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

Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 414 posts

Re: Please Use AI

#241

Post by layer8 »

draftsman wrote: post #140
hootz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, when working on personal projects with AI I feel like I've replaced some of the joy of tinkering with code with the joy of tinkering with models. They require different work, writing prompts, setting up guardrails, harnesses etc, and that is also pretty fun for me!

I find very little joy in trying to wrangle the blackboxes that are LLMs. The undeterministic nature of them frustrates me, and feels nothing like the software engineering I know and love. However, I know I’m in the minority here, as almost everyone else in the industry I’ve talked to seems to love using them.

I agree with you. It’s actually similar to the frustration of using ill-documented, ill-behaved libraries or tools that are either closed-source or otherwise inscrutable. They may even be deterministic, but what’s frustrating is when you can’t reason about their behavior, can’t predict what will happen when you change x to y.

Re: Please Use AI

#242

Post by kccqzy »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
annnoo wrote: post #55

I had this moment when we designed shirts for the marathon we ran as a group. Instead of Brainstorming something funny, we just prompted ChatGPT and chose one of the results. I felt lost immediately. All the creativity, the humanity, the endless hours of putting soul into something. Gone For one hour or so I had some kind of existential crisis. Just because of a funny slogan on a shirt. And sometimes I still feel emp…

Ever since I started experimenting with AI coding, I've totally lost that feeling of accomplishment. For projects I actually developed by typing in the code, it feels like I actually did something--like here's something I built and am responsible for bringing into the world. When I finish an AI-built project, I feel...nothing. Just that empty: "Code now exists where it didn't exist before, but I didn't really do anyt…

That’s why fully AI written projects are only interesting to those who care only about productivity (i.e. business use cases) rather than the developer’s enjoyment and satisfaction.

For my own sanity, I never allow AI to do everything. Either I write some code and turn to AI for debugging help and code review, or I let AI write the initial draft and I debug the AI-written code.

Re: Please Use AI

#243

Post by SuperV1234 »

bko wrote: post #237
SuperV1234 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if my router wasn't working 5 years ago, I would have first used a search engine and tried to figure it out on my own. Pretending it's an AI novelty is... disingenuous.

Congrats. I'm pretty sure I've helped more than a few friends and family members debug a router. Most of them didn't even know what a router was. Much harder to Google for specific issues like that, hence the 1 billion people that use AI globally. Pretending that AI is not incredibly useful is... disingeuous

How'd you infer that I don't find AI useful from my statement? Of course I do. I am merely saying that the argumentation in the "poem" is not specific to AI.

Re: Please Use AI

#244

Post by jdw64 »

g-b-r wrote: post #218
jdw64 wrote: post #97

I am truly envious of people who have the luxury of a supportive environment that allows them to write a post like this. For my first dev job, I was made to set up a sole proprietorship just so the company could illegally dodge minimum wage and severance. I didn't get mentored; I learned through constant abuse. It was only when I first used AI that I realized the people around me were teaching me garbage and my books…

Buddy, I have no idea what happened you, but I never heard someone linking learning programming to insults. It seems unlikely to have happened to anyone else, ever. "Before" AI there was internet, and before that often just your room, your computer, and tinkering with it for years before meeting anyone else with the same interest. And trust me that there are many books better than AI. I'm sorry for your experience, a…

[dead]

Re: Please Use AI

#245

Post by antonyt »

causal wrote: post #68
antonyt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, sure, but Uber and AirBNB? I don't see how Uber has displaced some community function. AirBNB is arguably destructive to communities, but again how was community fulfilling the need it attempts to address?

Before Uber it was totally normal to ask someone, even an acquaintance, for a ride to the airport.

I see what you mean. I still ask friends for rides to the airport, but you're probably right that it's a shallower net than I might have cast without rideshare apps.

Re: Please Use AI

#246

Post by causal »

customguy wrote: post #107
causal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the poem doesn't suggest technology isn't ever useful. It's highlighting that the inefficiency of human relationship is a feature, not a bug. You might not have a friend who is into fly-fishing, but surely you know somebody into SOMETHING you could ask about. Maybe that's less efficient, maybe it's less direct. But our whole reason for existing, all of the stuff that gives life meaning- it requires each other, an…

> But our whole reason for existing, all of the stuff that gives life meaning- it requires each other "It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love." -- Stephen Hawking I think we may be approaching some sort of watershed moment, if not conflict between those who hold such sentiments and those whose response is "oh yeah? hold my beer".

Yeah I hit reply knowing the "hold my beer" crowd would disagree but I stand by the claim :)

Re: Please Use AI

#247

Post by jimbokun »

simoncion wrote: post #110
renegade-otter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole idea of trans-humanism, so beloved by VCs and the AI cult, seems borderline psychopathic to me.

> The whole idea of trans-humanism, so beloved by VCs and the AI cult, seems borderline psychopathic to me. Do you find HRT and gender-affirming surgeries to be borderline psychopathic? How about safe and effective cures for genetic, viral, and bacterial maladies that cripple or kill? The big things about transhumanism are to figure out how fix the things that damage and destroy us, and figure out how to let each per…

This is all bullshit.

Transhumanism when put into practice will be about changing our environment to take away everything that allows humans to thrive and be happy and fulfilled.

It's about the destruction of families, communities, and human cultures built up over millennia with no serious thought put into what comes next and why it might or might not be better for human beings.

> How about safe and effective cures for genetic, viral, and bacterial maladies that cripple or kill?

This is not Transhumanism, the desire for these things far pre-date Transhumanism as a philosophy.

> Hell, we appear to be generally incapable of figuring out something so simple as how to provide good lives for everyone even if there's no useful work for them to do.

So maybe we work on that before diving head long into the post human future?

Re: Please Use AI

#248

Post by kogasa240p »

annnoo wrote: post #55

I had this moment when we designed shirts for the marathon we ran as a group. Instead of Brainstorming something funny, we just prompted ChatGPT and chose one of the results. I felt lost immediately. All the creativity, the humanity, the endless hours of putting soul into something. Gone For one hour or so I had some kind of existential crisis. Just because of a funny slogan on a shirt. And sometimes I still feel emp…

Had a similar experience with one of my classes where my classmates decided to use chatgpt to brainstorm a group project. Felt very disconnected with my peers and the group project itself for the rest of that class.
Post reply on HN