Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Please stop the AI confidence theater

elenaverna.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 282 posts

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#151

Post by natsucks »

AaronAPU wrote: post #38
algoth1 wrote: post #14

As someone who has worked closely to the marketing space, there’s a saying that goes something like: ‘then the marketers found about it and ruin everything’. Quick example: when amazon launched kindle self publishing, there was a golden age where wannabe writers could self-publish their books, and let the market dictate what survived and became successful. Eventually, some people got good money out of it. Then market…

I’ve long considered marketing to be one of the purest forms of evil in existence. It truly does envelop and destroy everything good.

I wish every product everywhere was evaluated based on merit, efficacy, etc alone...but...i bet most of us lean towards products in a grocery store with more appealing labels. The unfortunate reality is that customer psychology matters and your great product can die because of it.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#152

Post by overgard »

heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

You know, people could just put their money where their mouth is. IE go build something amazing instead of talking endlessly about how they're going to build amazing stuff. That's why this feels like so much theatre.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#153

Post by lspears »

"Meanwhile, I’m over here asking ChatGPT to rewrite the same paragraph for the third time because it keeps defaulting me into ‘LinkedIn wisdom post’ mode. GARH."

Did they tell it to write it differently? You can literally make it sound like a pirate if you want. You can also make it be conservative, non-hype. Just ask.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#154

Post by lilbigdoot »

heresalexandria wrote: post #150
gmm1990 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that thinking/agent mode sometimes makes it worse/comes up with the same thing and just takes a long time. But I’m sure it’ll be different with fable for a few months until that hype blows over

Something a lot of folks struggling with these systems don't get is that the instruction and management of them is often quite important - just because they're capable doesn't mean they're mind readers. Most of the skepticism I encounter on this front is due to lack of proper direction, process involving planning and review before execution, and appropriate attention given to evaluation and feedback loops. If you ask…

I asked Qwen 3.7 pro to create a C# project that takes a string and reverses it, with a single file WASM target. It spun wheels for over 30 minutes and got nothing.

I use LLMs all the time to help me diagnose bugs and work through my designs, but again and again, I am super unimpressed by their coding abilities. I can see how in some cases with a proper harness they probably do a decent job at certain tasks, but almost everything I try to do, they flail.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#156

Post by tracerbulletx »

AaronAPU wrote: post #38
algoth1 wrote: post #14

As someone who has worked closely to the marketing space, there’s a saying that goes something like: ‘then the marketers found about it and ruin everything’. Quick example: when amazon launched kindle self publishing, there was a golden age where wannabe writers could self-publish their books, and let the market dictate what survived and became successful. Eventually, some people got good money out of it. Then market…

I’ve long considered marketing to be one of the purest forms of evil in existence. It truly does envelop and destroy everything good.

I'm always curious if people who think like this have ever owned a business and had to convince people to actually give them money for what they do.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#157

Post by heresalexandria »

lilbigdoot wrote: post #148
heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

I tried to have multiple models convert a simple textmate grammar to a vim one, and none of them could do it. They couldn't even use the right names between the regex matches and the color definitions. I tried for about 30 minutes. It took me about 5 I tried having them work on a LSP. The fact I got a one shot half working autocomplete based on my existing work was cool, but again, they flailed on incredibly simple t…

Did you try providing it documentation for the respective formats (via browsing/tool use or input to the prompt)? And were you using a modern thinking model from Anthropic or OpenAI?

The crucial breakdown here sounds like either lack of proper context/harness or insufficiently capable model (there's a huge gulf between GPT-5.5/Opus 4.8/Fable class models and anything not from the big three) or both.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#158

Post by lilbigdoot »

slopinthebag wrote: post #135
heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

Or they aren’t building a SaaS with React or a TUI with Typecript, which is about the only thing that LLMs have “solved”.

Seriously I've been on a sabbatical and have no pressure to use AI. I keep trying on my compiler and for coding they flail so hard every time. I love how good they are at helping me diagnose bugs, it's so much better than scouring google like I used to hoping for some result that matches what I'm seeing. Even then, they hallucinate all the time and just say odd things that don't make sense. As soon as you ask them something obscure they just.... merp

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#159

Post by harimau777 »

Can someone explain to me:

I have big problems with how AI companies stole artist's art and I have big concerns with how AI might be overused or misused. However, I don't understand how people can still say that AI is useless. Everyday when I use AI I am impressed with everything it can do. Particularly in coding, AI is useful right now (this may or may not be due to how messy the codebase that I'm working in is).

To be clear, this isn't a rhetorical question. I'm wondering what I am missing that other people are seeing.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#160

Post by nradov »

heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

I should use it to read and vote on HN comments so that I don't have to waste time doing that myself.
Post reply on HN