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AI Pullback Has Officially Started

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Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#41

Post by jswny »

herdcall wrote: post #39

Articles like this keep popping up because they're catnip to those who hate AI or feel threatened by it. On coding, I routinely see people trashing vibe coding and jumping on the slightest mistake agents may make, never mind that human devs screw up all the time. And write-ups citing stats on AI coding tend to be written by folks who either don't code for a living or never earnestly tried it. I use Claude Code regula…

I think devs have a natural inclination to resist a seismic shift in their industry, which is understandable.

However I agree that a lot of this stuff is FUD and AI dev is like a new skill, it takes time to master. It took me a few months but I’m comfortably more productive and having a more fun time at work with Claude Code

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#42

Post by iainctduncan »

I personally think a big factor here (i.e., on HN discussions) is that, to programmers, gen-AI seems amazing because we happen to do something it appears to do well and which can be useful if we supervise it. But really, typing up the code has always been the low-skill part of the job! Anyone who's been in the biz 10 years or more knows that that new coders can create code that seems ok but actually creates nightmares long term.

To people who aren't programmers, there isn't really the same kind of easily-verified use case. Most people can't tell at a glance that a business proposal or email is full of errors they need to correct, thus the stuff causes even more damage.

Unfortunately, programmers, as a rule, aren't terribly good at listening to the experiences and perspectives of non-coders, so I don't see this dynamic changing anytime soon.

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#43

Post by kk58 »

Libidinalecon wrote: post #38
sega_sai wrote: post #25

I find these sorts of takes to be tiresome. It is absolutely true there is a lot of hype around AI. Also it is true that many AI companies try to shove AI into everything without necessarily thinking wherer it is a good idea or whether it useful (talking to you Google). Notwithstanding this it is absolutely clear how transformational the technology is. For low skill tasks it can certainly substitute people and save a…

Most business tasks are not low skilled language tasks that are so easy to automate. I am helping rebuild a business right now that has a call center and LLMs are basically useless for us. It is actually kind of shocking how I can go home and learn about quantum computing from LLMs but find them useless for simple business processes. This though I think exemplifies the entire mistake of the bubble. Most business proc…

Im curious I've seen very different results for automation of business processes. Could you share an example of what you're dealing with?

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#44

Post by y0eswddl »

yeasku wrote: post #32
lm28469 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every employee using LLM for productivity you have 50 who use it to bullshit their way up the ladder, generate overly verbose emails, reports, bug reports, &c. My wife's team spent 20+ man hours analyzing and trying to fufil the requests of one of their biggest customer, in the end it turned out to be a fully llm generated feature request email from someone who didn't quite understand the product in the first pla…

I dont undertand why you are beibg downvoted

Because too many people are just as sycophant towards AI as it is towards us...

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#45

Post by card_zero »

falcor84 wrote: post #20
killingtime74 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if switching to 3 ply toilet paper (from the dreaded 1 ply) in employee bathrooms increased productivity in 5% of companies. We could also apply the same logic that these 5% could also produce 50x returns.

I'm not sure what your point is, but I do absolutely think that getting proper toilet paper offers 50x returns and everyone should prioritize it.

The point is, the above logic depends on the part about "1 million" and "1 billion", that is, it assumes a thousand times profit for the 5% of companies that succeed in getting productivity improvements from AI or toilet paper. Eh, but I guess TP is cheap, so maybe you're going along with that.

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#46

Post by y0eswddl »

iainctduncan wrote: post #42

I personally think a big factor here (i.e., on HN discussions) is that, to programmers, gen-AI seems amazing because we happen to do something it appears to do well and which can be useful if we supervise it. But really, typing up the code has always been the low-skill part of the job! Anyone who's been in the biz 10 years or more knows that that new coders can create code that seems ok but actually creates nightmare…

...except a significant number of us programmers also think it's BS. The pullback also includes less use in development automation lately as well.

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#47

Post by y0eswddl »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #4

I'm not saying AI is living up to the "hype" or "expectations" - it would largely depend on how you quantify the hype or expectations. Most rational would be to consider how much money is funneled into vs how much ROI would it have within some time range in the future, e.g. 10 years. A wise investor would look ahead 10 years, balance benefits, potential and risks. By that metric it could be too early to say if it's p…

lolol "I still use it, so clearly everyone else still loves it and thinks it's amazing"

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#48

Post by y0eswddl »

bdangubic wrote: post #27
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now the question is whether that’s true (and thus should be objectively measurable) or if he is bullshitting because Microsoft invested so much money in it it just has to work.

yes, I believe this. Microsoft is deploying an army of devs to HN to tout AI because they are invested in at cost of billions of dollars per year - HN AI Bubble :)

You don't need a coordinated disinformation campaign for employees to drink the Kool-Aid and evangelize.

all it takes is significant emotional investment for someone to become a bit blind to reality.

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#49

Post by y0eswddl »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #14
CuriouslyC wrote: post #3

People roll out a complex and powerful technology without understanding the technology fully, what evals are or updating process to account for the tech, and the rollout fails, news at 11. Seriously though, "AI fucks up" is a known thing (as is humans fuck up!) and the people who are using the tech successfully account for that and build guardrails into their systems. Use version control, build automated tests (e2e/s…

Imagine comparing a human fuck up to an AI one. Lol.

it's been grinding my gears so much lately that people keep trying to compare "blurry jpeg machines" to human intelligence and development.

llms don't learn. nor do they operate with any sort of intent towards precision.

we can develop around, plan for and predict most common human errors. also, humans typically get smarter and learn from their mistakes.

llms will go on making the same ridiculous mistakes, confidently making up bullshit frameworks methods and code, and no matter how much correction you try to offer, they will never get any better until the next multi-billion dollar model update. and even then, it's more of a crossed finger situation than an inevitability improvement and growth.

I hate hate hate hate hate that AI seems to be increasing Dunning Krueger's effect on all our lives...

Re: AI Pullback Has Officially Started

#50

Post by y0eswddl »

bdangubic wrote: post #29
rhetocj23 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine comparing a human fuck up to an AI one. Lol.

I have seen 30 years of human fuckups, it is infinitely worse than AI fuck ups so you are right, cannot be compared, humans are so much worse there are roughly 2.09% of SWEs that actually know what they are doing so this 97.91% generally prodces garbage (after 30 years doing this shit I have once experiencing being brought it to a project (I have been working as a consultant for a long time now) and went “wow, now th…

You have to look at where the bullet holes aren't on surviving planes to know where to reinforce them...

aka you don't maybe think tha - as an outside consultant - the nature of the job means you'd rarely be brought in to fix "beautiful codebases"...?

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