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My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

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Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#151

Post by BeetleB »

baobun wrote: post #68

The privacy aspect and other security risks tho? So far all the praise I hear on productivity are from people using cloud-hosted models. Claude, Gemini, Copilot and and ChatGPT are non-starters for privacy-minded folks. So far, local experiements with agents have left me underwhelmed. Tried everything on ollama that can run on my dedicated Ryzen 8700G with 96GB DDR5. I'm ready to blow ~10-15k USD on a better rig if I…

Privacy is not binary, and it would make it easier if you outlined specific scenarios.

Most providers promise not to train on inputs if used via an API (and otherwise have a retention timeline for other reasons).

I'm not sure the privacy concern is greater than using pretty much any cloud provider for anything. Storing your data on AWS: Privacy concern?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#152

Post by sottol »

I think another thing that comes out of not knowing the codebase is that you're mostly relegated to being a glorified tester.

Right now (for me) it's very frequent, depending on the type of project, but in the future it could be less frequent - but at some you've gotta test what you're rolling out. I guess you can use another AI to do that but I don't know...

Anyway, my current workflow is:

1. write detailed specs/prompt,

2. let agent loose,

3. pull down and test... usually something goes wrong.

3.1 converse with and ask agent to fix,

3.2 let agent loose again,

3.3 test again... if something goes wrong again:

3.3.1 ...

Sometimes the Agent gets lost in the fixes but now have a better idea what can go wrong and you can start over with a better initial prompt.

I haven't had a lot of success with pre-discussing (planning, PRDing) implementations, as in it worked, but not much better than directly trying to prompt what I want and takes a lot longer. But I'm not usually doing "normal" stuff as this is purely fun/exploratory side-project stuff and my asks are usually complicated but not complex if that makes sense.

I guess development is always a lot of testing, but this feels different. I click around but don't gain a lot of insight. It feels more shallow. I can write a new prompt and explain what's different but I haven't furthered my understanding much.

Also, not knowing the codebase, you might need a couple attempts at phrasing your ask just the right way. I probably had to ask my agent 5+ times, trying to explain in different ways how translate phone IMU yaw/pitch/roll into translations of the screen projection. Sometimes it's surprisingly hard to explain what you want to happen when you don't know the how it's implemented.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#153

Post by mgraczyk »

We are beyond the point of trying to convince naysayers.

I will simply not hire anybody who is not good at using LLMs, and I don't think I would ever work with anybody who thinks they aren't very useful. It's like working with somebody who things compilers are useless. Obviously wrong, not worth spending time trying to convince.

To anyone who reads this article and disagrees with the central point: You are missing the most important thing that will happen in your career. You should reevaluate because you will be unemployable in a few years.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#154

Post by gwbas1c »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #90

The argument seems to be that for an expert programmer, who is capable of reading and understanding AI agent code output and merging it into a codebase, AI agents are great. Question: If everyone uses AI to code, how does someone become an expert capable of carefully reading and understanding code and acting as an editor to an AI? The expert skills needed to be an editor -- reading code, understanding its implication…

> Question: If everyone uses AI to code, how does someone become an expert capable of carefully reading and understanding code and acting as an editor to an AI?

Well, if everyone uses a calculator, how do we learn math?

Basically, force students to do it by hand long enough that they understand the essentials. Introduce LLMs at a point similar to when you allow students to use a calculator.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#157

Post by thetwentyone »

The author posits that people don't like using LLMs with Rust because LLMs aren't good with Rust. Then people would migrate towards languages that do will with LLMs. However, if that were true, then Julia would be more popular since LLMs do very well with it: https://www.stochasticlifestyle.com/chatgpt-performs-better-...

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#158

Post by ACCount36 »

fooqux wrote: post #65

> "For art, music, and writing? I got nothing. I’m inclined to believe the skeptics in those fields." You've already lost me, because I view programming as an art form. I would no more use AI to generate code than I would use it to paint my canvas. I think the rest of the article is informative. It made me want to try some things. But it's written from the perspective of a CEO thinking all his developers are just sal…

People don't pay programmers to produce great art. No one sees that "art" and no one cares. They pay programmers to get shit done.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#159

Post by slg »

>We imagine artists spending their working hours pushing the limits of expression. But the median artist isn’t producing gallery pieces. They produce on brief: turning out competent illustrations and compositions for magazine covers, museum displays, motion graphics, and game assets.

One of the more eye-opening aspects of this technology is finding out how many of my peers seemingly have no understanding or respect for the concept of art.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#160

Post by jiggawatts »

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.

You can be fuzzier than a soft fluff of cotton wool. I’ve had incredible success trying to find the name of an old TV show or specific episode using AIs. The hit rate is surprisingly good even when using the vaguest inputs.

“You know, that show in the 80s or 90s… maybe 2000s with the people that… did things and maybe didn’t do things.”

“You might be thinking of episode 11 of season 4 of such and such snow where a key plot element was both doing and not doing things on the penalty of death”

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