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"People who don't use AI will be left behind"

migrainebrain.bearblog.dev

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Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#271

Post by sshine »

shinryuu wrote: post #249
sshine wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clearly some level where you want a human making decisions Yes, clearly. There was a meme out there, "just make something cool idk". Statements like "Don't let AI make decisions" are made because of the loss of control we experience as mechanical parts of our work (such as writing to files) gets automated.

There is also the famous saying from IBM. > A computer can never be held accountable > Therefore a computer must never make a management decision

  > A computer can never be held accountable
  > Therefore a computer must never make a management decision
It makes sense. But most decisions, by quantity, are not management decisions.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#272

Post by giancarlostoro »

pydry wrote: post #246
giancarlostoro wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the real goal of directing a Junior, which is you're teaching them to be a team player, Junior devs will surpass your expectations, the rate at which they goof or are about to goof should decrease over time the more you mentor them. If you do it right, you not have a strong ally and coder under your belt, or would you rather someone else teach them their bad habits?

Im not missing the point that they need to be trained. I was quite explicit about that being necessary. Nor am I denying the benefits of them being trained. I just cant pretend that I'll get extra productivity while I'm training them. Certain professions lend themselves well to a apprentice/master framework because the apprentice doing the drudge work that requires less skill frees up time. This can increase overall…

> I just cant pretend that I'll get extra productivity while I'm training them.

It is an investment, but it pays back for itself is my point.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#274

Post by nurettin »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #253
benterix wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but this is like saying 10 years ago: you don't need to learn React, you can continue coding in Angular. People do want to learn and use new tech but instead what is promoted is an access to a proprietary and (increasingly more) expensive API.

React is really a bad example because you really don't need it. I am no web dev, but I think React is an abomination. The reason I can confidently say it without knowing every detail there is to it is simply that there aren't impressive websites that show it. There should be some that by now. The number of reused components is probably quite analogous to reused classes in OO. It can make sense, but sometimes it also…

Internally I oppose react as much as possible. The reason beginners use it is because of job security. The reason experts start projects with it is because it enforces encapsulation, inversion of control and declarative code. Can you do all those yourself in freeform js? yes, of course. It is their way of imposing these traits.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#275

Post by jjav »

intended wrote: post #251
jjav wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I try LLMs for something every couple of months, and I have yet to see them produce anything actually correct. Calling non-existing library methods, confabulations, etc. That's too pessimistic, the productivity gains are real and substantial. OTOH, the hype train is out of control. It is nowhere near perfect and requires a lot of handholding and guardrails to avoid going sideways. You need to adopt it to stay relev…

> That's too pessimistic, the productivity gains are real and substantial. Source, please . Even if its self reported, its useful to know.

I ask in honesty, have you used LLMs? Seems to me the productivity gains are obvious.

As for my source, it is my experience at work for both myself, and my direct reports, and my peer teams.

Tiny example: a certain recurring task we need to do to help other teams which requires somewhat tedious analysis but rarely a lot of high level thinking, plus a bit of decision making. A year ago I'd do maybe 2-3 per day because each one took about 30 minutes so I had to find slices of uninterrupted time between other work to complete them.

Just tonight as I was wrapping up the day I did 19 of these in an hour while also catching up on email. I let the bots do all the research in parallel, as each one completed the research I'd either tell it "ok, do it", or if it was asking me for a decision I'd decide and tell it how to proceed.

I count myself as an AI skeptic, in the sense that the hype is way above reality. But that doesn't mean there isn't a huge amount of real gains.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#277

Post by bluegatty »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #270
bluegatty wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all fine points, but 'lack of open compute' isn't quite an AI issue. Thanks to Chinese vendors, there's a ton of near Tier1 AI that we can all access. Unlike Android where it's not feasible to use though it may be Open on some level.

Not quite an AI issue, but they do intersect. They want us to pay them for "intelligence" on a metered basis, just like we pay for energy and water. They absolutely are an enemy of local computing freedom. The future they are designing is one where they hold all the computing power while we are literally priced out.

I think your concerns are valid - but the decisive claims are not.

They're capitalist entities trying to capture value and control of a new thing they are introducing - yes - but that's a pretty normal thing, we get over that with competition, regulation etc.

This will happen over time - all device manufacturers, cloud providers are 'on our side!'

AWS and Apple want to commoditize the AI as much as you do.

So do the Chinese manufacturers, and really Nvidia and ASML as well.

So we, the proletariat can 'pit them against each other' in value chain competition!

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#278

Post by xigoi »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #254
cmiles74 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I remember when heavyweight IDEs where all the rage, there was a similar sentiment that if you weren't using one of them then you would eventually be so much slower that you'd be out of a job. It only took maybe five years until people started asking themselves if the dependency on a big IDE (and cost) was worth it. I don't think anyone would look at someone who prefers a stripped down text editor today and…

It can put out code much faster than any software dev. And if you are careful with your prompts and demands, it is good quality code as well. Especially for visualising data, to just get a quick look at, it can now be done in lightning speed and I am quite familiar with "manual data processing" in a few languages. AI use me decently outcompetes manual me. Sometimes there are also stupid tasks. Data must be serialised…

> It can put out code much faster than any software dev.

Judging a programmer by how much code they write is like judging an airplane engineer by how heavy their planes are.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#279

Post by xigoi »

dsjoerg wrote: post #30
gdulli wrote: post #17

Trading practice of primary skills for indirect skills like AI is like a writer deciding they should stop writing directly and get really good at Microsoft Word.

That's why I write my own assembly language. Compilers just atrophy your skills!

The job that a compiler does is just a boring mechanical process, which makes it well-suited for a computer to replace. Also, I can use a compiler for free without relying on an evil company.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#280

Post by rstuart4133 »

intended wrote: post #252
rstuart4133 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others are disagreeing with you here, and I do too. The difference is profound, and takes more than a couple of days to get your head around the implications. I'd summarise it as: "if you give a computer the same input it always produces the same output, but if you give a model the same input it always produces different output". Add to that the output is often wrong and it can't reliably follow instructions, and the…

> The reward ... is it can be far smarter than you.... and they know far more than you I think this solidified an idea for me. A tool being smarter than me but inconsistent, is useless. I can work with people who are smarter than me, because I can trust them, and I can trust them to own up or be held accountable for screw ups. For a calculator, I can only hold myself accountable. However I cannot hold myself accounta…

> For a calculator, I can only hold myself accountable. However I cannot hold myself accountable for not knowing something I dont know.

I thought I could let this fly through keeper, but the idea keeps bugging me.

If the programmer does not vet and understand what the LLM has done, we call it vibe coding. If he takes personal responsibility for every line of code, we call it software engineering.

Lots of people use LLMs to vibe code (I do), and lots of people use them as a software engineering aid (I do that too).

The choice depends on the quality of code you need to produce. If an engineer is designing an aircraft wing, he would choose the highest grade of materials with known parameters. If he is building a kite for his son, an old newspaper would do in a pinch. Using 7075 Aluminium wouldn't just be overkill, it would mean his son doesn't get to see the fun his dad has building a flying machine in an afternoon.

A good engineer understands the properties of every tool at his disposal, and knows when to deploy each.

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