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Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#291

Post by mattmaroon »

jvanderbot wrote: post #248
immibis wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it really proves how much the economy would be booming if we abolished copyright, doesn't it? China ignores copyright too, and look at them surpassing us in all aspects of technology, while Western economies choose to sabotage themselves to keep money flowing upwards to old guys.

Well no, because copyright != cannot use. "Available for use" and "Automatically rewritten to work in your codebase fairly well" is very different, so copyright is probably not the blocker technically

Yeah, I love the idea that all software could just be cobbled together from other software, but none of it does anything new.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#292

Post by Macha »

maccard wrote: post #109
tombert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but think about what it's replacing. If you hired a human, it will cost you thousands a week. Humans will also fail at basic tasks, get stuck in useless loops, and you still have to pay them for all that time. For that matter, even if I'm not hiring anyone, I will still get stuck on projects and burn through the finite number of hours I have on this planet trying to figure stuff out and being wrong for a lot of…

You’ve missed my point here - I agree that gen AI has changed everything and is useful, _but_ I disagree that it’s improved substantially - which is what the comment I replied to claimed. Anecdotally I’ve seen no difference in model changes in the last year, but going from LLM to Claude code (where we told the LLMs they can use tools on our machines) was a game changer. The improvement there was the agent loop and th…

My experience in 2024 AI tools like copilot was if the code compiled first time it was an above average result and I’d need a lot of manual tweaking.

There were definitely languages where it worked better (JS), but if I told people here I had to spend a lot of time tweaking after it, at least half of them assumed I was being really anal about spacing or variable names, which was simply not the case.

It’s still the case for cheaper models (GPT-mini remains a waste of my timetime), but there’s mid level models like Minimax M2 that can produce working code and stuff like Sonnet can produce usable code.

I’m not sure the delta is enough for me that I’d pay for these tools on my own though…

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#293

Post by dpark »

jvanderbot wrote: post #251
sswatson wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s well known and also wrong. Delta’s airplanes also require a great deal of maintenance, and I’m sure they strive to have no more than are necessary for their objectives. But if you talk to one of Delta’s accountants, they will be happy to disabuse you of the notion that the planes are entered in the books as a liability.

Whoa whoa whoa let's not bring the accountants in! Code isn't a liability b/c it costs money (though it does). Code is a liability like an unsafe / unproven bridge is a liability. It works fine until it doesn't - and at that point you're in trouble. Just b/c you can build lots of bridges now, doesn't mean each new bridge isn't also a risk. But if you gotta get somewhere now , conjuring bridges might be the way to go.…

Even proven code is a liability. The point of it being a liability is that it costs time and effort to maintain and update.

The same with the bridge. Even the best built and most useful bridge requires maintenance. Assuming changing traffic patterns, it might equally require upgrades and changes.

The problem with this whole “code is a liability” thing is that it’s vacuous. Your house is a liability. The bridge that gets you to work as a liability. Everything that requires any sort of maintenance or effort or upkeep or other future cost is ina sense a liability. This isn’t some deep insight though. This is like saying your bones could break so they are liability. OK, but their value drastically outweighs any liability they impose.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#294

Post by dpark »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #226
sswatson wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s well known and also wrong. Delta’s airplanes also require a great deal of maintenance, and I’m sure they strive to have no more than are necessary for their objectives. But if you talk to one of Delta’s accountants, they will be happy to disabuse you of the notion that the planes are entered in the books as a liability.

If Delta was going bankrupt it would likely be able to sell individual planes for the depreciated book value or close to it. If a software company is going bankrupt, it’s very unlikely they will be able to sell code for individual apps and services they may have written for much at all, even if they might be able to sell the whole company for something.

The other half of the quote about liability is that the capabilities of the code are an asset. I don’t know if your bankrupt company would be able to sell their code, but they sure as hell couldn’t sell their capabilities without the code.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#295

Post by LexiMax »

marssaxman wrote: post #290
adrian_b wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the productivity enhancement provided by LLMs for programming is caused by circumventing the copyright restrictions of the programs on which they have been trained. You and anyone else could have avoided spending millions for programmer salaries, had you been allowed to reuse freely any of the many existing proprietary or open-source programs that solved the same or very similar problems. I would have no problem…

Intellectual property law is a net loss to humanity, so by my reckoning, anything which lets us all work around that overhead gets some extra points on the credit side of the ledger.

I agree in spirit, but in actual fact this subversion of intellectual property is disproportionately beneficial to those who can afford to steal from others and those who can afford to enforce their copyright, while disproportionately disadvantageous to those who can't afford to fend off a copyright lawsuit or can't afford to sue to enforce their copyright.

The GP can free-ride uncredited on the collective work of open source at their leisure, but I'm sure Disney would string me up by my earlobes if I released a copywashed version of Toy Story 6.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#296

Post by LexiMax »

mattmaroon wrote: post #289
immibis wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it really proves how much the economy would be booming if we abolished copyright, doesn't it? China ignores copyright too, and look at them surpassing us in all aspects of technology, while Western economies choose to sabotage themselves to keep money flowing upwards to old guys.

The theory behind copyright is that the enshrined monopoly guarantees profits and thus encourages r&d. China steals our r&d (both copyrighted and non) and gets a lot of theirs from state funding. I don’t think I’d take China’s success as proof that the copyright system doesn’t work.

It is proof that intellectual property is a transient and fickle thing, easily subverted when there is no legal framework to protect it.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#297

Post by rf15 »

xnx wrote: post #286
rf15 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no need to wait, by using AI you already are mediocre at best (because you forego skill and quality for speed)

Is this also true of carpenters who use circular saws and airguns instead of hand saws and hammers?

these are very different tools tbh

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#298

Post by orangecat »

kakacik wrote: post #271
Gud wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they “soul suckers”? Using LLMs has made it fun for me to make software again.

Shallow learning, overall laziness imprinted on the character over time. For kids and juniors starting the field they are much worse. None of the stuff I've learned over past 20 years was handed over to me in this easy fashion. Overconfident and over-positive shallow posts just hurt the overall discussion. Also some layer of arrogance - a typical 'if you struggle to get any significant value out of this new toy you m…

None of the stuff I've learned over past 20 years was handed over to me in this easy fashion.

Yeah, kids these days just include stdio.h and start printing stuff, no understanding of register allocation or hardware addressing modes. 20 years from now nobody will know how to write an operating system.

Also some layer of arrogance

As compared to "if you claim AI is useful for you, you're either delusional or a shill"? The difference is that the pro-AI side can accept that any specific case it may not work well, while detractors have to make the increasingly untenable argument that it's never useful.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#299

Post by kermatt »

mattmaroon wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. I myself am saving a small fortune on design and photography and getting better results while doing it. If this is not all that well I can’t wait until we get to mediocre!

Is the cofounder "rewriting" that code providing zero of the existing code as context? Doing it in a completely green field fashion?

Or is any of the existing platform is used as an input for the rewrite?

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#300

Post by immibis »

mattmaroon wrote: post #289
immibis wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it really proves how much the economy would be booming if we abolished copyright, doesn't it? China ignores copyright too, and look at them surpassing us in all aspects of technology, while Western economies choose to sabotage themselves to keep money flowing upwards to old guys.

The theory behind copyright is that the enshrined monopoly guarantees profits and thus encourages r&d. China steals our r&d (both copyrighted and non) and gets a lot of theirs from state funding. I don’t think I’d take China’s success as proof that the copyright system doesn’t work.

Sounds like you're saying state funded R&D works much better than copyright funded R&D
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