Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

kasava.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 608 posts

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#351

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

leoedin wrote: post #297
jimbokun wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why aren’t we seeing orders of magnitude more software being produced?

I think we are. There's definitely been an uptick in "show HN" type posts with quite impressively complex apps that one person developed in a few weeks. From my own experience, the problem is that AI slows down a lot as the scale grows. It's very quick to add extra views to a frontend, but struggles a lot more in making wide reaching refactors. So it's very easy to start a project, but after a while your progress slo…

I think the proportion of new software that is novel has absolutely plummeted after the advent of AI. In my experience, generative AI will easily reproduce code for which there are a multitude of examples on GitHub, like TODO CRUD React Apps. And many business problems can be solved with TODO CRUD React Apps (just look at Excel’s success), but not every business problem can be solved by TODO CRUD React Apps.

As an analogy: imagine if someone was bragging about using Gen AI to pump out romantasy smut novels that were spicy enough to get off to. Would you think they’re capable of producing the next Grapes of Wrath?

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#352

Post by gaigalas »

ACCount37 wrote: post #344
Tade0 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The benefits we get from checking in with other humans, like error correction, and delegation can all be done better by AI. Not this generation of AI though. It's a text predictor, not a logic engine - it can't find actual flaws in your code, it's just really good at saying things which sound plausible.

Your brain is a slab of wet meat, not a logic engine. It can't find actual flaws in your code - it's just half-decent at pattern recognition.

That is not exactly true. The brain does a lot of things that are not "pattern recognition".

Simpler, more mundane (not exactly, still incredibly complicated) stuff like homeostasis or motor control, for example.

Additionally, our ability to plan ahead and simulate future scenarios often relies on mechanisms such as memory consolidation, which are not part of the whole pattern recognition thing.

The brain is a complex, layered, multi-purpose structure that does a lot of things.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#353

Post by kunley »

Author compares X to Y and then goes:

- Y has been successful in the past

- Y brought this and this number of metrics, completely unrelated to X field

- overall, Y was cool,

therefore, X is good for us!

.. I'd say, please bring more arguments why X is equivalent to Y in the first place.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#354

Post by gaigalas »

LoganDark wrote: post #301
nielsole wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moreso than humans Citation needed.

Much of the space of artificial intelligence is based on a goal of a general reasoning machine comparable to the reasoning of a human. There are many subfields that are less concerned with this, but in practice, artificial intelligence is perceived to have that goal. I am sure the output of current frontier models is convincing enough to outperform the appearance of humans to some. There is still an ongoing outcry fr…

That's not a citation.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#357

Post by bspammer »

eCa wrote: post #257
fdefitte wrote: post #163

[dead]

> That's not augmentation, that's a completely different game Not saying that this comment is ai written, but this phrasing is the em-dash of 2026.

it'll be interesting to see if people start writing worse as a form of countersignalling. deliberately making spleling mistakes, not caring about capital letters, or punctuation or grammar or proper writing techniques and making really long run-on sentences that don't go anywhere but hey at least the person reading it will know its written by a human right

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#358

Post by Adexintart »

This is a useful framing. The exoskeleton metaphor captures it well — AI amplifies what you can already do, it doesn't replace the need to know what to do. I've found the biggest productivity gains come from well-scoped tasks where you can quickly verify the output.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#360

Post by varjag »

Adexintart wrote: post #358

This is a useful framing. The exoskeleton metaphor captures it well — AI amplifies what you can already do, it doesn't replace the need to know what to do. I've found the biggest productivity gains come from well-scoped tasks where you can quickly verify the output.

All metaphors are flawed. You may still need a degree of general programming knowledge (for now) but you don't need to e.g. know Javascript to do frontend anymore.

And as labs continue to collect end-to-end training done by their best paying customers, the need for expert knowledge will only diminish.

Post reply on HN