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Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

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Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#171

Post by Kiro »

surfingdino wrote: post #45
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…

> 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.

This post supports your case way less than you think. I've sent it to several EE friends and none have expressed your discontent. The general consensus has been "amazing what AI can do nowadays", and I agree. This would have been complete science-fiction just a couple of years ago.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#172

Post by makapuf »

scld wrote: post #50
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Most of the time? I find I spend an enormous amount of time on boring stuff like connecting VCC and ground with appropriate decoupling caps, tying output pins from one IC to the input pins on the other, creating library parts from data sheets, etc. There's a handful of interesting problems in any good project where the abstraction breaks down and you have to prove your worth. But a ton of time gets spent on t…

"Looks like you forgot pullups on your i2c lines" would be worth a big monthly subscription hahaha.

This totally didnt happen to me again recently. But next time I surely won't forget those. (Cue to a few months from now...)

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#173

Post by slg »

echelon wrote: post #142
slg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You were arguing that this will replace all other art. The population of people who want to create art is higher than the people who have the classical skills. By sheer volume, the former will dominate the latter. And eventually most artists will begin to use AI tools when they realize that's what they are -- tools.

Now combine that with the photography and painting analogy that you made in the previous post. Photography was invented some 2 centuries ago. Do you think the world would be better if every painter of that era, including the likes of van Gogh and Picasso, picked up a camera instead of a paintbrush?

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#174

Post by pylua »

roody15 wrote: post #167

It makes me think of the saying “a jack of all trades a master of none”. I cannot help but think there are some similarities between large model generative AI and human reasoning abilities. For example if I ask a physician with a really high IQ some general questions about say anything like fixing shocks on my mini van … he may have some better ideas than me. However he may be wrong since he specialized in medicine,…

That’s not really reasoning, right ? Maybe humans rely disproportionate on association in general.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#175

Post by happypumpkin »

zo1 wrote: post #122
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.

What I find bizarre is people gatekeeping the process that helps get things from imagination onto canvas. Artists and "creative" people have long held a monopoly on this ability and are now finally paying the price now that we've automated them away and made their "valuable" skill a commodity.

> Artists and "creative" people have long held a monopoly on this ability and are now finally paying the price

I've seen a lot of schadenfreude towards artists recently, as if they're somehow gatekeeping art and stopping the rest of us from practicing it.

I really struggle to understand it; the barrier of entry to art is basically just buying a paper and pencil and making time to practice. For most people the practice time could be spent on many things which would have better economic outcomes.

> monopoly

Doesn't this term imply an absence of competition? There seems to be a lot of competition. Anyone can be an artist, and anyone can attempt to make a living doing art. There is no certification, no educational requirements. I'm sure proximity to wealth is helpful but this is true of approximately every career or hobby.

Tangentially, there seem to be positive social benefits to everyone having different skills and depending on other people to get things done. It makes me feel good when people call me up asking for help with something I'm good at. I'm sure it feels the same for the neighborhood handyman when they fix someone's sink, the artist when they make profile pics for their friends, etc. I could be wrong but I don't think it'll be entirely good for people when they can just have an AI or a robot do everything for them.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#177

Post by anticensor »

stavros wrote: post #3
bottlepalm wrote: post #2

It'd be interesting to see how Sonnet 3.5 does at this. I've found Sonnet a step change better than Opus, and for a fraction of the cost. Opus for me is already far better than GPT-4. And same as the poster found, GPT-4o is plain worse at reasoning. Edit: Better at chain of thought, long running agentic tasks, following rigid directions.

Opus is better than GPT-4? I've heard mixed experiences.

Opus 3.5 is not yet released.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#179

Post by crote »

seveibar wrote: post #146
crote wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is going to be getting those functional blocks in the first place. The industry does not like sharing, and the openly available datasets are full of mistakes. As a junior EE you learn quite quickly to never trust third-party symbols and footprints - if you can find them at all. Even when they come directly from the manufacturer there's a decent chance they don't 100% agree with the datasheet PDF. And good…

This is why me and even some YC backed companies are working toward datasheet-to-component ai. We don’t trust third party, but we do trust datasheets (at least, trust enough to test for a revision)

So why would anyone designing hardware trust your third-party component library? If I don't trust it when it is handwritten by a trained (albeit probably junior) engineer, I am definitely not going to trust anything generated by AI.

Datasheets get incredibly confusing incredibly fast, and every single detail is critical. It's quite common for one datasheet to describe multiple parts at the same time, even in the same tables and diagrams, and have contradictions between the two parts. You end up with pins labeled "EN/SET" where the xxx1 variant has the pin act as Enable and the xxx3 variant have the same pin act as Setpoint. If you don't generate two separate symbols for those, the symbols are essentially useless because they can't be trusted. And that's just about the easiest thing you're going to come across.

This isn't a problem which can be solved downstream. Even trained experts are often confused because the input data is just really bad. You can't throw garbage into AI and except diamonds to come out, the only way to solve it is to convince all the manufacturers to switch to a to-be-developed universal documentation protocol.

Re: Testing Generative AI for Circuit Board Design

#180

Post by Obscurity4340 »

stavros wrote: post #165
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is prose more readable than bullets?

* Clearer narrative * Connection between points * Flows better * Eyes don't start-stop as much

I think I was thinking more along the lines of if I'm looking for specific information or to get a condensed understanding of something

Different readable than the more flowing, conjunct readable than yours (which is the more typical use of it I concede)

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