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Two kinds of AI users are emerging

martinalderson.com

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Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#271

Post by palmotea »

NDizzle wrote: post #261
eitally wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically (I'm 48), professionals have cared about their jobs, generally speaking, and often do make serious attempts to logically derive sociological benefits from their personal efforts. There's been a seismic shift over the past 5-6 years, though, and this sense of care has massively eroded.

I feel you. I’m 46 and now on the hunt for the right company to work for, and hopefully finish out my career there. While the company values haven’t technically changed, the actions taken in the past 5 years have eroded my trust so much I barely recognize the place. When you no longer have a sense of pride working somewhere, it’s time to move on. At least that is what I believe to be true.

> While the company values haven’t technically changed, the actions taken in the past 5 years have eroded my trust so much I barely recognize the place. When you no longer have a sense of pride working somewhere, it’s time to move on. At least that is what I believe to be true.

The problem, as I see it, is the changes that bug me [1] seem systemic throughout the economy, "best practices" promulgated by consultants and other influencers. I'm actually under the impression my workplace was a bit behind the curve, at a lot of other places are worse.

[1] Not sure if they're the "actions" you're talking about. I'm talking about offshoring & AI (IHMO part of the same thrust), and a general increase in pressure/decrease in autonomy.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#272

Post by GrinningFool »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #142

I'd argue 2 types of users are * People using it as a tool, aware of its limitations and treating it basically as intern/boring task executor (whether its some code boilerplate, or pooping out/shortening some corporate email), or as tool to give themselves summary of topic they can then bite into deeper. * People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are int…

I can buy that if we stipulate that one person can belong to both groups, depending on the task and goals of the user.

Sometimes I just want the thing and really don't care about any details. Sometimes I want a very specific thing built in a very specific way. Sometimes I care about some details and not others.

How I use the tools at my disposal depends on what I want to get out of the effort.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#273

Post by idopmstuff »

3D30497420 wrote: post #152
PunchyHamster wrote: post #142

I'd argue 2 types of users are * People using it as a tool, aware of its limitations and treating it basically as intern/boring task executor (whether its some code boilerplate, or pooping out/shortening some corporate email), or as tool to give themselves summary of topic they can then bite into deeper. * People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are int…

> People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are interested only in results, and are not interested in knowing more about the topic or honing their skills in the topic And this may be fine in certain cases. I'm learning German and my listening comprehension is marginal. I took a practice test and one of the exercises was listening to 15-30 seconds of audio…

This is me, but for writing code. I own a business, and I use Claude Code to build internal tools for myself.

Don't care about code quality; never seen the code. I care if the tools do the things I want them to do, and they verifiably do.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#274

Post by riazrizvi »

I think the main divisions are 1) people who are using it in fields they have little knowledge of to get basic competence, 2) the same people using it for advanced competence who are kidding themselves, 3) experts who are battling it in their own fields to finally get better answers than they could without it.

The first group are like Improved-Generalists. The third are Improved-Specialists. The second are delusional hype jockeys that drive the dumb talking points that extrapolate up the whazoo what AI is going to do and whatnot.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#275

Post by ForHackernews »

eitally wrote: post #257
ddsfsdf wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you really care? Its a job.

Historically (I'm 48), professionals have cared about their jobs, generally speaking, and often do make serious attempts to logically derive sociological benefits from their personal efforts. There's been a seismic shift over the past 5-6 years, though, and this sense of care has massively eroded.

Software developers have never been professionals. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, chartered engineers are professionals. They have autonomy and obligations to a professional code of ethics that supersedes their responsibility to their employers.

Devs are hired goons at worst and skilled craftspeople at best, but never professionals.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#276

Post by GrinningFool »

holoduke wrote: post #107
stego-tech wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise IT dinosaur here, seconding this perspective and the author’s. When I needed to bash out a quick Hashicorp Packer buildfile without prior experience beyond a bit of Vault and Terraform, local AI was a godsend at getting me 80% of the way there in seconds. I could read it, edit it, test it, and move much faster than Packer’s own thin “getting started” guide offered. The net result was zero prior knowledge t…

I let Claude configure en setup entire systems now. Requires some manual auditing and steering once in a while. But managing barebone servers without any management software has become pretty feasible and cheap. I managed to configure +50 Debian server cluster simultaneously with just ssh and Claude. Yes it's cowboy 3.0. But so are our products/sites.

When you use phrases like "managed to configure" to describe your production systems, it does not inspire confidence in long-term sustainability of those systems.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#277

Post by darepublic »

On mobile Firefox the subscribe modal extends past the width of the viewport. I assume the close button is hanging out there outside of view. For all the peddlers of the astonishing power of agents.. why is your software subpar. This sounds like snark but I'm actually serious. Anyone crowing about the productivity gains I expect to see fast high quality software

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#278

Post by biophysboy »

defrost wrote: post #12

The "upside" description: On the other you have a non-technical executive who's got his head round Claude Code and can run e.g. Python locally. I helped one recently almost one-shot converting a 30 sheet mind numbingly complicated Excel financial model to Python with Claude Code. Once the model is in Python, you effectively have a data science team in your pocket with Claude Code. You can easily run Monte Carlo simul…

Ha! I also have a physics background and had the same gag reflex.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#279

Post by whynotmaybe »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #142

I'd argue 2 types of users are * People using it as a tool, aware of its limitations and treating it basically as intern/boring task executor (whether its some code boilerplate, or pooping out/shortening some corporate email), or as tool to give themselves summary of topic they can then bite into deeper. * People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are int…

> The second group is one that thinks talking to a chatbot will replace senior developer

Once they realize that it doesn't replace senior but can easily replace junior, junior dev will have a bigger problem and the industry at large will have a huge problem in 8 years because the concept of "senior" would have vanished.

Re: Two kinds of AI users are emerging

#280

Post by ontouchstart »

kakacik wrote: post #179
PunchyHamster wrote: post #142

I'd argue 2 types of users are * People using it as a tool, aware of its limitations and treating it basically as intern/boring task executor (whether its some code boilerplate, or pooping out/shortening some corporate email), or as tool to give themselves summary of topic they can then bite into deeper. * People outsourcing thinking and entire skillset to it - they usually have very little clue in the topic, are int…

Second group are often the management decision makers, holding budgets, setting up 5-year plans etc. Don't underestimate them nor mock them, at the end its a disservice to all of us.

That is a great point. People in this group are programming at a different abstraction level, i.e., allocating computing resources, both human and machine resources.

Now AI agents are cheap but they generate a lot of slop, and potential minefields that might be costly to clean. The ROI will show up eventually and people in the second group will find out their jobs might be in danger. Hopefully a third group will come to save them.

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