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AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

kasava.dev

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

#421

Post by crakhamster01 »

fdefitte wrote: post #163

[dead]

> taste scales now.

Not having taste also scales now, and the majority of people like to think they're above average.

Before AI, friction to create was an implicit filter. It meant "good ideas" were often short-lived because the individual lacked conviction. The ideas that saw the light of day were sharpened through weeks of hard consideration and at least worth a look.

Now, anyone who can form mildly coherent thoughts can ship an app. Even if there are newly empowered unicorns, rapidly shipping incredible products, what are the odds we'll find them amongst a sea of slop?

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

#422

Post by ilaksh »

0xcafefood wrote: post #419
ilaksh wrote: post #416

Who is actually trying to use a fully autonomous AI employee right now? Isn't everyone using agentic copilots or workflows with agent loops in them? It seems that they are arguing against doing something that almost no one is doing yet. But actually the AI Employee is coming by the end of 2026 and the fully autonomous AI Company in 2027 sometime. Many people have been working on versions of these things for awhile. B…

> the AI Employee is coming by the end of 2026 and the fully autonomous AI Company in 2027 sometime We'll see! I'm skeptical. > what's holding back the AI Employee are things like really effective long term context and memory management and some level of interface generality like browser or computer use and voice These are pretty big hurdles. Assuming they're solved by the end of this year is a big assumption to make…

https://platform.claude.com/cookbook/tool-use-automatic-cont...

https://research.google/blog/introducing-nested-learning-a-n...

Already very strong progress.

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

#424

Post by AlexandrB »

xlerb wrote: post #24

Humans don’t have an internal notion of “fact” or “truth.” They generate statistically plausible text. Reliability comes from scaffolding: retrieval, tools, validation layers. Without that, fluency can masquerade as authority. The interesting question isn’t whether they’re coworkers or exoskeletons. It’s whether we’re mistaking rhetoric for epistemology.

> Humans don’t have an internal notion of “fact” or “truth.” They generate statistically plausible text.

This doesn't jive with reality at all. Language is a relatively recent invention, yet somehow Homo sapiens were able to survive in the world and even use tools before the appearance of language. You're saying they did this without an internal notion of "fact" or "truth"?

I hate the trend of downplaying human capabilities to make the wild promises of AI more plausible.

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

#425

Post by afro88 »

Tade0 wrote: post #250
alphazard wrote: post #158

There's an undertone of self-soothing "AI will leverage me, not replace me", which I don't agree with especially in the long run, at least in software. In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh. In the medium run, "AI is not a co-worker" is exactly right. The idea of a co-worker will go away. Human collaboration on software is fundamentally inefficient. We pay huge communication/synchroniz…

> 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.

I would have agreed with you a year ago

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

#426

Post by thewebguyd »

alphazard wrote: post #158

There's an undertone of self-soothing "AI will leverage me, not replace me", which I don't agree with especially in the long run, at least in software. In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh. In the medium run, "AI is not a co-worker" is exactly right. The idea of a co-worker will go away. Human collaboration on software is fundamentally inefficient. We pay huge communication/synchroniz…

> In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh.

I’m very skeptical of this unless the AI can manage to read and predict emotion and intent based off vague natural language. Otherwise you get the classic software problem of “What the user asked for directly isn’t actually what they want/need.”

You will still need at least some experience with developing software to actually get anything useful. The average “user” isn’t going to have much success for large projects or translating business logic into software use cases.

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

#427

Post by jvdvegt »

ilaksh wrote: post #416

Who is actually trying to use a fully autonomous AI employee right now? Isn't everyone using agentic copilots or workflows with agent loops in them? It seems that they are arguing against doing something that almost no one is doing yet. But actually the AI Employee is coming by the end of 2026 and the fully autonomous AI Company in 2027 sometime. Many people have been working on versions of these things for awhile. B…

I think you're forgetting about accountability: who's to blame when AI messes up?

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

#428

Post by project2501a »

elar_verole wrote: post #395
Tade0 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I either accidentally pasted it somewhere and removed, forgetting about doing that or it's reading the clipboard. The suggestion it gave me started with the contents of the clipboard and expanded to scenario A.

Sorry to sound rude - but you polluted the context, pointing to the fact you would like A, and then found it annoying it tried to do A ?

I know I am not supposed to be negative in HN, but lay off the koolaid, dear colleague.

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

#429

Post by capital_guy »

overgard wrote: post #179
alphazard wrote: post #158

There's an undertone of self-soothing "AI will leverage me, not replace me", which I don't agree with especially in the long run, at least in software. In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh. In the medium run, "AI is not a co-worker" is exactly right. The idea of a co-worker will go away. Human collaboration on software is fundamentally inefficient. We pay huge communication/synchroniz…

Well, without the self soothing I think what's left is pitchforks.

Maybe it's time for pitchforks.

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

#430

Post by waffletower »

Marshal McLuhan would probably have agreed with this belief -- technologies are essentially prosthetic was one of the core tenets of his general philosophy. It is the essential thesis of his work "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man". AI is typically assigned otherness and separateness in recent discourse, rather than being considered as a directed tool (extension/prosthesis) under our control.
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