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

GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

seangoedecke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#21

Post by Incipient »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #15

Right now AI is lifting up the floor, so if you don't know programming, mandarin or any other topic it will sure do better than you. (Vibe coding goes here) Same for tasks you know how to do but AI does them faster, there is also value there. (Claude Code used by a senior goes here) The interesting thing is when AI is lifting up the ceiling everywhere, but maybe then is when we are almost on AGI territory.

>The interesting thing is when AI is lifting up the ceiling everywhere, but maybe then is when we are almost on AGI territory.

I feel like that's the only way this insanely high bet on AI could possibly pay off - if AGI/"ceiling lifting" is achieved then maybe all this could be the trillion+ bet they expect. If it doesn't really progress much beyond where it is now, they're in trouble.

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#22

Post by palmotea »

laborcontract wrote: post #9
Aurornis wrote: post #5

I’ve been putting questions into LLM research functions, including Claude’s research mode, and letting them churn until a report appears. I’ve been starting with topics where I’m already familiar with the answer but want a refreshed. So far, I’m not impressed. Some times the info will be correct. Most of the time it strings together a lot of words from the material it finds but it reads like an undergrad trying to pa…

Claude's research mode is by far the worst one I've used, I consider it nearly useless. I cannot trust it specifically because Anthropic has a policy of refusing to use reddit for anything, whether it be as a research source or in claude chrome. Reddit may not be the greatest source for hard science, but for things like "tell me what shoes people are finding helpful for their plantar fasciitis" I appreciate reddit's…

> I cannot trust it specifically because Anthropic has a policy of refusing to use reddit for anything, whether it be as a research source or in claude chrome.

Reddit wants money for its users' data. Is the reason Anthropic doesn't want to pay Reddit's shareholders for it?

Also Sam Altman owns quite a lot of Reddit stock and was briefly the CEO, so it's not inconceivable he's influenced them not to cooperate with one of his chief rivals.

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#24

Post by jacobr1 »

palmotea wrote: post #20
mountainriver wrote: post #12

I’ve had the exact same experience. I’ve been vibe coding most of my research now, previously was an MLE handcrafting model code. A lot of negative comments on here, which seems to always be the case with HN and vibe coding. The reality is that it’s actually starting to work, quite well.

> I’ve had the exact same experience. I’ve been vibe coding most of my research now, previously was an MLE handcrafting model code. What happened to the MLE? Are they all going to end up that way? > A lot of negative comments on here, which seems to always be the case with HN and vibe coding. The reality is that it’s actually starting to work, quite well. It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting…

>It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting devalued and getting kicked to the curb.

I think it depends where people build their own identities in the value stream. Do you see yourself as a product/hacker type person and writing code just is a blocker on delivering your vision? Building greenfield prototypes is now 100x easier! Do you see yourself as a craftsperson that brings years of experience to hard technical challenges? Some folks see AI as an attack, and some see it as a way to remove some drudgery while they focus on harder problems. It is about mindset.

What skills do you value?

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#25

Post by palmotea »

jacobr1 wrote: post #24
palmotea wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve had the exact same experience. I’ve been vibe coding most of my research now, previously was an MLE handcrafting model code. What happened to the MLE? Are they all going to end up that way? > A lot of negative comments on here, which seems to always be the case with HN and vibe coding. The reality is that it’s actually starting to work, quite well. It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting…

>It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting devalued and getting kicked to the curb. I think it depends where people build their own identities in the value stream. Do you see yourself as a product/hacker type person and writing code just is a blocker on delivering your vision? Building greenfield prototypes is now 100x easier! Do you see yourself as a craftsperson that brings years of experience…

>> It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting devalued and getting kicked to the curb.

> I think it depends where people build their own identities in the value stream. Do you see yourself as.... It is about mindset.

No. You're missing the point in a pretty serious way. In large part, we're talking about lower levels on the hierarchy of needs than that.

> Some folks see AI as an attack, and some see it as a way to remove some drudgery while they focus on harder problems.

Some folks see it as a way to remove hard problems so they can focus on drudgery. Do you love to code, but hate code reviews? Guess what you get to do more of now!

> Building greenfield prototypes is now 100x easier!

And then the boss-man can use his MBA, fire 90% of the team, pocket their wages, and get 10x the prototypes. Repeat that through the economy. Your teammates have 20 years to retirement and can't pay their mortgage. "Progress!," but for whom?

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#26

Post by gs17 »

tim333 wrote: post #17
Cheer2171 wrote: post #7

The author wasn't doing "AI research" before and neither was GPT5. This is not at the frontier of anything, it is just an already solved problem in training that GPT5 found. Had the author been willing to actually do a Google and GitHub search, or just twiddle the training knob parameters enough on their own, they would have found a better solution than working alone. Also this footnote: > Alone” here is relative - I…

I don't think he claims to be an "AI researcher". His CV has: >I built significant pieces of the Copilot onboarding, purchasing, billing and settings flow. For eight months I headed up the Copilot anti-abuse effort. I then led the launch of GitHub Models, and am now working on other Copilot projects. As an aside I had a look at GitHub Models and it was quite interesting - you can try the API for a number of models fo…

The article is titled "GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me", so I think it's easy to think he's referring to himself as an AI researcher. He does say "I don’t have any illusions about this making me a real AI researcher", but it's the very end.

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#27

Post by gs17 »

kubb wrote: post #3

I love using AI to set up projects in 5 minutes but I hate to develop these projects using AI because inevitably it runs into a wall and I need to guide it and fix its code. I suppose in this case it picked up an existing project and DIDN’T walk off a cliff? Were the mutations really small?

The worst to me is trying to use someone else's AI code. This guy, for example, has thousands of lines of undocumented (there are a few docstrings but not much more) code. I'm not really motivated to go through that, and you can't trust AI to go through and document it correctly necessarily either. At least if I generated it, I was probably around for enough of the process to know how most of it works.

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#28

Post by [deleted] »

dist-epoch wrote: post #11
conartist6 wrote: post #2

It's like reading a self-written obituary of someone who stopped thinking for themselves. They aren't excited about anything. They aren't in awe. They haven't done any hard work. They're just here to ooze lukewarm sludge

Now do the same for people who buy their food at the grocery store instead of growing it themselves like our ancestors did.

[deleted]

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#29

Post by jackphilson »

palmotea wrote: post #25
jacobr1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting devalued and getting kicked to the curb. I think it depends where people build their own identities in the value stream. Do you see yourself as a product/hacker type person and writing code just is a blocker on delivering your vision? Building greenfield prototypes is now 100x easier! Do you see yourself as a craftsperson that brings years of experience…

>> It's hard to be positive about the idea of your skills getting devalued and getting kicked to the curb. > I think it depends where people build their own identities in the value stream. Do you see yourself as.... It is about mindset. No. You're missing the point in a pretty serious way. In large part, we're talking about lower levels on the hierarchy of needs than that. > Some folks see AI as an attack, and some s…

I suppose you would need to weigh the utility points lost from people no longer enjoying their jobs with the positive utility points gained by the consumers of products and services.

My intuition is that with the law of leverage in mind, the former would be relatively low and the latter would be relatively high.

It is of course up to the government and culture to minimize the former and maximize the latter.

Re: GPT-5-Codex is a better AI researcher than me

#30

Post by kridsdale1 »

palmotea wrote: post #22
laborcontract wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude's research mode is by far the worst one I've used, I consider it nearly useless. I cannot trust it specifically because Anthropic has a policy of refusing to use reddit for anything, whether it be as a research source or in claude chrome. Reddit may not be the greatest source for hard science, but for things like "tell me what shoes people are finding helpful for their plantar fasciitis" I appreciate reddit's…

> I cannot trust it specifically because Anthropic has a policy of refusing to use reddit for anything, whether it be as a research source or in claude chrome. Reddit wants money for its users' data. Is the reason Anthropic doesn't want to pay Reddit's shareholders for it? Also Sam Altman owns quite a lot of Reddit stock and was briefly the CEO, so it's not inconceivable he's influenced them not to cooperate with one…

AFAIK it’s Google that has signed a license deal with Reddit.
Post reply on HN