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Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

blog.kilocode.ai

261–270 of 363 posts

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#261
What I found interesting from the comments in this thread is not that their services were unlimited or not, and whether it's fair that they added more limits.

Just below me as I type there's a comment saying they're refusing to cancel a subscription (may not be below me any more when I finish typing).

Somewhere lower there's a comment saying they do not show the full price when you subscribe, but add taxes on top of it and leave you to notice the surprise on your credit card statement.

Is there an ethical "AI" service anywhere?

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#262
post #92
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI isn't a stylistic preference or minor enhancement, but cognitive augmentation that allows developers to navigate complexity at scales human cognition wasn't designed for. Just as the developer who refused to adopt version control, IDEs, or Stack Overflow eventually became unemployable , those who reject tools that fundamentally expand their problem-solving capacity will find themselves unable to compete with those…

> cognitive augmentation that allows developers to navigate complexity at scales human cognition wasn't designed for I don't think you should use LLMs for something you can't master without. > will find themselves unable to compete I'd wait a bit more before concluding so affirmatively. The AI bubble would very much like us to believe this, but we don't yet know very well the long term effects of using LLMs on code,…

> I don't think you should use LLMs for something you can't master without.

I'm not sure, I frequently use LLMs for well-scoped math-heavy functions (mostly for game development) where I don't neccessarly understand what's going on inside the function, but I know what output I expect given some inputs, so it's easy for me to kind of blackbox test it with unit tests and iterate on the "magic" inside with an LLM.

I guess if I really stopped and focused on math for a year or two I'd be able to code that myself too, but every time I tried to get deeper into math it's either way too complex for me to feel like it's time well spent, and it's also boring. So why bother?

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#263
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two masters go head to head. One uses AI tools (wisely - after all, they're a master!), the other refuses to. Which one wins? To your second point -- With as much capital as is going into data center buildout, the increasing availability of local coding LLMs that near the performance of today's closed models, and the continued innovation on both open/closed models, you're going to hang your hat on the possibility tha…

> Which one wins? We don't really know yet, that's my point. There are contradictory studies on the topic. See for instance [1] that sees productivity decrease when AI is used. Other studies show the opposite. We are also seeing the first wave of blog posts from developers abandoning the LLMs. What's more, most people are not masters. This is critically important. If only masters see a productivity increase, others s…

There's a clear difference between "I have used these tools, tested their limits, and have opinions" and "I am consuming media narratives about why AI is bad"

AI presently has a far lower footprint on the globe than the meat industry -- The US Beef industry alone far outpaces the impact of AI.

As far as "work pillaging" - There is cognitive dissonance in supporting the freedom of information/cultural progress and simultaneously desiring to restrict a transformative use (as it has been deemed by multiple US judges) of that information.

We don't see eye to eye, and I think that's ok. We can re-evaluate our predictions in a year!

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#264
Companies do what companies do despite promising to not to do this time. News at 11.

On a more serious note, I'm sure most of the people can't fathom or even think about the resources they are consuming when using AI tools. This things doesn't use energy, they consume it like how a black hole sucks light.

In some cases, your queries can consume your home's daily energy needs in a hour or so.

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure if this is a joke, but most home internet plans get throttled after some secret limit.

That still sounds unlimited, just like there's a natural limit when you're unthrottled.

That's not unlimited, or every mobile data plan in the EU would be unlimited too. You only get throttled very aggressively (64 kBit/s mostly) after reaching the quota, but you still can't call it unlimited.

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#266
post #137

"I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." Ugh, anyone who says that and really believes it can no longer see common sense through the hype goggles. It's just stupid and completely 100% wrong, like saying all musicians will use autotune in the future because it makes the music better. It's the same as betting that there will be no new invent…

Do the people in this corner use compilers? Would they agree that programmers who don't use them* have been replaced by those that do? *: I'm aware of cases like the recent ffmpg assembly usage that gave a big performance boost. When talking about industrial trend lines, I'm OK with admitting 0.001% exceptions. (Apologies if it comes across as snarky or pat, but I honestly think the comparison is reasonable.)

Compilers are systems that tame complexity in the "grug-brain" sense. They're true extensions of our senses and the information they offer should be provably correct.

The basic nature of my job is to maintain the tallest tower of complexity I can without it falling over, so I need to take complexity and find ways to confine it to places where I have some way of knowing that it can't hurt me. LLMs just don't do that. A leaky abstraction is just a layer of indirection, while a true abstraction (like a properly implemented high-level language) is among the most valuable things in CS. Programming is theory-building!

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that is how many photographers felt about digital cameras and photo editing software when it first came. Now very few professional photographers work without digital cameras and photo editing software (even if it is just to tweak some colors). Yes, you will still have some artists making money with purely analog cameras without any touch up but they are a tiny minority of the photographers getting paid for t…

> I'm sure that is how many photographers felt about digital cameras and photo editing software when it first came. And for a few decades at least it was true. The technology was shite compared to film photography for a long time. The same will probably be true for AI, as full developer replacement will require AGI.

It's amazing how much better shot-on-film media from the 60s and 70s has aged than the early digital video that became popular in the late 80s and 90s.

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A surprisingly large number of musicians do use things like written music (a medieval invention, but came into its own in the renaissance) or amplifiers (a modern one).

Sure but that's different than saying "if you don't use those things you are worthless and will fail"

This is true for 99% of developers who aren't particularly talented or driven, e.g. the average engineer who treats their job as a job and not their passion.

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is interesting, in my experience these tools work quite well on larger codebases but it depends how you use them and I haven't really found a counterexample. Do you maybe have a practical example, like a repo you could link that just doesn't work for AI?

Think larger codebases that do not involve node/npm...

The reason I ask is I work on developer experience, and I see feedback often online by developers that AI simply doesn't work for their flow. So I'm looking for real-world concrete examples on what AI development tools are stuggling with. Or, maybe it is how you use the tool? Personally I haven't run into limitations, so I'm really looking for hard counter-examples. The Godot example by the other poster was great, maybe you could provide another?

Re: Stop selling “unlimited”, when you mean “until we change our minds”

#270

"I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." Ugh, anyone who says that and really believes it can no longer see common sense through the hype goggles. It's just stupid and completely 100% wrong, like saying all musicians will use autotune in the future because it makes the music better. It's the same as betting that there will be no new invent…

[flagged]

Such a strong reaction sounds much more driven by emotion than reason
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