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AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

kasava.dev

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Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#221

Post by thwarted »

falcor84 wrote: post #195
thwarted wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We pay huge communication/synchronization costs to eek out mild speed ups on projects by adding teams of people. Something Brooks wrote about 50 years ago, and the industry has never fully acknowledged. Throw more bodies at it, be they human bodies or bot agent bodies.

But there is a level of magnitude difference between coordinating AI agents and humans - the AIs are so much faster and more consistent than humans, that you can (as Steve Yegge [0] and Nicholas Carlini [1] showed) have them build a massive project from scratch in a matter of hours and days rather than months and years. The coordination cost is so much lower that it's just a different ball game. [0] https://steve-yeg…

> But there is a level of magnitude difference between coordinating AI agents and humans

And yet, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47048599

> One of the tips, especially when using Claude Code, is explictly ask to create a "tasks", and also use subagents. For example I want to validate and re-structure all my documentation - I would ask it to create a task to research state of my docs, then after create a task per specific detail, then create a task to re-validate quality after it has finished task.

Which sounds pretty much the same as how work is broken down and handed out to humans.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#222

Post by ok_dad »

danielbln wrote: post #213
ok_dad wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been a minute and a half and I don’t see the evidence you can task an agent swarm to produce useful software without your input or review. I’ve seen a few experiments that failed, and I’ve seen manic garbage, but not yet anything useful outside of the agent operators imagination.

Agent swarms are what, a couple of months old? What are you even talking about. Yes, people/humans still drive this stuff, but if you think there isn't useful software out there that can be handily implemented with current gen agents that need very little or no review, then I don't know what to tell you, apart from "you're mistaken". And I say that as someone who uses three tools heavily but has otherwise no stake in…

The whole point is that an agent swarm doesn’t need a month, supposedly.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#223

Post by ehnto »

iwontberude wrote: post #185
fdefitte wrote: post #163

[dead]

Did you purposely write this to sound like an LLM?

It's just good writing structure. I get the feeling many people hadn't been exposed to good structure before LLMs.

LLMs can definitely have a tone, but it is pretty annoying that every time someone cares to write well, they are getting accused of sounding like an LLM instead of the other way around. LLMs were trained to write well, on human writing, it's not surprising there is crossover.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#224

Post by itemize123 »

jimbokun wrote: post #201
falcor84 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a level of magnitude difference between coordinating AI agents and humans - the AIs are so much faster and more consistent than humans, that you can (as Steve Yegge [0] and Nicholas Carlini [1] showed) have them build a massive project from scratch in a matter of hours and days rather than months and years. The coordination cost is so much lower that it's just a different ball game. [0] https://steve-yeg…

Then why aren’t we seeing orders of magnitude more software being produced?

we are. you can check the APP STORE release yoy. it's skyrocketing.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#225

Post by 0xpgm »

ehnto wrote: post #223
iwontberude wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you purposely write this to sound like an LLM?

It's just good writing structure. I get the feeling many people hadn't been exposed to good structure before LLMs. LLMs can definitely have a tone, but it is pretty annoying that every time someone cares to write well, they are getting accused of sounding like an LLM instead of the other way around. LLMs were trained to write well, on human writing, it's not surprising there is crossover.

There is such a thing as a distinct LLM writing style that is not just good structure. Anyone who's read more than five books can tell that.

And the comment itself seems completely LLM generated.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#226

Post by arcxi »

jacquesm wrote: post #39
oxag3n wrote: post #32

> We're thinking about AI wrong. And this write up is not an exception. Why even bother thinking about AI, when Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs openly tell us what they want (quote from recent Dwarkesh interview) - "Then further down the spectrum, there’s 90% less demand for SWEs, which I think will happen but this is a spectrum." So save thinking and listen to intent - replace 90% of SWEs in near future (6-12 months accor…

Not without some major breakthrough. What's hilarious is that all these developers building the tools are going to be the first to be without jobs. Their kids will be ecstatic: "Tell me again, dad, so, you had this awesome and well paying easy job and you wrecked it? Shut up kid, and tuck in that flap, there is too much wind in our cardboard box."

Is it the first time when workers directly work on their own replacement? If so, software developer may go down in history as the dumbest profession ever.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#227

Post by ukuina »

jimbokun wrote: post #201
falcor84 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a level of magnitude difference between coordinating AI agents and humans - the AIs are so much faster and more consistent than humans, that you can (as Steve Yegge [0] and Nicholas Carlini [1] showed) have them build a massive project from scratch in a matter of hours and days rather than months and years. The coordination cost is so much lower that it's just a different ball game. [0] https://steve-yeg…

Then why aren’t we seeing orders of magnitude more software being produced?

Why do you assume there isn't?

Enterprise (+API) usage of LLMs has continued to grow exponentially.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#228

Post by ukuina »

ehnto wrote: post #223
iwontberude wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you purposely write this to sound like an LLM?

It's just good writing structure. I get the feeling many people hadn't been exposed to good structure before LLMs. LLMs can definitely have a tone, but it is pretty annoying that every time someone cares to write well, they are getting accused of sounding like an LLM instead of the other way around. LLMs were trained to write well, on human writing, it's not surprising there is crossover.

Not so sure about that. There are many distinct LLM "smells" in that comment, like "A is true, but it hides something: unrelated to A" and "It's not (just) C, it's hyperbole D".

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#229

Post by dasil003 »

oxag3n wrote: post #32

> We're thinking about AI wrong. And this write up is not an exception. Why even bother thinking about AI, when Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs openly tell us what they want (quote from recent Dwarkesh interview) - "Then further down the spectrum, there’s 90% less demand for SWEs, which I think will happen but this is a spectrum." So save thinking and listen to intent - replace 90% of SWEs in near future (6-12 months accor…

I sort of agree the random pontification and bad analogies aren't super useful, but I'm not sure why you would believe the intent of the AI CEOs has more bearing on outcomes than, you know, actual utility over time. I mean those guys are so far out over their skis in terms of investor expectations, it's the last opinion I would take seriously in terms of best-effort predictions.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#230

Post by cromka »

pseudosavant wrote: post #145
fhub wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is likely working on a very clean codebase where all the context is already reachable or indexed. There are probably strong feedback loops via tests. Some areas I contribute to have these characteristics, and the experience is very similar to his. But in areas where they don’t exist, writing code isn’t a solved problem until you can restructure the codebase to be more friendly to agents. Even with full context, wr…

It's funny that "restructure the codebase to be more friendly to agents" aligns really well with what we have "supposed" to have been doing already, but many teams slack on: quality tests that are easy to run, and great documentation. Context and verifiability. The easier your codebase is to hack on for a human, the easier it is for an LLM generally.

Turns out the single point of failure irreplaceable type of employees who intentionally obfuscated the projects code for the last 10+ years were ahead of their time.
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