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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

#261

Post by small_model »

p-e-w wrote: post #255
josefrichter wrote: post #252

AI most definitely is a coworker already. You do delegate some work for which you previously had to hire humans.

And the amount of work that could be delegated, with equal or better results than those from average human workers, is far higher than currently attempted in most companies. Industries have barely started using the potential of even current-generation AI.

Agreed, and with each passing month the work that 'could' be done increases. I don't write code anymore, for example, (after 20 years of doing so) Opus does that part of the job for me now. I think we have a period where current experienced devs are still in the loop, but that will eventually go away too.

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

#262

Post by georgefrowny »

MattGaiser wrote: post #253
alphazard wrote: post #158

There's an undertone of self-soothing "AI will leverage me, not replace me", which I don't agree with especially in the long run, at least in software. In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh. In the medium run, "AI is not a co-worker" is exactly right. The idea of a co-worker will go away. Human collaboration on software is fundamentally inefficient. We pay huge communication/synchroniz…

> We pay huge communication/synchronization costs to eek out mild speed ups on projects by adding teams of people. I am surprised at how little this is discussed and how little urgency there is in fixing this if you still want teams to be as useful in the future. Your standard agile ceremonies were always kind of silly, but it can now take more time to groom work than to do it. I can plausibly spend more time scoring…

It's always been like that. Waterfall development was worse and that's why the Agilists invented Agile.

YOLOing code into a huge pile at top speed is always faster than any other workflow at first.

The thing is, a gigantic YOLO'd code pile (fake it till you make it mode) used to be an asset as well as a liability. These days, the code pile is essentially free - anyone with some AI tools can shit out MSLoCs of code now. So it's only barely an asset, but the complexity of longer term maintenance is superlinear in code volume so the liability is larger.

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

#264

Post by lioeters »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #251
alphazard wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This assumes every individual is capable of succinctly communicating to the AI what they want. And the AI is capable of maintaining it as underlying platforms and libraries shift. I think there are people who want to use software to accomplish a goal, and there are people who are forced to use software. The people who only use software because the world around them has forced it on them, either through work or frie…

>The only time reuse really matters is in network protocols. Communication requires that both sides have a shared understanding. A lot of things are like network protocols. Most things require communication. External APIs, existing data, familiar user interfaces, contracts, laws, etc. Language itself (both formal and natural) depends on a shared understanding of terms, at least to some degree. AI doesn't magically ma…

Even within a single computer or program, there is need for communication protocols and shared understanding - such as types, data schema, function signatures. It's the interface between functions, programs, languages, machines.

It could also be argued that "reuse" doesn't necessarily mean reusing the actual code as material, but reusing the concepts and algorithms. In that sense, most code is reuse of some previous code, written differently every time but expressing the same ideas, building on prior art and history.

That might support GP's comment that "code reuse" is overemphasized, since the code itself is not what's valuable, what the user wants is the computation it represents. If you can speak to a computer and get the same result, then no code is even necessary as a medium. (But internally, code is being generated on the fly.)

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

#265

Post by RealityVoid »

alphazard wrote: post #174
paulryanrogers wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes every individual is capable of succinctly communicating to the AI what they want. And the AI is capable of maintaining it as underlying platforms and libraries shift. And that there is little value in reusing software initiated by others.

> This assumes every individual is capable of succinctly communicating to the AI what they want. And the AI is capable of maintaining it as underlying platforms and libraries shift. I think there are people who want to use software to accomplish a goal, and there are people who are forced to use software. The people who only use software because the world around them has forced it on them, either through work or frie…

> The only time reuse really matters is in network protocols.

And long term maintenance. If you use something. You have to maintain it. It's much better if someone else maintains it.

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

#266

Post by notahacker »

0xpgm wrote: post #225
ehnto wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not just false. It's the antithesis of true.

It's not just using rhetorical patterns humans also use which are in some contexts considered good writing. Its overusing them like a high schooler learning the pattern for the first time — and massively overdoing the em dashes and mixing the metaphors

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

#267

Post by quietbritishjim »

thwarted wrote: post #193
alphazard wrote: post #158

There's an undertone of self-soothing "AI will leverage me, not replace me", which I don't agree with especially in the long run, at least in software. In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh. In the medium run, "AI is not a co-worker" is exactly right. The idea of a co-worker will go away. Human collaboration on software is fundamentally inefficient. We pay huge communication/synchroniz…

> 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.

The point of the mythical man month is not that more people are necessarily worse for a project, it's just that adding them at the last minute doesn't work, because they take a while to get up to speed and existing project members are distracted while trying to help them.

It's true that a larger team, formed well in advance, is also less efficient per person, but they still can achieve more overall than small teams (sometimes).

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

#268

Post by literalAardvark »

progx wrote: post #254
josefrichter wrote: post #252

AI most definitely is a coworker already. You do delegate some work for which you previously had to hire humans.

And than you fix the produces shit, got high blood pressure and think "damn it,how I would love to yell at that employee"

You say that, but it's been better than most employees for a year or so ( *for specific tasks, of course. It's still not better than "an employee" )

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

#269

Post by quietbritishjim »

ok_dad wrote: post #222
danielbln wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're talking about whether the human users have caught up with usage of tech, not the speed of the tech itself.
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