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Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

antirez.com

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Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#351

Post by threethirtytwo »

jibal wrote: post #335
jibal wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand the meaning of "technically". Also, don't use inflammatory language.

P.S. The response is filled with bad faith accusations.

Look at your response. You first dismissed me completely by saying I don’t know what technically means. Then you mischaracterization my statement as an intent to inflame. These are highly insulting and dismissive statements.

You’re not willing to have good faith discussion. You took the worst possible interpretation of my statement and crafted a terse response to shut me down. I only did two things. First I explained myself… then I called you out for what you did while remaining civil. I don’t skirt around HN rules as a means to an end, which is what I believe you’re doing? I’m ok with what you’re doing… but I will call it out.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#352

Post by threethirtytwo »

mrwrong wrote: post #349
threethirtytwo wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not using inflammatory language to hurt anyone. I am illustrating a point on the contrast between technical meaning and non-technical meanings. One meaning is offensive the other meaning is technically correct. Don't start a witch hunt by deliberately misinterpreting what I'm saying. So technical means something like this: in a technical sense you are a stochastic parrot. You are also technically an object. But…

> a technical sense you are a stochastic parrot. I am not. I'm sorry you feel this way about yourself. you are more than a next token predictor

If I am more than a next token predictor… doesn’t that mean I’m a next token predictor + more? Do you not predict the next word you’re going to say? Of course you do, you do that and more.

Humans ARE next token predictors technically and we are also more than that. That is why calling someone a next token predictor is a mischaracterization. I think we are in agreement you just didn’t fully understand my point.

But the claim for LLMs are next token predictors is the SAME mischaracterization. LLMs are clearly more than next token predictors. Don’t get me wrong LLMs aren’t human… but they are clearly more than just a next token predictor.

The whole point of my post is to point out how the term stochastic parrot is weaponized to dismiss LLMs and mischaracterize and hide the current abilities of AI. The parent OP was using the technical definition as an excuse to use the word as a means to achieve his own ends namely be “against” AI. It’s a pathetic excuse I think it’s clear the LLM has moved beyond a stochastic parrot and there’s just a few stragglers left who can’t see that AI is more than that.

You can be “against” AI, that’s fine but don’t mischaracterize it… argue and make your points honestly and in good faith. Using the term stochastic parrot and even what the other poster did in attempt to accuse me of inflammatory behavior is just tactics and manipulation.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#353

Post by phlummox »

antirez wrote: post #334
phlummox wrote: post #331

> For years, despite functional evidence and scientific hints accumulating, certain AI researchers continued to claim LLMs were stochastic parrots: probabilistic machines that would: 1. NOT have any representation about the meaning of the prompt. 2. NOT have any representation about what they were going to say. But did any AI researchers actually claim there was no representation of meaning? I thought generally, the…

> Text generated by an LM is not grounded in communicative intent This means exactly that no representation should exist in the activation states about what the model wants to tell, and there must be only a single token probabilistic inference at play. Also their model requires the contrary, too: that the model does not know , semantically, what the query really means. Stochastic Parrot has a scientific meaning, and…

> > Text generated by an LM is not grounded in communicative intent

> This means exactly that no representation should exist in the activation states about what the model wants to tell, and there must be only a single token probabilistic inference at play.

That's not correct. It's clear from the surrounding paragraphs what Bender et al mean by this phrase. They mean that LLMs lack the capacity to form intentions.

> You are doing the big error that is common to do in this context of extending the stochastic parrot to a non scientifically isolated model that can be made large enough to accomodate any evidence arriving from new generations of models.

No, I'm not. I haven't, in fact, made any claims about the "stochastic parrot". Rather, I've asked whether your characterisation of AI researchers' views is accurate, and suggested some reasons why it may not be.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#354

Post by throw1235435 »

abricq wrote: post #68

> * Programmers resistance to AI assisted programming has lowered considerably. Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway: now the return on the investment is acceptable for many more folks. Could not agree more. I myself started 2025 being very skeptical, and finished it very convinced about the usefulness of LLMs f…

I'm not sure that it will scale to other fields other than coding and math. The approach with RLVR makes it more amenable to STEM fields in general and most jobs believe it or not aren't that. The level of open source software with good test suites effectively gave them all the training material they needed; most professions won't provide that knowing that they will be giving their moat away. LLM's to other fields from my understanding still exhibit the same hallucination rates if only mildly improved especially if there isn't public internet material in that field.

We have to accept in the end that coding/SWE is one of the most disrupted fields from this breed of AI. Disruption unfortunately probably means less jobs overall. The profession is on trend to disrupting and automating itself I think; plan accordingly. I've seen so many articles claiming its great we didn't learn to code now; that's what the AI's have done.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#355

Post by throw1235435 »

danielfalbo wrote: post #70
abricq wrote: post #68

> * Programmers resistance to AI assisted programming has lowered considerably. Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway: now the return on the investment is acceptable for many more folks. Could not agree more. I myself started 2025 being very skeptical, and finished it very convinced about the usefulness of LLMs f…

> Are we going to be too many developers / software engineers ? What will happen for the rests of us? I propose that we should raise the bar for the quality of software now.

I don't think that will happen because it hasn't for other technological improvements. In the end people pay for "good enough" and that's that. If "good enough" is now cheaper to implement that's all they will do. I've seen it in other technologies. As an example due to more precise manufacturing many manufacturers have used it to cheapen things like cars, electronics, etc just to the point where it passes warranty mostly; in the old days they had to "overbuild" to get it to that point putting more quality into the product.

Quality is a risk mitigation strategy; if software is disposable just like cheap manufactured goods most people won't pay for it thinking they can just "build another one". What we don't realise is due to sheer cost of building software we've wanted quality because its too expensive to fix later; AI could change that.

Hoping we invest in quality, more software (which has a price inelastic curve mostly due to scale/high ROI) etc I'm starting to think is just false hope from people in the tech industry that want to be optimistic which generally is in our nature. Tech people understand very little about economics most of the time and how people outside tech (your customers) generally operate. My reflection is mostly I need to pivot out of software; it will be commoditized.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#356

Post by throw1235435 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #132
bachmeier wrote: post #99

> Programmers resistance to AI assisted programming has lowered considerably. Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway: now the return on the investment is acceptable for many more folks. I'm not a fan of this phrasing. Use of the terms "resistance" and "skeptics" implies they were wrong. It's important we don't eng…

Yes, it's a strange take. It's not that programmers have changed their mind about unchanging LLMs, but rather that LLMs have changed and are now useful for coding, not just CoPilot autocomplete like the early ones. What changed was the use of RLVR training for programming, resulting in "reasoning" models that are now attempting to optimize for a long-horizon goal (i.e. bias generation towards "reasoning steps" that d…

Agree with this. The RLVR changes (starting with o1 I think) was what changed/disrupted the industry. Before that I thought these things were just better autocomplete.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#357

Post by throw1235435 »

Aurornis wrote: post #120
bachmeier wrote: post #99

> Programmers resistance to AI assisted programming has lowered considerably. Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway: now the return on the investment is acceptable for many more folks. I'm not a fan of this phrasing. Use of the terms "resistance" and "skeptics" implies they were wrong. It's important we don't eng…

> The change occurred because LLMs are useful for programming in 2025 But the skeptics and anti-AI commenters are almost as active as ever, even as we enter 2026. The debate about the usefulness of LLMs has grown into almost another culture war topic. I still see a constant stream of anti-AI comments on HN and every other social platform from people who believe the tools are useless, the output is always unusable, pe…

Its simple. Given the trajectory of these things people feel under threat and defend themselves accordingly. They say what they hope for given a number of factors (bad workplaces generating slop they have to deal with, job losses, identity redefinition, etc). You know the things that happen when a profession is disrupted in a capitalist system where 'what you do' is often tied up with identity, status, and livelihood.

People will go from skeptic to dread/anxiety, to either acceptance or despair. We are witnessing the disruption of a profession in real time and it will create a number of negative effects.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#358

Post by fuzztester »

gldrk wrote: post #193
Aurornis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're an interesting phenomen that people have convinced themselves MUST BE USEFUL in the context of software development, Reading these comments during this period of history is interesting because a lot of us actually have found ways to make them useful, acknowledging that they’re not perfect. It’s surreal to read claims from people who insist we’re just deluding ourselves, despite seeing the results Yeah they’…

It's absolutely possible to be mistaken about this. The placebo effect is very strong. I'm sure there are countless things in my own workflow that feel like a huge boon to me while being a wash at best in reality. The classic keyboard vs. mouse study comes to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657135 This is why it's so important to have data. So far I have not seen any evidence of a 'Cambrian explosion' or…

>This is why it's so important to have data.

"In God we trust, all others must bring data."

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#359

Post by layer8 »

etra0 wrote: post #343
layer8 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can just run the code and see if the output is what we expected There is a vast gap between the output happening to be what you expect and code being actually correct. That is, in a way, also the fundamental issue with LLMs: They are designed to produce “expected” output, not correct output.

That is exactly my point, though. I didn't mean they do it on the first time, or that it is correct, I mean that you can 'run' and 'test it' to see if it does what you want in the way you want. The same cannot be said to any other topics like medical advice, life advice, etc. The point is, how verifiable is the output the LLM gives and so how useful it is.

My point is that running and testing the code successfully doesn’t prove correctness, doesn’t show that “it does what you want in the way you want” under all circumstances. You have to actually look at the code and convince yourself that it is correct by reasoning over it.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#360

Post by rldjbpin »

the reflections felt like a mixed bag between someone who seems to know about the technical aspects deeper than an average person, while simultaneously being like an astrologist.

personally, as someone building on top of gen AI for a living, i finally bit the bullet on building using LLMs. it did reduce friction in things i don't like doing and did not explore as much. by acting as a catalyst when i needed to finally address them, it helped me get going and eventually become proficient in the core tech itself.

outside of work, however, i find people around me use the services much more than i do. sometimes it felt like the "big data is like teenage sex"[1], but some aspects were quite genuine. got better appreciation after trying them to better understand other people's perspective and to design better.

with "slop" as word of the year and people wondering if a random clip is AI, now more than ever the effects in general life seems apparent. it is not as sexy as "i will lose my job soon", but the effects are here and now. while the next year will be even more interesting, i can't wait for the bubble to burst.

[1] https://hewlett.org/is-big-data-like-teenage-sex/

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