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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

#331

Post by xmcp123 »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #232
array_key_first wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a developer POV, or at least my developer POV, less code is always better. The best code is no code at all. I think getting results can be very easy, at first. But I force myself to not just spit out code, because I've been burned so, so, so many times by that. As software grows, the complexity explodes. It's not linear like the growth of the software itself, it feels exponential. Adding one feature takes 100x t…

yeah AI is perfect at refactor and cleaning things up, you just have to instruct it. I've improved my code significanlty by asking it to clean up, refactor function to pure that I can use & test over a messy application. Without creating new bugs.

Holy hell, AI is not at all perfect at refactoring. Absolutely terrified on your behalf if you believe this to be the case.

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

#332

Post by xmcp123 »

rerdavies wrote: post #264
jbgt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slice THEIR hands. They might say yours are rigged. I'm a non dev and the things I'm building blow me away. I think many of these people criticizing are perhaps more on the execution side and have a legitimate craft they are protecting. If you're more on the managerial side, and I'd say a trusting manager not a show me your work kind, then you're more likely to be open and results oriented.

I am a (very) senior dev with decades of experience. And I, too, am blown away by the massive productivity gains I get from the use of coding AIs. Part of the craft of being a good developer is keeping up with current technology. I can't help thinking that those who oppose AI are not protecting legitimate craft, but are covering up their own laziness when it comes to keeping up. It seems utterly inconceivable to me t…

I think the issue is that most vibe coders believe it is professional quality code, or is sufficient moving forward.

It produces code (in the hands of an amateur) that is good enough for a demo or at best an MVP, but it’s not at all a stable foundation.

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

#333

Post by immibis »

jimbokun wrote: post #301
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.

China is not surpassing the US in all aspects of technology. There is still much for them to steal.

Can you name one area of technology where the USA has better technology than China? I'll wait.

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

#334

Post by didibus »

sheeh wrote: post #123
didibus wrote: post #117

Ignoring the actual poor quality of this write-up, I think we don't know how well GenAI is going to be honest. I feel we've not been able to properly measure or assess it's actual impact yet. Even as I use it, and I use it everyday, I can't really assess its true impact. Am I more productive or less overall? I'm not too sure. Do I do higher quality work or lower quality work overall? I'm not too sure. All I know, it'…

And what do you think investors in OAI et al are expecting?

I think there is a hype around it becoming revolutionary and so on, but I also think investors would get an decent ROI even if it just ends up that 50+ million of users pay 20$ a month, on top of some enterprise contracts and API fees and so on. Or the inevitable Ad-supported access.

In my opinion, it's already useful enough, given the use-cases I described, to reach that level.

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

#335

Post by twisterius »

dpark wrote: post #293
jvanderbot wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

[dead]

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

#336

Post by _heimdall »

Ygg2 wrote: post #262
_heimdall wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, my point wasn't that liability doesn't have a meaning in finance. My read of the quote is that it uses liability in the sense of risk not debt on a balance sheet. I could always be wrong though, that was just my interpretation of it. I don't get how code could be a liability in the financial sense, but I do get how every line of code risks bugs and other issues.

Sure, but all code is a potential future debt. You wrote a music player that only allows one artist from list of all artists? Tech debt. You wrote optimized assembly for x86_64? It's the year 2060, and we only support NGPU_ARM_N_LEG. The moment your expectations change (which is all the time), your code needs to be changed, and effort isn't free.

Tech debt is not part of a financial account or disclosure though. Yes those are forms of debt, no they aren't financial debts or financial liabilities.

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

#337

Post by eleumik »

mattmaroon wrote: post #288
gallerdude wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the rich are now permitted to ignore copyrights, while the poor remain constrained by them, as before. Claude Code is $20 a month, and I get a lot of usage out of it. I don't see how cutting edge AI tools are only for the rich. The name OpenAI is often mocked, but they did succeed at bringing the cutting edge of AI to everyone, time and time again.

My cofounder said his plan is $100 a month and if it were $1,000 he’d still pay it. So much of programming is tedium.

Cofounder of what?

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

#338

Post by Dylan16807 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #328
kunley wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions? Of people in self driving teslas? The actual number of such vehicles produced is two orders of magnitude less.

No it isn’t. They sold 1.6 million vehicles last year and every one of them can self drive. At least once a year they give out free access to it and I don’t know a Tesla owner who hasn’t tried it. You’re right that it doesn’t happen every day but that doesn’t change the point, you all are debating whether something can happen after it already happened.

> you all are debating whether something can happen after it already happened

My goalposts have always been on levels 3 and 4.

Elon Musk has been promising level 4, sometimes level 5, this entire time.

It has not already happened. The cars are level 2.

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

#339

Post by jimbokun »

immibis wrote: post #333
jimbokun wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not surpassing the US in all aspects of technology. There is still much for them to steal.

Can you name one area of technology where the USA has better technology than China? I'll wait.

Software

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

#340

Post by anarticle »

joquarky wrote: post #316
anarticle wrote: post #112

Download models you can find now and forever. The guardrails will only get worse, or models banned entirely. Whether it's because of "hurts people's health" or some other moral panic, it will kill this tech off. gpt-oss isn't bad, but even models you cannot run are worth getting since you may be able to run them in the future. I'm hedging against models being so nerfed they are useless. (This is unlikely, but drives…

Guardrails are just adjustable parameters. The trick is finding the right ones and turning them off. I forget the name, but there is at least one project dedicated to this.

Here's the thing: this is like 0days, the bar gets higher and higher on served models from OpenAI/Microsoft/Google. Sure, some have api access and you can allow spicier content but a better answer is: "tl;dr: not reading that."

I'm tired of having to step around megacorp's opinions on how I should be running my software, what questions to ask. gpt5.2 is HELLA paternalistic when you ask for deep dives on technical questions. Try asking something near to state of the art and see how far you get, most decisions come with huge warnings about how "this idea won't work" etc.

This deviates from my expectation, which is a fun word calculator to help me with back of the napkin calculations quickly so I can do other things. If that's not the core use case, fine. But that is a flag to me that says this will continue to be a moving target, which is the OPPOSITE of what a tool is.

There are some projects to reverse alignment and other things, and those people are doing god's work for sure. For me, I want to be sure I have the ability to run these things on my own because I don't trust that this won't mutate into something not useful in my way on the long term.

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