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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#41

Post by baq »

BoredPositron wrote: post #15

We are 5 years in... it's fine to be sceptical. The model advancements are in the single digits now. It's not on us that they promised the world 3 years ago. It's fine and will be just fine for the next few years. A real breakthrough is at least another 5 years away and if it comes everything you do now will be obsolete. Nobody will need or care about the dude that Sloperatored Claude Code on release and that's the r…

I haven't been listening to any promises, I'm simply trying out the models as they get released. I agree with the article wholeheartedly - you can't pretend these tools are not worth learning anymore. It's irresponsible if you're a professional.

Next breakthrough will happen in 2030 or it might happen next Tuesday; it might have already happened, it's just that the lab which did it is too scared to release it. It doesn't matter: until it happens, you should work with what you've got.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#42

Post by esperent »

> But I'm worried for the folks that will get fired. It is not clear what the dynamic at play will be: will companies try to have more people, and to build more?

This is the crux. AI suddenly became good and society hasn't caught on yet. Programmers are a bit ahead of the curve here, being closer to the action of AI. But in a couple of years, if not already, all the other technical and office jobs will be equally affected. Translators, admin, marketing, scientists, writers of all sorts and on and on. Will we just produce more and retain a similar level of employment, or will AI be such a force multiplier that a significant number or even most of these jobs will be gone? Nobody knows yet.

And yet, what I'm even more worried about for their society upending abilities, is robots. These are coming soon and they'll arrive with just as much suddeness and inertia as AI did.

The robots will be as smart as the AI running them, so what happens when they're cheap and smart enough to replace humans in nearly all physical jobs?

Nobody knows the answer to this. But in 5 years, or 10, we will find out.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#43

Post by edg5000 »

bsaul wrote: post #38
systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.

An ecosystem is being built around AI : Best prompting practices, mcps, skills, IDE integration, how to build a feedback loop so that LLM can test its output alone, plug to the outside world with browser extensions, etc... For now i think people can still catch up quickly, but at the end of 2026 it's probably going to be a different story.

> probably going to be a different story

Can you elaborate? Skill in AI use will be a differentiator?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#44

Post by yard2010 »

This is making me sad. The people that are going to lose their jobs will be literally weaponized against minorities by the crooked politicians that are doing their thing right now, it's going to be a disaster I can tell. I just wish I could go back in time. I don't want to live in this timeline anymore. I lost my passion job before anything of it even happened. On the paper.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#45

Post by rvz »

systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.

> What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools?

The ones pushing this narrative have either the following:

* Invested in AI companies (which they will never disclose until they IPO / acquired)

* Employees at AI companies that have stock options which they are effectively paid boosters around AGI nonsense.

* Mid-life crisis / paranoia that their identity as a programmer is being eroded and have to pivot to AI.

It is no different to the crypto web3 bubble of 2021. This time, it is even more obvious and now the grifters from crypto / tech are already "pivoting to ai". [0]

[0] https://pivot-to-ai.com/

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#46

Post by delusional »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #13
dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

I feel similarly for a different reason. I put my code out there, licensed under the GPL. It is now, through a layer of indirection, being used to construct products that are not under the GPL. That's not what I signed up for. I know the GPL didn't have a specific clause for AI, and the jury is still out on this specific case (how similar is it to a human doing the same thing?), but I like to imagine, had it been mad…

The argument of the AI megacorps is that generated work is not "derivative" and therefore doesn't fall interact with the original authors copyright. They have invented a machine that takes in copyrighted works, and from a legal standpoint produces "entirely original" code. No license, be that GPL or otherwise, can do anything about that, because they ultimately rely on the authors copyright to required the licensee to observe the license.

They cannot violate the license, because in their view they have not licensed anything from you.

I think that's horse shit, and a clear violation of the intellectual property rights that are supposed to protect creatives from the business boys, but apparently the stock market must grow.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#47

Post by vanviegen »

JackSlateur wrote: post #5

"Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" AI is both a near-perfect propaganda machine and, in the programming front, a self-fulfilling prophecy: yes, AI will be better at coding than human. Mostly because humans are made worse by using AI.

> Mostly because humans are made worse by using AI.

For the type of work I do, I found it best to tightly supervise my LLMs. Giving lots of design guidance upfront, and being very critical towards the output. This is not easy work. In fact, this was always the hard part, and now I'm spending a larger percentage of my time doing it. As the impact of design mistakes is a lot smaller, I can just revert after 20 minutes instead of 3 days, I also get to learn from mistakes quicker. So I'd say, I'm improving my skills faster than before.

For juniors though, I think you are right. By relying on this tech from early on in their careers, I think it will be very hard to grow their skills, taste and intuition. But maybe I'm just an old guy yelling at the clouds, and the next generation of developers will do just fine building careers as AI whisperers.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#48

Post by oncallthrow »

systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.

My take: learning how to do LLM-assisted coding at a basic level gets you 80% of the returns, and takes about 30 minutes. It's a complete no-brainer.

Learning all of the advanced multi-agent worklows etc. etc... Maybe that gets you an extra 20%, but it costs a lot more time, and is more likely to change over time anyway. So maybe not very good ROI.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#49

Post by DrewADesign »

poszlem wrote: post #3
dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

You are not wrong to feel this, because you cannot control what you feel. But it might be worth investigating why you feel this, and why were you writing open source in the first place.

Job insecurity while a bunch of companies claim LLM coding agents are letting them decimate their workforces is a pretty solid reason to feel like your code is being stolen. Many, if not most tech workers have been very sheltered from the harsher economic realities most people face, and many are realizing that labor demand, rather than being special, is why. A core goal of AI products is increasing the supply of what developer labor produces, which reduces demand for that labor. So yeah— feeling robbed when your donated code is used to train models is pretty rational.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#50

Post by bakugo »

noosphr wrote: post #25
dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

Use a license that doesn't allow it then. Not everything needs to be mit or gnu.

LLMs don't care about licenses. And even if they did, the people who use them to generate code don't care about licenses.
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