft explanations, emails requesting time extensions to the Jugendamt case worker. This is super scary stuff for an ADHDer like me. I have an idea for a programming…

"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors were different. Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Enterprise spend went from $1.7B to $37B since 2023. Hyperscalers are spending $650B this year on AI infra and are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. There is no…

There's another perspective you can see in the comparison with the dot com boom. The web is here to stay, but a lot of ideas from the beginning didn't work out and a lot of companies turned bankrupt.
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