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

My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

fly.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 1001 posts

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#181

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I use AI every day, basically as a "pair coder."

I used it about 15 minutes ago, to help me diagnose a UI issue I was having. It gave me an answer that I would have figured out, in about 30 minutes, in about 30 seconds. My coding style (large files, with multiple classes, well-documented) works well for AI. I can literally dump the entire file into the prompt, and it can scan it in milliseconds.

I also use it to help me learn about new stuff, and the "proper" way to do things.

Basically, what I used to use StackOverflow for, but without the sneering, and much faster turnaround. I'm not afraid to ask "stupid" questions -That is critical.

Like SO, I have to take what it gives me, with a grain of salt. It's usually too verbose, and doesn't always match my style, so I end up doing a lot of refactoring. It can also give rather "naive" answers, that I can refine. The important thing, is that I usually get something that works, so I can walk it back, and figure out a better way.

I also won't add code to my project, that I don't understand, and the refactoring helps me, there.

I have found the best help comes from ChatGPT. I heard that Claude was supposed to be better, but I haven't seen that.

I don't use agents. I've not really ever found automated pipelines to be useful, in my case, and that's sort of what agents would do for me. I may change my mind on that, as I learn more.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#182

Post by disambiguation »

Man the redbull is oozing off this post, talk about sipping rocket fuel.

I mean a tool is a tool, nothing wrong with that - but most of the resistence stems from AI being shoved down our throats at warp speed. Its already everywhere and I can't opt out, that stinks.

As for the skepticism in terms of adoption and usefulness, its mainly a question of whether or not it will continue improving - there's no way to no what lies ahead, but if it came to a grinding halt today well then the high water mark just isn't all that impressive.

> Yeah, we get it. You don’t believe in IPR. Then shut the fuck up about IPR. Reap the whirlwind.

This is the point that matters, and I don't think everyone is on the same page that LLMs are essentially over glorified data laundering.

The industry would get just as much "value" if we declared a jubilee and wiped out all licenses and allowed unlimited plagiarism (Looking at Zuckerburg and his 10 TB of pirated data). In fact, if AI owners published their training data sets with a capable search engine, I would bet money of it out performing LLMs in most cases. Why waste all that man power reinventing Netflix again? Just copy paste the code and give everyone their time back, sheesh.

> Kids today don’t just use agents; they use asynchronous agents. They wake up, free-associate 13 different things for their LLMs to work on, make coffee, fill out a TPS report, drive to the Mars Cheese Castle, and then check their notifications. They’ve got 13 PRs to review. Three get tossed and re-prompted. Five of them get the same feedback a junior dev gets. And five get merged.

I'm in a role that is behind the times, using a bespoke in-house framework that is immune to the benefits of LLMs, so I don't get to see what you see - so as a skeptic, I'm not convinced this isn't just the illusion of speed. I have not seen convincing results, show me the amazing things being made by AI (AI tooling itself does not count) - but yes, maybe that's because its all siloed into walled gardens.

> But something real is happening. My smartest friends are blowing it off. Maybe I persuade you. Probably I don’t. But we need to be done making space for bad arguments.

Yeah all the arguments have been made, good and bad, we're all waiting to see how it plays out. But I'd rather take the side of being a skeptic - if I'm right then I'm in the right place. If I'm wrong, that's cool too, I don't mind playing catch-up. But fully embracing the hype is, IMO, tantamount to putting all your eggs in one basket, seems like a needless risk but if that's worth it to you to get ahead then by all means, slurp up the hype.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#183

Post by flufluflufluffy »

bloat wrote: post #29

So we replace the task of writing tedious boilerplate with the task of reading the AI's tedious boilerplate. Which takes just as long. And leaves you with less understanding. And is more boring.

and probably results in a greater net energy consumption/carbon output

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#184

Post by r3trohack3r »

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…

I don’t know about you, but I use LLMs as gateways to knowledge. I can set a deep research agent free on the internet with context about my current experience level, preferred learning format (books), what I’m trying to ramp up on, etc. A little while later, I have a collection of the definitive books for ramping up in a space. I then sit down and work through the book doing active recall and practice as I go. And I have the LLM there for Q&A while I work through concepts and “test the boundaries” of my mental models.

I’ve become faster at the novice -> experienced arc with LLMs, even in domains that I have absolutely no prior experience with.

But yeah, the people who just use LLMs for “magic oracle please tell me what do” are absolutely cooked. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#185

Post by TheRoque »

One of the biggest anti LLM arguments for me at the moments is about security. In case you don't know, if you open a file with copilot active or cursor, containing secrets, it might be sent to a server a thus get leaked. The companies say that if that file is in a cursorignore file, it won't be indexed, but it's still a critical security issue IMO. We all know what happened with the "smart home assistants" like Alexa.

Sure, there might be a way to change your workflow and never ever open a secret file with those editors, but my point is that a software that sends your data without your consent, and without giving you the tools to audit it, is a no go for many companies, including mine.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#186

Post by consumer451 »

I am just some shmoe, but I believe that devs fall into to major categories when it comes to LLMs: those with their own product ideas, and those without their own product ideas.

The prior look upon Claude Code/Cursor/Windsurf much more favorably, as they are able to ship their ideas much faster.

This is a bit of a hot take, so I would love any replies to bring me back down to earth.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#187

Post by abdullin »

My current workflow with Codex is (coding environment from OpenAI):

(1) Ask to write an implementation plan for a specific change or a feature. It will go through the source code, look up references, make notes and produce a plan

(2) Review the plan. Point out missing things, or stuff that needs improvement.

(3) Once I'm satisfied with the plan - ask to draft PR. Launch a few attempts in parallel and pick the one that I like the most.

(4) While drafting PR, Codex will run unit tests (even can run E2E tests in its container), linting and type checkers at every single step. This helps a lot with the stability.

(5) I review the code and merge the PR if I like it. Ask to cleanup - if not.

This feels like working with a remote team - very patient and diligent at that.

Ultimately, I get to get more features done per day. But I also feel more tired by the end of the day due to a higher level of cognitive load. There are more decisions to make and less idle time (e.g. no more hours spent tidying up the code or doing relaxing and pretty refactoring).

TLDR; this AI thing works really well at least for me. But it comes with trade-offs that might slow down its adoption by companies en masse.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#188

Post by sanderjd »

grey-area wrote: post #169

I’d love to see the authors of effusive praise of generative AI like this provide the proof of the unlimited powers of their tools in code. If GAI (or agents, or whatever comes next …) is so effective it should be quite simple to prove that by creating an AI only company and in short order producing huge amounts of serviceable code to do useful things. So far I’ve seen no sign of this, and the best use case seems to…

What kind of proof are you looking for here, exactly? Lots of businesses are successfully using AI... There are many anecdotes of this, which you can read here, or even in the article you commented on.

What else are you looking for?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#189

Post by [deleted] »

TrackerFF wrote: post #44

My take is: It is OK to don't buy into the hype. There's a lot of hype, no denying that. But if you're actively avoiding everything related to it, you might find yourself in a position where you're suddenly being left in the dust. Maybe not now, not next month, not next year, but who some time in the future. The models really are improving fast! I've talked with devs that (claim they) haven't touched a model since Ch…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN