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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

#301

Post by jimbokun »

immibis wrote: post #245
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…

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.

China is not surpassing the US in all aspects of technology.

There is still much for them to steal.

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

#302

Post by joquarky »

sensanaty wrote: post #225
user34283 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If machines taking over labor and allowing humans to live a life of plenty instead of slaving away in jobs isn't exciting, then I don't know what is. I guess cynics will yap about capitalism and how this supposedly benefits only the rich. That seems very unimaginative to me.

> That seems very unimaginative to me. Does it? How exactly is the common Joe going to benefit from this world where the robots are doing the job he was doing before, as well as everyone else's job (aka, no more jobs for anyone )? Where exactly is the money going to come from to make sure Joe can still buy food? Why on earth would the people in power (aka the psychotic CxOs) care to expend any resources for Joe, once…

Many people seem to have this ideal that UBI is inevitable and will solve a bunch of these sort of problems.

But I don't see how UBI can avoid the same complexities as our tax systems, where it will be used to try to influence behaviors, growing cruft along the way just like taxes.

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

#303

Post by joquarky »

sensanaty wrote: post #256
user34283 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's completely baffling how people imagine that with human labor largely going obsolete, we will just stick with capitalism and all workers go hungry in some dystopian fantasy. Many cynics seem to believe rich people are demons with zero consideration for their fellow humans. Rich and powerful persons are still people just like you, and they have an interest in keeping the general population happy. Not to ment…

> Many cynics seem to believe rich people are demons with zero consideration for their fellow humans. Do they have considerations for their fellow humans? I certainly haven't observed that they give a shit about anyone or anything that isn't their bottom line. What exactly has Zuckerberg contributed to this world and to his fellow man, other than a mass data harvesting operation that has enabled real life genocides?…

They care about their fellow humans about as much as corporate farms care about their livestock.

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

#305

Post by Voultapher »

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!

> I myself am saving a small fortune on design and photography and getting better results while doing it.

Tell me you have bland taste without telling me you have bland taste. But if your customers eat it up and your slop manages to stand out in sea of slop, who am I to dislike slop.

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

#306

Post by daxfohl »

code_martial wrote: post #193
daxfohl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've gotten pretty good IME so long as you guide it to think out of the box, give it the right level of background info, have it provide alternatives instead of recommendations, and do your best not to bias it in any particular direction. That said, the thing it really struggles with is when the best approach is "do nothing". Which, given that a huge chunk of principal level work is in deciding what NOT to do, it…

I’m not sure. I keep asking the LLMs whether I should rewrite project X in language Y and it just asks back, “what’s your problem?” And most of the times it shoots my problems down showing exactly why rewriting won’t fix that particular problem. Heck, it even quoted Joel Spolsky once! Of course, I could just _tell_ it to rewrite, but that’s different.

Damn, I'm sure even I'd have caved at some point. Did you get to VHDL? Your project etched in pure silicon? Yes! Must!

Oh no, my job is safe no longer!

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

#307

Post by johnnienaked »

tombert wrote: post #186
johnnienaked wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying the same thing cryptobros say about bitcoin right now, and that's 17 years later. It's a business, but it won't be the thing the first movers thought it was.

It’s different in that Bitcoin was never useful in any capacity when it was new. AI is at least useful right now and it’s improved considerably in the last few years.

It was useful for doing illegal shit

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

#308

Post by kennyadam »

I’ve been using Claude Code, Gemini 3 Pro, and Nano Banana Pro to plan, code, and create custom UI elements for dozens of time-saving applications. For years, I have been searching high and low for existing solutions, but all I found were either overpriced cloud offerings that were bloated with endless features I didn’t need and just complicated the UI, or abandoned GitHub repos consisting of an initial commit and a roadmap that has been waiting eight years for its first update and what code was present was half baked and out of date. The reality is that my requirements are so specific to my workflow that until these latest models came along, building exactly what I needed in a matter of hours for a cost of $20 a month was inconceivable. Now I provide a description of what functionality I need, some sketches of the UI I made on my ipad with an apple pencil and after a bit of back and forth to get everything dialled in and I’ve created a bit of software that will save me dozens if not hundreds of hours of previously tedious manual work.

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

#309

Post by nonethewiser »

mattmaroon wrote: post #167
nonethewiser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. Why? Im not even casting shade - I think AI is quite amazing for coding and can increase productivity and quality a lot. But I'm curious why he's doing this.

The codebase is old and really hard to work on. It’s a game that existed pre-iPhone and still has decent revenue but could use some updating. We intentionally shrank our company down to auto-pilot mode and frankly don’t even have a working development environment anymore. It was basically cost prohibitive to change anything significant until Claude became able to do most of the work for us. My cofounder (also CTO of…

Sounds like a good reason to rewrite. And sounds like a rewrite just would not happen by any other means. Thanks for sharing the details.

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

#310

Post by joquarky »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #209
dyauspitr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, contrary to other comments here I think AI can do all of the above already except being a kitchen cook. Just earlier today I asked it to give me a summary of a show I was watching until a particular episode in a particular season without spoiling the rest of it and it did a great job.

You know that almost every show as summaries of episodes available online?

How do you find them?
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