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The human-in-the-loop is tired

pydantic.dev

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Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#111

Post by Schlagbohrer »

Barbing wrote: post #55
tharkun__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very well may be AI written. Then again, the stuff our PMs output, all pre-AI, now would all qualify as "AI written". There are certain writing styles, which even if you wrote them all yourself, most people will now attribute to AI. The all-too-common em-dash, yes sure. Guess what, it's a thing that was actually taught as "the thing to use if you write properly". So guess what lots of folks consciously put into…

I’m sure—pretty sure—we can use em-dashes w/o setting off the slop bells. And try to substitute them, you may; but the bell might still ring. (Yeah it stinks we have to adapt to avoid sounding like a model, especially for the best writers who were probably ripped off a lot more than the rest of us.)

I have started honing a method of trolling where i intentionally write like a crappy AI, but, do it by hand, just to prank my anti-AI friends. Gotta get my kicks somewhere. It's not just fun-- it's annoying. :-)

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#112

Post by Schlagbohrer »

Barbing wrote: post #64
akeck wrote: post #24

Reminds me of "The Animal is Tired" (2021) ( https://www.robinhobb.com/blog/archives/2021-05 )

> The animal is aging. Not surprising; I knew it would happen eventually, but I didn't make any provisions to deal with that eventuality. Somehow the reality crept up on me. And now it must be dealt with, day after day. (only ~5 paragraphs left now so y’all might as well finish it :) ) Thanks, lots of hackers can use the reminder.

To my fellow nerds: Take care of your bodies! Walk, move, exercise, occasionally eat a vegetable, reach for a piece of fruit rather than a soda! <3

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#113

Post by Schlagbohrer »

xtracto wrote: post #45

>It's also, frankly, quite lonely. Programming with an LLM is an intensely solitary activity. > You and the machine, going back and forth, refining and prompting and reviewing. I just want to comment on this. Maybe im part of some spectrum, but building stuff with AI in that "solitary mode" ive found it really enjoyable. It takes me too the times 30 years ago when I was a 14 year old writing my own games on Basic and…

Being able to ask an AI an embarassing newbie question that I should really know but I just need someone to remind me / confirm my half-forgotten knowledge...

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#114

Post by IanCal »

georgemcbay wrote: post #72
verdverm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's different between professional and personal projects, but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. I'm able to focus on a single project for a month and have something pretty good by the end. Doing rewrites to clean up and reorganize has never been easier, so I get to see and feel more of the design space in action. The can be…

> but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. Features might be easier to create, but I rarely ever get the feeling of I did that anymore from writing software. "I told the LLM to do that" is different and far less satisfying for me.

When my wife has a thing she says she needs to do and I can help, I now ask “do you want this done or do you want to do it?”. I think this is a similar kind of split.

Sometimes I want to cook, that’s a thing I want to actively do. Sometimes I cook because I want to put dinner out, dinner being out is the thing I want and cooking is just a required step.

Sometimes I want to solve a problem, sometimes I want a problem solved.

Here’s the tricky part for me now and I think others are hitting it - when a machine can solve the problem does that devalue the feeling of doing it by hand? Solving a sudoku feels good even though I know I have multitudes of machines in my house that could solve it faster than I could pick up the pen. Games that place a dollar value on some item I can also achieve makes me feel like the effort is only worth $ though. This isn’t logical but I’m ok being human.

So for a personal project do I get the same feeling doing it by hand? Will it feel like I’ve just made my life harder for no reward or will it be a nice satisfying thing?

As the models get so much better the goalposts shift too, the less I direct the less I was needed.

It’s a weird time. Fascinating, exciting and definitely useful - but so much of what I’ve learned is rapidly becoming less and less important for many tasks. Still, I’ve argued for many years that more people should code because it’s such a powerful tool even used basically, I guess I’ve got my wish (and that side I genuinely love, seeing people make things with their domain knowledge and not having to learn exactly how brackets work in order to automate something)

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#115

Post by Schlagbohrer »

magnio wrote: post #54

> He described waking up to thirty PRs every morning, each one pulled overnight by someone's AI, and needing to make snap judgment calls on every single one. The temptation to delegate the review itself to an AI was enormous. But, as he put it: "at that point, what am I still doing here?". It's so funny and somber to see programmers having an existential crisis when they get a glimpse of what work is like for busines…

Business managers get to delegate their work, make big money, and just spend their time at work gossiping before leaving at lunch to go play golf or work on a second job as a consultant, or on the board of another company, or creating a new startup. Pretty good deal imo

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#116

Post by leethargo »

roomey wrote: post #107

We've started calling it "Human on the hook" instead of human in the loop in work. It is more accurate, in terms of, it only matters when something goes wrong. Edit:"On the hook" is a general expression that means if something goes wrong it lands on you as the responsibile party, generally in a negative way. As in, if it goes right, you don't get kudos, if it goes wrong, you're on the hook for it

That's perfect, I will use that term from now on whenever somebody proposes any kind of automation and will see how often somebody will try to correct me.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#117

Post by boorang »

bad_username wrote: post #90

> Yes the code (sorta) writes itself, but the human reviewing, directing, and course-correcting feels worse, not better. I noticed the opposite. When reviewing and directing a colleague or subordinate, I spend probably 30% of my brain cycles, and 70% of my activation energy, to weigh the technical merit of my feedback against the human impact it will make: bruised egos, differing architectural convictions, correct an…

yes- as a technical lead that has gone back and forth with engineers on PRs who kept saying "it's good enough", it's nice to be able to say "just do it the right way" and not get pushback.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#118

Post by zelphirkalt »

zem wrote: post #3

unlike the op, I've been having a wonderful time using claude, both at work and for my own personal projects, so I will share what has worked for me, just in case it resonates with anyone else. my anecdotal advice is to avoid the entire "agent" temptation, and treat the LLM as a code generator. have a single session running at a time. come up with a plan, iterate on it until you are satisfied, then tell it to execute…

Sounds very reasonable. It is similar to what I do. I have a chat completely separate from my editor, where I only paste necessary pieces of code, that should be considered, add some constraints or ideas to discuss and once I am satisfied, I copy back code into my editor, where I might rename things and might further improve things. Other times, I just code it myself, when it is already clear to me or seems enjoyable. I think for me it is important to engage in doing things oneself, here and there, and make the architectural decisions, to actually feel a connection to a project and develop an in-depth understanding.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#119

Post by j1elo »

georgemcbay wrote: post #72
verdverm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's different between professional and personal projects, but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. I'm able to focus on a single project for a month and have something pretty good by the end. Doing rewrites to clean up and reorganize has never been easier, so I get to see and feel more of the design space in action. The can be…

> but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. Features might be easier to create, but I rarely ever get the feeling of I did that anymore from writing software. "I told the LLM to do that" is different and far less satisfying for me.

We're just getting used to the invention of the washing machine. All clothes are equally cleansed on average, with good enough results even if afterwards some particular pieces need a bit of extra care, while before we had to clean them all one by one and paying attention to minutia and details on each piece's needs. Nowadays you just control a couple buttons and hope for the best.

Better to find joy in other parts of the process! Hanging clothes out is still a widespread practice in Europe, and some enjoy it. Likewise for software quality controls, testing, and full product lifecycle.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#120

Post by VulgarExigency »

N_Lens wrote: post #2

While I appreciate and agree with the key points of the post, Claude's writing style fingerprints are all over it and I guess it's even more exhausting to read someone's AI written article.

I think it was written mostly by AI, but with a lot more human intervention than the average AI written article, so it doesn't bother me as much as usual.
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