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Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

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Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#111

Post by derefr »

goatlover wrote: post #93
makk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a perception and the problem isn’t the AI it’s human nature: 1. every time AI is able to do a thing we move the goalposts and say, yeah, but it can’t do that other thing over there; 2. We are impatient, so our ability to get bored tends to outpace the rate of change.

The other side of this coin is everyone overhyping what AI can do, and when the inevitable criticism comes, they respond by claiming the goal posts are being moved. Perhaps, but you also told me it could do XYZ, when it can only do X and some Y, but not much Z, and it’s still not general intelligence in the he broad sense.

ML scientists will tell you it can do X and some Y but not much Z. But the public doesn’t listen to ML scientists. Most of what the public hears about AI comes from businessmen trying to market a vision to investors — a vision, specifically, of what their business will be capable of five years from bow given predicted advancements in AI capabilities in the mean time; which has roughly nothing to do with what current models can do.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#112

Post by HanClinto »

yousif_123123 wrote: post #96
HanClinto wrote: post #14

This feels like an excellent demonstration of the limitation of zero-shot LLMs. It feels like the wrong way to approach this. I'm no expert in the matter, but for "holistic" things (where there are a lot of cross-connections and inter-dependencies) it feels like a diffusion-based generative structure would be better-suited than next-token-prediction. I've felt this way about poetry-generation, and I feel like it migh…

One downside for diffusion based systems (and I'm very noob in this) is that the model won't be able to see it's input and output in the same space, therefore wouldn't be able to do follow-up instructions to fix things or improve on it. Where as an LLM generating html could follow instructions to modify it as well. It's input and output are the same format.

Oh? I would think that the input prompt to drive generation is not lost during generation iterations -- but I also don't know much about the architectural details.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#113

Post by contingencies »

cmbuck wrote: post #87
kristopolous wrote: post #85

Just the other day I came up with an idea of doing a flatbed scan of a circuit board and then using machine learning and a bit of text promoting to get to a schematic I don't know how feasible it is. This would probably take low $millions or so of training, data collection and research to get not trash results. I'd certainly love it for trying to diagnose circuits. It's probably not really that possible even at highe…

This would be an interesting idea if you were able to solve the problem of inner layers. Currently to reverse engineer a board with more than 2 layers an x-ray machine is required to glean information about internal routing. Otherwise you're making inferences based on surface copper only.

I think good RE houses have long since likely repurposed rapid PCB testing machines to determine common nets using flying CNC probes. The good ones probably don't need to depopulate to do it.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#114

Post by echelon »

slg wrote: post #89
echelon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in awe of the progress in AI images, music, and video. This is probably where AI shines the most. Soon everything you see and hear will be built up through a myriad of AI models and pipelines.

> Soon everything you see and hear will be built up through a myriad of AI models and pipelines. It is so bizarre that some people view this as a positive outcome.

These are tools. Humans driving the tools have heart and soul and create things of value through their lens.

Your argument rhymes with:

- "Let's keep using horses. They're good enough."

- "Photography lacks the artistic merit of portrait art."

- "Electronic music isn't music."

- "Vinyl is the only way to listen to music."

- "Digital photography ruins photography."

- "Digital illustration isn't real illustration and tablets are cheating."

- "Video games aren't art."

- "Javascript developers aren't real programmers."

Though I'm paraphrasing, these are all things that have been said.

I bet you my right kidney that people will use AI to produce incredible art that will one day (soon) garner widespread praise and accolade.

It's just a tool.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#115

Post by refulgentis »

photonthug wrote: post #110
refulgentis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wolves/sheep thing was to indicate how moralizing and infantalizing serves as a substitute for actually explaining what the problem is, because surely, it's not that the prose machine isn't doing circuit design. I'm sure you see it, I'd just love for someone to pause their internal passion play long enough to explain what they're seeing. Because I refuse to infantalize, I refuse to believe it's just grumbling bec…

I’ll play along. The thing that’s annoying me lately is that session details leaking between chats has been enabled as a “feature”, which is quickly making ChatGPT more like the search engine and social media echo chambers that I think lots of us want to escape. It’s also harmful for the already slim chances of having reproducible / deterministic results, which is bad since we’re using these things for code generatio…

(thank you!) 100% cosign. It breaks my. goddamn. heart. that [REDACTED], the consummate boring boneheaded SV lackey is [REDACTED] of [REDACTED], and can't think outside 6 week sprints and never finishes launching. This is technology that should be freeing us from random opaque algorithmic oppression and enabling us to take charge if we want. I left Google to do the opposite, and I'm honestly stunned that it's a year later and there's nothing on the market that challenges that. Buncha me-too nonsense doing all the shit I hate from the 2010s: bulk up on cash, buy users, do the recurring revenue thing and hope x > y, which inevitably, it won't be.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#116

Post by DHaldane »

seveibar wrote: post #78
HanClinto wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in reading more of your findings! Are you able to accomplish this with prompt-engineering, or are you doing fine-tuning of LLMs / custom-trained models?

No fine tuning needed, as long as the target language/DSL is fairly natural, just give eg a couple examples of tscircuit React, atopile JotX etc and it can generate compliant circuits. It can hallucinate imports, but if you give it an import list you can improve that a lot.

I've found the same thing - a little syntax example, some counter examples and generative AI does well generating syntactically correct code for PCB design.

A lot of the netlists are electrically nonsense when it's doing synthesis for me. Have you found otherwise?

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#117

Post by wewtyflakes »

goatlover wrote: post #97
echelon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in awe of the progress in AI images, music, and video. This is probably where AI shines the most. Soon everything you see and hear will be built up through a myriad of AI models and pipelines.

I sincerely hope not. Talk about a dystopian future. That’s even worse than what social media has become.

Why would that be describing a dystopian future? A more generous framing might be to say that incredibly creative feats will be available to more people, and those who are particularly talented will create things that are now beyond our imagination using these tools. Who knows if that is how it will actually play out, but it also does not seem unreasonable to think that it might.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#118

Post by 127 »

makk wrote: post #60
surfingdino wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels like an excellent demonstration of the limitation of zero-shot LLMs. It feels like the wrong way to approach this. There is one posted on HN every week. How many more do we need to accept the fact this tech is not what it is sold at and we are bored waiting for it get good? I am not say "get better", because it keeps getting better, but somehow doesn't get good.

That’s a perception and the problem isn’t the AI it’s human nature: 1. every time AI is able to do a thing we move the goalposts and say, yeah, but it can’t do that other thing over there; 2. We are impatient, so our ability to get bored tends to outpace the rate of change.

What goals were achieved that I missed? Even for creative writing and image creation it still requires significant human guidance and correction.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#119

Post by anoncareer0212 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #108
refulgentis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wolves/sheep thing was to indicate how moralizing and infantalizing serves as a substitute for actually explaining what the problem is, because surely, it's not that the prose machine isn't doing circuit design. I'm sure you see it, I'd just love for someone to pause their internal passion play long enough to explain what they're seeing. Because I refuse to infantalize, I refuse to believe it's just grumbling bec…

I am literally right now explaining to a senior exec why some PR hype numbers about developer productivity from genAI are not comparable to internal numbers, because he is hoping to say to his bosses that we’re doing better than others. This is a smart, accomplished person, but he can read the tea leaves. The problem with hype is that it can become a pathological form of social proof.

I see, I'm sorry that's happening :/ I was lucky enough to transition from college dropout waiter to tech startup on the back of the iPad, 6 years in, sold it and ended up at still-good 2016 Google. Left in 2023 because of some absolutely mindnumbingly banal-ly evil middle management. I'm honestly worried about myself because I cannot. stand. that. crap., Google was relatively okay, and doubt I could ever work for someone else again. it was s t u n n i n g to see how easily people slip into confirmation bias when it involves pay / looking good.

fwiw if someone's really into Google minutae: I'm not so sure it is relatively okay anymore, it's kinda freaky how many posts there are on Blind along the lines of "wow I left X for here, assumed i'd at least be okay, but I am deeply unhappy. its much worse than average-white-collar job I left"

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#120

Post by slg »

echelon wrote: post #114
slg wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soon everything you see and hear will be built up through a myriad of AI models and pipelines. It is so bizarre that some people view this as a positive outcome.

These are tools. Humans driving the tools have heart and soul and create things of value through their lens. Your argument rhymes with: - "Let's keep using horses. They're good enough." - "Photography lacks the artistic merit of portrait art." - "Electronic music isn't music." - "Vinyl is the only way to listen to music." - "Digital photography ruins photography." - "Digital illustration isn't real illustration and t…

The specific phrase used was "everything you see and hear" (emphasis mine). You weren't arguing this would be an optional tool that could be used in the creation of art. You were arguing that this will replace all other art. That isn't an argument that photography is an art equal to painting, it is an argument for it to replace painting.
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