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The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

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Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#301

Post by handfuloflight »

bsenftner wrote: post #287
handfuloflight wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words are power, and specifically, specific words are power.

Yes! Why do people get so angry about it? "Oh, you're saying I'm hold it wrong?!" Well, actually, yes, If you speak Pascal to Ruby you get syntax errors, and this is the same basic idea. If you want to talk sports to an LLM and you use shit talking sports language, that's what you'll get back. Obvious, right? Same goes for anything formal, and why is that an insult to people to point that out?

For a subset of these detractors, it's their investment and personal moat building into learning syntax which is now being threatened to be obsoleted by natural language programming. Now people with domain knowledge are able to become developers, whereas previously domain experts relied on syntax writers to translate their requirements into reality.

The syntax writers may say: "I do more than write syntax! I think in systems, logic, processes, limits, edge cases, etc."

The response to that is: you don't need syntax to do that, yet until now syntax was the barrier to technical expression.

So ironically, when they show anger it is a form of hypocrisy: they already know that knowing how to write specific words is power. They're just upset that the specific words that matter have changed.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#302

Post by ryandrake »

SoftTalker wrote: post #237
dataflow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the problem really the phone , or everything but the actual phoning capability? Mobile phones were a thing twenty years ago and I didn't recall them being pulled out at the slightest gap in the conversation. I feel like the notifications and internet access caused the change, not the phone (or SMS for that matter).

Yes it's the content delivered by the phone. My first mobile phones could only make calls. Not even text messaging was supported. So pretty obviously you're not going to pull out your phone and call someone during a lag in conversation unless you are just supremely rude or maybe it's a call to invite someone to come over and join the group. You might answer a call if you get one I suppose, but it would be fairly awkw…

Yea, the problem is the combination of the form factor and the content.

If only the phone was available, and there was no stream of online content, this wouldn't be a problem. Also, if the online content was available, but no phones to look at it on-the-go, it would also not be a problem. Both of these things existed in the past, too, but only when they were hooked up together did it become the problem we see today.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#303

Post by ryandrake »

mat_b wrote: post #228
arnaudsm wrote: post #222

Remembering the failure of Google+, I wonder if hostilely forcing a product to your users makes it less likely to succeed.

Google Buzz is a better example

Google+ is a great example, because there was a very similar mindless push to integrate it into all of their products, by any means necessary. And then, when it fizzled, there was the inevitable engineering effort to rip it all out. I predict in a few years, when the AI fad has subsided, there will be a similar amount of engineering effort undertaken at all of these companies to pull out and sunset these expensive AI integrations...

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#304

Post by suddenlybananas »

leptons wrote: post #293
suddenlybananas wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people had the concept of a bubble at the time of a printing press.

That whole Danish tulips thing taught us about bubbles a pretty long time ago, when the printing press was still getting popular.

That happened like nearly 200 years after the printing press arrived in Europe.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#305

Post by ryandrake »

bitwize wrote: post #277
brookst wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does speculative investment get 500m DAU?

I dunno, how did Juicero get $120m?

Exactly. It is possible for a metric like DAUs to come almost entirely from marketing saturation, heavy promotion, and hype, and not from actual utility to the user. I'm not sure that's the case in particular for ChatGPT but I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#306

Post by const_cast »

ryandrake wrote: post #297
recursive wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product I'm working on is privately owned. Hence no investors. We're still in the process of cramming AI into everything.

Even if your company is privately owned, it has at least 1 investor (possibly just the founder), and this urge to cram AI is no doubt coming from him.

Why are investors so stupid? I mean this genuinely. Every time I hear about investors and what they want, it seems to me like they make dumb decisions that implode on themselves.

I mean, you would think someone very rich who invests in companies would be somewhat smart. But, I'm convinced, a lot of them would do much better if they made no decisions at all and left everything up to entropy.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#307

Post by const_cast »

handfuloflight wrote: post #164
20k wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that you have to put in more effort to solve a problem using AI, than to just solve it yourself If I have to do extensive subtle prompt engineering and use a lot of mental effort to solve my problem... I'll just solve the problem instead. Programming is a mental discipline - I don't need help typing, and if using an AI means putting in more brainpower, its fundamentally failed at improving my ability to…

This overlooks a new category of developer who operates in natural language, not in syntax.

Does this new category actually exist? Because, I would think, if you want to be successful at a real company you would need to know how to program.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#308

Post by dang »

Xss3 wrote: post #158
CuriouslyC wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a huge AI supporter, and use it extensively for coding, writing and most of my decision making processes, and I agree with you. The AI features in non-AI-first apps tend to be awkward bolt-ons, poorly thought out and using low quality models to save money. I don't want shitty bolt-ons, I want to be able to give chatgtp/claude/gemini frontier models the ability to access my application data and make api calls for…

[flagged]

Can you please stop posting flamebait comments and crossing into personal attack? Your account has unfortunately been doing this repeatedly, and we're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#310

Post by ryandrake »

const_cast wrote: post #306
ryandrake wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if your company is privately owned, it has at least 1 investor (possibly just the founder), and this urge to cram AI is no doubt coming from him.

Why are investors so stupid? I mean this genuinely. Every time I hear about investors and what they want, it seems to me like they make dumb decisions that implode on themselves. I mean, you would think someone very rich who invests in companies would be somewhat smart. But, I'm convinced, a lot of them would do much better if they made no decisions at all and left everything up to entropy.

My pet theory / speculation: Investors (as individuals and as a class) are just not very creative or insightful people. They chase trends and look to "other investors" for clues about what to invest in. If "everyone is doing AI" then there must be money being made there, so I must do AI too. The thought process stops there.
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