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Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

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Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#211

Post by diggan »

ipsi wrote: post #178
diggan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if you use a proper password manager that prevents you from using the autofill on domains/pages others than the hardcoded ones. In my case, it would immediately trigger my "sus filter" if the automatic prompt doesn't show up and I would have to manually find the entry.

And yet that's not enough, even when someone very definitely knows better: https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mail... Turns out that under certain conditions, such as severe exhaustion, that "sus filter" just... doesn't turn on quickly enough. The aim of passkeys is to ensure that it _cannot_ happen, no matter how exhausted/stressed/etc someone is. I'm not familiar enough with passkeys to pass ju…

If you're saying something is less secure because the users might suffer from "severe exhaustion", then I know that there aren't any proper arguments for migrating to it. Thanks for confirming I can continue using OTP without feeling like I might be missing something :)

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#212

Post by Bedon292 »

pm215 wrote: post #116
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #23

I do love one bot asking another bot to sign a CLA! - https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115732#issuecomment-2...

That's funny, but also interesting that it didn't "sign" it. I would naively have expected that being handed a clear instruction like "reply with the following information" would strongly bias the LLM to reply as requested. I wonder if they've special cased that kind of thing in the prompt; or perhaps my intuition is just wrong here?

A comment on one of the threads, when a random person tried to have copilot change something, said that copilot will not respond to anyone without write access to the repo. I would assume that bot doesn't have write access, so copilot just ignores them.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#213

Post by mieubrisse »

sbarre wrote: post #165
rsynnott wrote: post #41

Beyond every other absurdity here, well, maybe Microsoft is different, but I would never assign a PR that was _failing CI_ to somebody. That that's happening feels like an admission that the thing doesn't _really_ work at all; if it worked even slightly, it would at least only assign passing PRs, but presumably it's bad enough that if they put in that requirement there would be no PRs.

I feel like everyone is applying a worse-case narrative to what's going on here.. I see this as a work in progress.. I am almost certain the humans in the loop on these PRs are well aware of what's going on and have their expectations in check, and this isn't just "business as usual" like any other PR or work assignment. This is a test. You can't improve a system without testing it on real world conditions. How do we…

I was looking for exactly this comment. Everybody's gloating, "Wow look how dumb AI is! Haha, schadenfreude!" but this seems like just a natural part of the evolution process to me.

It's going to look stupid... until the point it doesn't. And my money's on, "This will eventually be a solved problem."

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#214

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

safety1st wrote: post #160
surgical_fire wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imagine how the people who have to deal with this are feeling. It's like you have a junior developer except they don't even read what you're telling them, and have 0 agency to understand what they're actually doing. That comparison is awful. I work with quite a few Junior developers and they can be competent. Certainly don't make the silly mistakes that LLMs do, don't need nearly as much handholding, and te…

These GH interactions remind me of one of those offshore software outsourcing firms on Upwork or Freelancer.com that bid $3/hr on every project that gets posted. There's a PM who takes your task and gives it to a "developer" who potentially has never actually written a line of code, but maybe they've built a WordPress site by pointing and clicking in Elementor or something. After dozens of hours billed you will, in f…

This gives me flashbacks to when my big corporate former employer outsourced a bunch of work offshore.

An outsourced contractor was tasked with a very simple job as their first task - update a single dependency, which required just a bump of the version and no code changes - after three days of them seemingly struggling to even understand what they were asked to do, inability to clone the repo, failure to install the necessary tooling on their machine, they ended up getting fired from the project. Complete waste of money, and the time of those of us having to delegate and review this work.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#215

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

kruuuder wrote: post #146

A comment on the first pull request provides some context: > The stream of PRs is coming from requests from the maintainers of the repo. We're experimenting to understand the limits of what the tools can do today and preparing for what they'll be able to do tomorrow. Anything that gets merged is the responsibility of the maintainers, as is the case for any PR submitted by anyone to this open source and welcoming repo…

This is important context given that it would be absurd for the managers to have already drawn a definitive conclusion about the models’ capabilities. An explicit understanding that the purpose of the exercise is to get a better idea of the current strengths and weaknesses of the models in a “real world” context makes this actually very reasonable.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#216

Post by weird-eye-issue »

globalise83 wrote: post #21

Malicious compliance should be the order of the day. Just approve the requests without reviewing them and wait until management blinks when Microsoft's entire tech stack is on fire. Then quit your job and become a troubleshooter on x3 the pay.

That's cute, but the maintainers themselves submitted the requests with Copilot.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#217

Post by voxic11 »

safety1st wrote: post #160
surgical_fire wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imagine how the people who have to deal with this are feeling. It's like you have a junior developer except they don't even read what you're telling them, and have 0 agency to understand what they're actually doing. That comparison is awful. I work with quite a few Junior developers and they can be competent. Certainly don't make the silly mistakes that LLMs do, don't need nearly as much handholding, and te…

These GH interactions remind me of one of those offshore software outsourcing firms on Upwork or Freelancer.com that bid $3/hr on every project that gets posted. There's a PM who takes your task and gives it to a "developer" who potentially has never actually written a line of code, but maybe they've built a WordPress site by pointing and clicking in Elementor or something. After dozens of hours billed you will, in f…

Actually the AI might still be more expensive at this point. But give it a few years I'm sure they will get the costs down.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#218

Post by rco8786 »

sbarre wrote: post #165
rsynnott wrote: post #41

Beyond every other absurdity here, well, maybe Microsoft is different, but I would never assign a PR that was _failing CI_ to somebody. That that's happening feels like an admission that the thing doesn't _really_ work at all; if it worked even slightly, it would at least only assign passing PRs, but presumably it's bad enough that if they put in that requirement there would be no PRs.

I feel like everyone is applying a worse-case narrative to what's going on here.. I see this as a work in progress.. I am almost certain the humans in the loop on these PRs are well aware of what's going on and have their expectations in check, and this isn't just "business as usual" like any other PR or work assignment. This is a test. You can't improve a system without testing it on real world conditions. How do we…

I think people would be more likely to adopt this view if the overall narrative about AI is that it’s a work in progress and we expect it to get magnitudes better. But the narrative is that AI is already replacing human software engineers.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#219

Post by mieubrisse »

sbarre wrote: post #143
globalise83 wrote: post #21

Malicious compliance should be the order of the day. Just approve the requests without reviewing them and wait until management blinks when Microsoft's entire tech stack is on fire. Then quit your job and become a troubleshooter on x3 the pay.

I know this is meant to sound witty or clever, but who actually wants to behave this way at their job? I'll never understand the antagonistic "us vs. them" mentality people have with their employer's leadership, or people who think that you should be actively sabotaging things or be "maliciously compliant" when things aren't perfect or you don't agree with some decision that was made. To each their own I guess, but I…

Exactly this. I suspect that "us vs them" is sweet poison: it feels good in the moment ("Yeah, stick it to The Man!") but it long-term keeps you trapped in a victim mindset.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#220

Post by HelloMcFly »

sbarre wrote: post #143
globalise83 wrote: post #21

Malicious compliance should be the order of the day. Just approve the requests without reviewing them and wait until management blinks when Microsoft's entire tech stack is on fire. Then quit your job and become a troubleshooter on x3 the pay.

I know this is meant to sound witty or clever, but who actually wants to behave this way at their job? I'll never understand the antagonistic "us vs. them" mentality people have with their employer's leadership, or people who think that you should be actively sabotaging things or be "maliciously compliant" when things aren't perfect or you don't agree with some decision that was made. To each their own I guess, but I…

It’s worth recognizing that the tension between labor and capital historical reality, not just a modern-day bad attitude. Workers and leadership don’t automatically share goals, especially when senior management incentives often prioritize reducing labor costs which they always do now (and no, this wasn't always universally so).

Most employees want to do good work, but pretending there’s no structural divergence in interests flattens decades of labor history and ignores the power dynamics baked into modern orgs. It’s not about being antagonistic, it’s about being clear-eyed where there are differences between the motivations of your org. leadership and your personal best interests. After a few levels remove from your position, you're just headcount with loaded cost.

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