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The Generative AI Con

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Re: The Generative AI Con

#341

Post by CamperBob2 »

parodysbird wrote: post #134
CamperBob2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll save him the trouble of writing it: "I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to write a large, underspecified chunk of code a couple of years ago, and it didn't work the first time, unlike the code that I write. This whole 'AI' business is an elaborate scam."

He's not a developer. He's really talking about consumer tech.

OK, let's try, "I have no idea how any of this works. However, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't, and can't."

Closer? I'm just going by the headline here.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#342

Post by simonw »

jcgrillo wrote: post #200
simonw wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The efficiency gains over the past 18 months have been incredible. Turns out there was a lot of low hanging fruit to make these things faster, cheaper and more resource efficient. https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/llms-in-2024/#llm-pric...

Interesting. There's obviously been a precipitous drop in the sticker price, but has there really been a concomitant efficiency increase? It's hard to believe the sticker price these companies are charging has anything to do with reality given how massively they're subsidized (free Azure compute, billions upon billions in cash, etc). Is this efficiency trend real? Do you know of any data demonstrating it?

I have personal anecdotal evidence that they're getting more efficient: I've had the same 64GB M2 laptop for three years now. Back in March 2023 it could just about run LLaMA 1, a rubbish model. Today I'm running Mistral Small 3 on the same hardware and it's giving me a March-2023-GPT-4-era experience and using just 12GB of RAM.

People who I trust in this space have consistently and credibly talked about these constant efficiency gains. I don't think this is a case of selling compute for less than it costs to run.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#343

Post by CamperBob2 »

muddi900 wrote: post #63
Ancapistani wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, they’re better than what they replaced. Horses weren’t cheap when they were a primary mode of transportation. Lots of people have died riding, driving, and breaking horses. They definitely smell bad, and their “particulate matter” was so bad that houses had to be set back and elevated from the street. Cities designed around cars are far superior to cities designed around horses.

But cities designed around trains are superior and it was a contemporary technology that was ignored.

No, they were not. Trains are good for taking large numbers of people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be. In certain situations that can be a useful thing to do, but you can't design a city around it. In every case you have in mind, rest assured, the city was there first.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#344

Post by consumer451 »

levkk wrote: post #91

If my Android (or IPhone) disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I time traveled back a century. If Google search was gone, I wouldn't be able to do my job anymore. If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore. There are no workarounds, unless you feel like going to a library...? If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go b…

While that might be true for you, it's not at all true for me. If generic chatbots went away, no big deal. If Windsurf IDE + Sonnet 3.5 went away tomorrow, my prospects would look very different.

The last production code I wrote was over 20 years ago. I don't know React and TypeScript. I recently created a SaaS MVP using Windsurf/Sonnet/React/Refine.dev/Supabase in 8 days. We already have live humans excitedly using the product.

The SaaS product is a recreation of an app that I tried as a startup a few years ago, which never got to even this level of traction and failed. We failed for many classic reasons, but one of the main reasons was that we had no truly technical co-founder, and could only afford an off-shore dev. Iteration took around 24 hours. Using Windsurf, a product shmoe like myself can iterate in 2 minutes.

Of course we will have to get a real React dev on board if we start to get real traction, but the LLM tools allowed us to explore an opportunity that would not have existed without them.

Disclaimer: I happened to use Windsurf, but there are other options like Cursor, which you might have better luck with. I am not on Mac OS, so Cursor was not an option for me.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#345

Post by nilamo »

levkk wrote: post #91

If my Android (or IPhone) disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I time traveled back a century. If Google search was gone, I wouldn't be able to do my job anymore. If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore. There are no workarounds, unless you feel like going to a library...? If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go b…

I don't think Google search is useful, as a developer. The top results are all garbage, unrelated, or ads. Going past the first page used to be useful, now it's not. Honestly, it's so bad, that I straight up do not believe you that you use Google to find new information.

DuckDuckGo/Kagi are where good search is at.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#346

Post by muddi900 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #343
muddi900 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But cities designed around trains are superior and it was a contemporary technology that was ignored.

No, they were not. Trains are good for taking large numbers of people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be. In certain situations that can be a useful thing to do, but you can't design a city around it. In every case you have in mind, rest assured, the city was there first.

And yet we created trains that are a more efficient way of traversing cities built around horses as well.

Why can't you design a city around it? It would be different than Houston or LA, but would that be a bad thing?

Re: The Generative AI Con

#347

Post by mostlysimilar »

nilamo wrote: post #345
levkk wrote: post #91

If my Android (or IPhone) disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I time traveled back a century. If Google search was gone, I wouldn't be able to do my job anymore. If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore. There are no workarounds, unless you feel like going to a library...? If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go b…

I don't think Google search is useful, as a developer. The top results are all garbage, unrelated, or ads. Going past the first page used to be useful, now it's not. Honestly, it's so bad, that I straight up do not believe you that you use Google to find new information. DuckDuckGo/Kagi are where good search is at.

Agreed, I don't even bother with Google anymore. The only thing I use Google for is for local results, e.g. finding a restaurant. It's useless for finding actual information on the web.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#348

Post by sejje »

surgical_fire wrote: post #270
siva7 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you think LLMs operate at "junior dev" capacity you either don't work with junior devs and is just bullshitting your way around here, or you just pick pretty awful junior devs. I’ve hired lots of junior devs, some of them very capable. I’ve been in this industry for more than 15 years. LLMs operate at junior dev capacity, that’s pretty clear to me at this moment.

I sincerely doubt both your experience and your ability to hire decent devs.

I sincerely doubt your ability to use LLMs well.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#349

Post by simonw »

camdenreslink wrote: post #195
qingcharles wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi-modal was the absolute game-changer. Just last night I was digging around in my basement, pulling apart my furnace, showing pics of the inside of it, having GPT explain how it works and what I needed to do to fix it.

I would never trust an LLM to do this unless it was pointing me to pages/sections in a real manual or reputable source I could reference.

I admire your optimism that good manuals and reputable sources exist for the average furnace in the average basement.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#350

Post by 34679 »

light_triad wrote: post #336

If you've been in SV long enough, you've seen multiple hype cycles. AI is the latest one. It doesn't mean AI is a con, there's just a tendency to exaggerate and make hyperbolic claims to sell. AI is primarily used to write text and code. Actually integrating it into workflows across markets will take time. A great article that is neither overly pessimistic or optimistic is Benedict Evan's The AI Summer [1]. He argues…

>It doesn't mean AI is a con, there's just a tendency to exaggerate and make hyperbolic claims to sell.

"Con", in this context, is short for confidence. A con-man is a confidence man.

"a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim"

It's a con.

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