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Grief and the AI split

blog.lmorchard.com

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Re: Grief and the AI split

#171

Post by bluefirebrand »

daft_pink wrote: post #143

It kinda reminds me of the first time I visited a maker space years ago. It was full of cutting edge lasers cutters, 3-D printers, oscilloscopes. I’m doing the tour they told us we could make anything. Then the tour ended. I get to meet the real users and they showed me what they made. Most people just made random things like etching Pokémon into their pencil case. I left thinking wow these people could make anything…

The average person can't afford the materials to build an SR 71 but they can afford a pencil case.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#173

Post by mllev15 »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #157

I'm just not buying this framing. At all. I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to be mourning. I'm using my skills and continuing in my craft the way I have for several decades and the way I will continue to for several more. I eschew the LLMs not because they are threatening to me, but because they are unsound products built & promoted by people who are fundamentally sociopathic. If I am to mourn, I can mourn the un…

Completely agree. This is the framing people use to cope with their moral and psychological failure. Using tools that are literally scorching the earth just so they don’t have to use their brains anymore.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#174

Post by antod »

adriand wrote: post #45
simonw wrote: post #2

This sounds right to me: > Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, the same pull request workflows. The craft-lovers and the make-it-go people sat next to each other, shipped the same products, looked indistinguishable. The motivation behind the work was invisible because the process was identical. Helps explain why some people are d…

I feel zero sense of sadness about how things used to be. I feel like the change that sucked the most was when software engineering went from something that nerds did because they were passionate about programming, to techbros who were just in it for the money. We lost the idealism of the web a long time ago and the current swamp with apex reptiles like Zuckerberg is what we have now. It became all about the bottom l…

I think the rise of Facebook was possibly my first sense that our victory for "open" on the web was going to be short lived. Eg our (well not mine, I never used it) comms were moving to proprietary platforms.

Then with AWS our infra was moving to proprietary platforms. Now our dev tools are moving to expensive proprietary platforms.

Combined with widespread enshittification, we've handed nearly everything to the tech bros now.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#175

Post by antihipocrat »

ofrzeta wrote: post #169
hungryhobbit wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. There's always been two camps ... on everything! Emacs vs. vi. Command-line editor vs. IDE. IntelliJ vs. VS Code. I could do like twenty more of these: dev teams have always split on technology choices. But, all of those were rational separations. Emacs and vi, IntelliJ and VS Code ... they're all viable options, so they boil down to subjective preference. By definition, anything subjective will…

For the sake of argument let's assume we have a common goal: produce a software product that does its job and is maintainable (emphasis on the latter). Now given that LLMs are known to not produce 100% correct code you should review every single line. Now the production rate of LLMs is so high that it becomes very hard to really read and understand every line of the output. While at the same time you are gradually lo…

I think differences in the business determine whether the maintenance/understanding aspect is important. If developing an MVP for a pitch or testing markets then any negatives aren't much of a consideration.. if working in a mature competitive or highly regulated domain then yeah, it's important

Re: Grief and the AI split

#176

Post by skeledrew »

rimunroe wrote: post #149
skeledrew wrote: post #125

> These are real feelings about real losses. I'm not here to argue otherwise. I'll argue it. Technically, there's no loss IMO, only gain. Craft lovers can still lovingly craft away, even if they have to do it on their own time instead of on their now-AI-dominated day job, just like in ye olde days. Nothing's stopping them. But now result chasers can get results faster in their chasing. Or get results at all. I'm a pr…

> Craft lovers can still lovingly craft away, even if they have to do it on their own time instead of on their now-AI-dominated day job, just like in ye olde days. Nothing's stopping them. …except time, which sadly is limited. I’m sad about the real potential that I might not get to be paid to do something I enjoy so much anymore. I care about end products for sure, but that’s not why I’m in this career. I do this be…

> sacrificing time I’ve previously spent on other interests

I'd say this is the crux of the matter. Having competing interests and choosing what to do and how much of it is a balancing act, but you can still get that desired satisfaction. You could perhaps even start your own company if it's that important to you.

For me, projects just keep accumulating regardless of how much time I dedicate to them (outside of the mandatory things). Maybe I just have too many things I'd like to build. Definitely thinking about starting a company myself now there's all this capability available.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#177

Post by est »

I wonder what happens if Claude was exploited by hackers and all chat logs were released one day.

Nearly every corp secrets would be instant leaked.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#178

Post by reverius42 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #168
PaulHoule wrote: post #23

You can use gen AI entirely in the spirit of craft. For instance if you need to consume, implement or extend some open source software you can load it up in an agent IDE and ask “How do I?” questions or “how is it that?” questions that put you on a firm footing.

You don't need AI for this, we've had search engines and good online resources for decades

Current AI is much, much better than current search engines (which themselves seem worse than they were decades ago, for some reason).

Re: Grief and the AI split

#180

Post by carlmr »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #141
carlmr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But instead, all you see are FOMO propaganda to get devs to adopt the tool with no asking if it actually helps the devs do their job. If (big if) LLMs/AI take over all of knowledge work the first thing you'll notice is that the first company getting to the point of automating all knowledge work will close off their models to the public, not advertise it, and take over every business on the planet. You wouldn't waste…

There's not going to be a single point at which that happens. More likely what we will see (if this happens) is AI companies entering close partnerships with other businesses, building up their models ability to do that sort of work, then either acquiring their partner or directly competing with them. Similar to how Apple monitors developers having success on their platform and then launches a first-party offering.

This might be happening, too, however B2C advertising and heavy astroturfing is a sure sign that they don't even think they're close to this goal.

The average consumer pays the least for subscriptions and asks most uninteresting questions to the AI in terms of gaining insight. The only goal here can be upholding the narrative that everything will be AI soon™.

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