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You Had No Taste Before AI

matthewsanabria.dev

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Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#41

Post by k__ »

philipp-gayret wrote: post #17

I very often hear from developers at clients I work with that code they (not me) generate with AI is not of enough "quality". So I ask them what quality means. So far, I only get the most basic feedback: it should be in X style, pass Y linter, have N% coverage, have documentation... At the same time, most, if not all manually written repositories do not pass the newfound quality metrics that must apply to AI code to…

" I only get the most basic feedback: it should be in X style, pass Y linter, have N% coverage, have documentation"

Those are things that AIs can check by themselves.

What AIs are lacking is common sense.

They have no problem to inline everything they do which makes the codebase unmaintainable for humans

If you tell them to refactor, you get useless abstractions, like functions that get called in random places with no sense of structure.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#43

Post by literalAardvark »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #28
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

Maybe by the textbook definition, sure. Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.

Many people find advertising valuable.

It's tracking, micro targeting, retargeting, and trying to sell me a fridge that I literally just bought while I'm off reading about sailboats that's intrusive.

Advertise shoes, cleats, sails, and charters in the Bahamas while I'm doing that, not singles near me and bicycles because I posted in a Facebook group.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#44

Post by 9rx »

btbuildem wrote: post #4

Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do

Why's that? Profit, of course, is just the measure of how much trade is undelivered.

The old: I give you my corn to feed your chickens, and at some point in the future you will give me chickens in return once they are fed and grown. The amount of undelivered chickens are my profit. But eventually you will provide the chickens as promised, theoretically. Fair trade doesn't seem tasteless.

And if I forever hold on to that profit and never expect you to give me the chickens in the future as you originally promised, then I literally gave you the corn for free. How could it be tasteless to help someone out by giving them something for free?

Perhaps you are actually thinking of something like regulatory capture that is oft associated with profit? I can see how that becomes quite tasteless and certainly the tech industry in particular loves to exploit that. I am not sure that underpins our professional efforts, though. The tech industry would still exist even without all the insane laws that surround it.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#45

Post by esseph »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #38
StilesCrisis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe by the textbook definition, sure. Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.

How do consumers discover new products and services if not through advertising? A product on a shelf at a store is also a form of advertising proven by how much money is spent on packaging. Word of mouth is also one of the most effective forms of advertising.

> How do consumers discover new products

By looking them up when they need them

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#46

Post by rhetocj23 »

kraftman wrote: post #3

I think this really underpins the difference between the people that say AI is useless and those that say it's enhanced many aspects of their day to day lives.

Yes. The people who had low standards in the first place find it transformative.

If you have high standards, its regurgitating info in an ill disciplined fashion. Because its input isn't really of the highest standard upon which the model is trained on.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#47

Post by tpoacher »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #28
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

Maybe by the textbook definition, sure. Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.

Only for modern definitions of advertising, mind you, which are all about dark patterns and invasive marketing, rather than putting a descrption of your product out there that can be searched by interested parties looking to buy a product like yours.

There were times were advertising was useful and desirable, e.g. Small Ads pages.

There was also a time when ads were a single unintrusive scrolling line, curated by the website owner so as to be relevant to their audience. Those were fine.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#48

Post by rhetocj23 »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #39
qsort wrote: post #15

Eh, kind of. In a way, AI does not change at all the problem of having taste. There are more books you'll ever read, movies you'll ever watch, games you'll ever play, software you'll ever use. I remain completely unconvinced that "dead internet/dead youtube" is a problem: you had to filter before, you have to filter now. What AI does, being highly weird technology, is that it destroys heuristics. Good English used to…

Yes. Oddly, for once, English majors may actually benefit, because they may be better prepared than most to prepare prompts for the jobs of tomorrow ( mild sarcasm, coffee didn't kick in yet ).

I remain convinced that it is those who studied/have a passion for the humanities and liberal arts that will be leading the charge of future product innovation.

With all due respect with pure technologists, they just dont understand people, what they need, and how to envision/communicate the benefits.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#49

Post by literalAardvark »

ivape wrote: post #33
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #20

As someone who works with a lot of creatives, I've noticed people tend to get really defensive and self-righteous anytime "taste" comes up, on both sides - the haute designer-types vs. the scrappy I-can-do-it types. So I won't be surprised if this post is controversial. But it's insightful. Having poor taste (or more charitably, having no taste) can be covered up or ignored by the ability to choose from a pre-curated…

The problem is there is a mindfuck dynamic the arena of taste brings. Popular taste can overwhelm all other taste. A society may not even know they’ve lost taste for a significant amount of time.

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