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The first 40 months of the AI era

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Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#41

Post by jmalicki »

theteapot wrote: post #35

> While I’m certain that this technology is producing some productivity improvements, I’m still genuinely (and frustratingly) unsure just how much of an improvement it is actually creating. I often wonder how much more productive I'd be if just a fraction the effort and money poured into LLMs was spent on better API documentation and conventional coding tools. A lot of the time, I'm resorting to using an AI because I…

My favorite thing is when some projects now have better documentation in their Claude skills or MCPs than they ever did for users.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#42

Post by OrangePilled »

etherus wrote: post #11
H8crilA wrote: post #9

Do you regularly find text content that you know is AI written (but is not marked as such)? Because honestly I don't, and it must exist in decent quantity by now. Or perhaps it's still sparse?

Have a look here [1] and here [2] - I think they are good resources, but fallible in the long run. I think yes, I do, often confirmed by communication with people I know (i.e. i suspect they have used AI to make something -> I ask). This falls victim to confirmation bias, though. I suspect a nontrivial amount of writing I read is AI generated without me realising, and I'm wary also of falsely flagging AI-generated co…

I think the second resource that you linked to is valuable. The first is useless unless you're a Wikipedia editor, the significance of verifying citations not withstanding.

The gap between LLM-generated writing and the composite style of the average Wikipedia page is more narrow than most people may believe.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#43

Post by slopinthebag »

H8crilA wrote: post #19
etherus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look here [1] and here [2] - I think they are good resources, but fallible in the long run. I think yes, I do, often confirmed by communication with people I know (i.e. i suspect they have used AI to make something -> I ask). This falls victim to confirmation bias, though. I suspect a nontrivial amount of writing I read is AI generated without me realising, and I'm wary also of falsely flagging AI-generated co…

Okay, but the answers in [1] look something like: AI generated. Some of the clues include: - Most obviously, a failed ISBN checksum - Other source-to-text integrity issues; for example, the WWF source says very little about Malaysia specifically, only mentions Sunda tigers (Panthera tigris sondaica), and does not mention tapirs at all - Very short yet consistent paragraph length - Generic "see also" links, one of whi…

Ok, but like, what about [2]?

I can easily tell AI writing. I'm sure plenty goes under the radar, but I can still catch a lot.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#44

Post by cruffle_duffle »

aidos wrote: post #7

> To what degree did I expand scope because I knew I could do more using the AI? Someone at work recently termed this “Claude Creep”. It’s so easy to generate things push you towards going further but the reality is that’s you’re setting yourself up for more and more work to get them over the line.

Dude. I’ve been thinking about this a lot! I think it’s because the traditional way we internalize the costs of what we are building just got take for a ride. We don’t really (or I don’t anyway) fully know what “too much scope” feels like with one of these Claude thingies. So it’s easy to completely both overestimate complexity and underestimate it too. Some times the LLM makes a seemingly daunting refactor be super simple and sometimes something seemingly not complex can take it forever… and there really is, for me, a good “gut sense” of how something will go.

So lately I’ve just decided that I’ll time box things instead of set defined endpoints. And by “endpoint” I really mean “I’m done for the day” and honestly maybe thinking about it… “I’m done with this project”.

I don’t know. But the term “Claude Creep” is absolutely something I can identify with. That thing will take you down a rathole that started with just pulling in some document and ends with you completely repartitioning your file system. lol.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#45

Post by tomrod »

theteapot wrote: post #35

> While I’m certain that this technology is producing some productivity improvements, I’m still genuinely (and frustratingly) unsure just how much of an improvement it is actually creating. I often wonder how much more productive I'd be if just a fraction the effort and money poured into LLMs was spent on better API documentation and conventional coding tools. A lot of the time, I'm resorting to using an AI because I…

As someone who does broad activities, it supercharges a lot of things. Having a critical eye is required though. I estimate 40%-60% improvements on basic coding tasks.

I don't bring huge codebases to it.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#46

Post by _bernays_sauce »

The Gartner hype cycle has 5 phases: tech trigger (6 months - 2 years), peak of inflated expectations (6 months - 2 years ), the slope of enlightenment (2 - 5 years), and the plateau of productivity (5+ years), and the slope of decline (Obsolescence which noone talks about). If we are in fact at the 40th month then we are either approaching the peak of inflated expectations, the slope of enlightenment, or the plateau of productivity. I would say we are probably approaching the peak of inflated expectations. We are constantly hearing the symptoms of the 'This Time is Different' Syndrome from people saying the old rules don’t apply which is the classic sign the peak is approaching. The average financial bubble bursts after 3 years, however the dot-com bubble burst 5 years after peak and the housing bubble took 3-4 years. We are probably in the “bubble mania” phase right now because of all the irrational exuberance. Ride the Lightning!

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#47

Post by yks »

jmalicki wrote: post #41
theteapot wrote: post #35

> While I’m certain that this technology is producing some productivity improvements, I’m still genuinely (and frustratingly) unsure just how much of an improvement it is actually creating. I often wonder how much more productive I'd be if just a fraction the effort and money poured into LLMs was spent on better API documentation and conventional coding tools. A lot of the time, I'm resorting to using an AI because I…

My favorite thing is when some projects now have better documentation in their Claude skills or MCPs than they ever did for users.

But that documentation itself is likely AI-generated

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#48

Post by jmalicki »

yks wrote: post #47
jmalicki wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite thing is when some projects now have better documentation in their Claude skills or MCPs than they ever did for users.

But that documentation itself is likely AI-generated

At least it saves me from having to generate the docs myself!

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#49

Post by andai »

tkgally wrote: post #18

Nice observation about AI-generated content: > I’ve had the idea that from a social perspective it’d be regarded like plastic surgery, in that it only looks weird when its over-done, or done badly.

It's the same way with writing as with video. There are some videos now where it's actually hard to tell. You can only tell it's AI when it's bad. When it's done well, you don't even know it's AI.

So it creates this selection effect where people only associate AI with fake and bad. The good stuff, they don't associate with AI at all.

Re: The first 40 months of the AI era

#50

Post by andai »

Hekkova wrote: post #39

I would agree with the utility of Claude and Claude Code. Claude feels like your own executive assistant, sales team and IT department. Combine that with Claude Code and you can build some incredible things. Myself as an example, I used Claude to advise me on starting a business and building a MVP. After a few weeks of refinement I was able to create something I never could have done without Claude. It is a game chan…

Several of my friends who don't know any programming are creating video games and music software with AI agents.

Much of what they are doing is incomprehensible to me. I often find that being a programmer is actually holding me back in this regard, because I feel the need to understand everything the code is doing, as well as the specialized knowledge (e.g. the math involved in audio processing and sound effects). Whereas my friends can just say... yeah add a phaser effect to the synth and it just does it.

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