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"Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

jkap.io

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Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#221

Post by HolyLampshade »

LeonidBugaev wrote: post #187
HolyLampshade wrote: post #151

I know I'm running a bit late to the party here, but maybe someone can provide some color that I (on the slightly older end of the spectrum when it comes to this) don't fully understand. When people talk about leaving their agents to run overnight, what are those agents actually doing? The limited utility I've had using agent-supported software development requires a significant amount of hand holding, maybe because…

I had a few useful examples of this. In order to make it work you need to define your quality gates, and rather complex spec. I personally use https://github.com/probelabs/visor for creating the gates. It can be a code-review gate, or how well implementation align with the spec and etc. And basically it makes agent loop until it pass it. One of the tips, especially when using Claude Code, is explictly ask to create a…

That is interesting. Never considered trying to throw one or two into a loop together to try to keep it honest. Appreciate the Visor recommendation, I'll give it a look and see if I can make this all 'make sense'.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#222

Post by littlestymaar »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #13
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the "back and forth" thing normal for AI stuff, then? Because every time I've attempted to use Claude or Copilot for coding stuff, it's been completely unable to do anything on its own, and I've ended up writing all of the code while it's just kind of introduced misspellings into it. Maybe someone can show me how you're supposed to do it, because I have seen no evidence that AI can write code at all.

Step 1: deposit money into an Anthropic API account Step 2: download Zed and paste in your API Key Step 3: Give detailed instructions to the assistant, including writing ReadMe files on the goal of the project and the current state of the project Step 4: stop the robot when it's making a dumb decision Step 5: keep an eye on context size and start a new conversation every time you're half full. The more stuff in the c…

> I spent about 500 dollars and 16 hours of conversation to get an MVP static marketplace

If I wasn't already convinced that agentic tools were slot machines, here's a very strong argument in favor of that theory…

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#223

Post by mrguyorama »

nerdsniper wrote: post #219
jascha_eng wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk I haven't really hit the point with any llm that it comes up with useful abstractions on its own unless those abstractions have been in the training data. E.g. imagine building a google docs clone where you have different formatting options. Claude would happily build bold and italic for you but if afterwards you add headings, tables, colors, font size, etc. It would just produce a huge if/else tree instead of bu…

FWIW I’ve used LLMs to invent new things. Not super groundbreaking fundamental research, but they were able to use physics to design a device that didn’t exist yet, from first principles.

Pics or it didn't happen

More seriously, what in the world "novel" physics device did you invent?

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#224

Post by dudeinhawaii »

HolyLampshade wrote: post #151

I know I'm running a bit late to the party here, but maybe someone can provide some color that I (on the slightly older end of the spectrum when it comes to this) don't fully understand. When people talk about leaving their agents to run overnight, what are those agents actually doing? The limited utility I've had using agent-supported software development requires a significant amount of hand holding, maybe because…

If you visualize it as AI Agents throwing a rope to wrangle a problem, and then visualize a dozen of these agents throwing their ropes around a room, and at each other -- very quickly you'll also visualize the mess of code that a collections of agents creates without oversight. It might even run, some might say that's the only true point but... at what cost in code complexity, performance waste, cascading bugs, etc.

Is it possible? Yes, I've had success with having a model output a 100 step plan that tried to deconflict among multiple agents. Without re-creating 'Gas town', I could not get the agents to operate without stepping on toes. With _me_ as the grand coordinator, I was able to execute and replicate a SaaS product (at a surface level) in about 24hrs. Output was around 100k lines of code (without counting css/js).

Who can prove that it works correctly though? An AI enthusiasts will say "as long as you've got test coverage blah blah blah". Those who have worked large scale products know that tests passing is basically "bare minimum". So you smoke test it, hope you've got all the paths, and toss it up and try to collect money from people? I don't know. If _this_ is the future, this will collapse under the weight of garbage code, security and privacy breaches, and who knows what else.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#225

Post by ath3nd »

HolyLampshade wrote: post #151

I know I'm running a bit late to the party here, but maybe someone can provide some color that I (on the slightly older end of the spectrum when it comes to this) don't fully understand. When people talk about leaving their agents to run overnight, what are those agents actually doing? The limited utility I've had using agent-supported software development requires a significant amount of hand holding, maybe because…

[dead]

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#226

Post by nerdsniper »

mrguyorama wrote: post #223
nerdsniper wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I’ve used LLMs to invent new things. Not super groundbreaking fundamental research, but they were able to use physics to design a device that didn’t exist yet, from first principles.

Pics or it didn't happen More seriously, what in the world "novel" physics device did you invent?

I didn’t say “novel physics” or “physics device”.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#227

Post by _345 »

nerdsniper wrote: post #219
jascha_eng wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk I haven't really hit the point with any llm that it comes up with useful abstractions on its own unless those abstractions have been in the training data. E.g. imagine building a google docs clone where you have different formatting options. Claude would happily build bold and italic for you but if afterwards you add headings, tables, colors, font size, etc. It would just produce a huge if/else tree instead of bu…

FWIW I’ve used LLMs to invent new things. Not super groundbreaking fundamental research, but they were able to use physics to design a device that didn’t exist yet, from first principles.

Would you share a bit more?

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#229

Post by mrguyorama »

nerdsniper wrote: post #226
mrguyorama wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pics or it didn't happen More seriously, what in the world "novel" physics device did you invent?

I didn’t say “novel physics” or “physics device”.

Okay, so rereading it as pedantically as you seem to insist:

You "invented" ("Designed") a "device" "using physics", and nobody has designed that "device" before, making it novel.

"From first principles" is a fun statement because people like Aristotle also thought they were reasoning from "first principles" and look how far it got them. The entire point of science is that "first principles" are actually not something we have access to, so we should instead prioritize what literally happens and can be observed. It's not possible as far as we know to trick mother nature into giving us the answer we want rather than the real answer.

Did you ever actually build or test this "device"?

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#230

Post by _345 »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #155
tokioyoyo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you believe this? Simply, cut-throat competition. Given multiple nations are funding different AI-labs, quality of output and speed are one of the most important things.

Dating apps also have cut-throat competition and none of them are optimised for minimising the time you spend on the app.

~90% of them are owned by Match
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