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Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

blog.jakesaunders.dev

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Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#441

Post by abustamam »

jimbokun wrote: post #426
abustamam wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! I've actually learned a lot about what I don't know by using AI. It made me dig into learning proper systems design, app architecture, etc. But at the same time the more I read about AI, the more I realize I need to learn about AI. Thus far I'm just using cursor and the Claude code extension alongside obra superpowers, and I've been quite happy with it. But on Twitter I see people with multiple instances of Cla…

It’s telling those people mostly talk about the complexity of the AI setup they’ve engineered to write code. Much more so than bragging about the software created by that process.

That's a good point, but I've seen a lot of interesting meta-setups as well (like visualizations of agents interacting with one another).

Does it write good code? I dunno. But it looks cool, and I think interesting in its own right, even if it ends up being functionally useless.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#442

Post by pamcake »

anon-3988 wrote: post #430
strken wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before AI, there were also stories of people who had no background in software engineering who wrote entire applications using their fingers. This was called "learning to be a software engineer". I don't mean to snipe at AI, because it really does seem to have set more people on the path of learning, but I was writing VB5 apps when I was 14 by copying poorly understood bits and pieces from books. Now people are doing…

I have never seen people learn how to be a software engineer in a weekend tho.

And neither do you today.

There is more to it than "being able to make an entire application", which a novice could also have pulled off in a weekend 10 years ago.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#443

Post by flowerthoughts »

I'm starting to believe that AGI really will cause a singularity, even before the technology exists: it's the only thing that will be talked about in my circles. People will forget to eat, families will be divided and split apart, houses will be foreclosed on due to neglect to pay the bills. It will be technology's last and eternal heroin high. The one you never experience coming down from.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#444

Post by mostertoaster »

computerdork wrote: post #245
mostertoaster wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EPA repealed its 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases warm the Earth and endanger human health and well-being. So this is not a good reason to oppose AI. Now the sheer energy it requires does mean we might want to go nuclear though. Natural gas is nice though because it does pollute the air far less than coal. You might argue the EPA only repealed that because of political agendas, but the same argument could be…

Hmm, it seems pretty clear that climate is getting hotter, so it seems natural for some people to be worried about what will happen to the planet in a few decades (me for one). And, you may be right, it may not be that big a deal and that we're being alarmists, but it seems like we currently have the tools to slow it down greatly. Why not be on the safe side and use them? ... but to be honest, guessing my opinion won…

It’s really about the cost/benefit analysis.

The value of plowing ahead and using more energy is worth far more than making sure Florida doesn’t lose some coastline.

The presumptions I see that annoy me with the alarmists, is that they completely negate human agency and ingenuity, and they ignore the economic cost of many of the proposed plans.

Natural gas is far better than coal and should be encouraged rather than condemned. Nuclear power is best of all, is the cleanest and safest energy, and yet is hardly ever the first choice of the alarmists.

I’d rather spend double the energy unlocking breakthroughs in science with the help of AI, and address the problems when they come. I don’t go out of my way to lower my “carbon footprint”, but I also don’t just do things that are wasteful and deliberately harmful to the environment.

AI making us forget how to think for ourselves is a far bigger risk to mankind than climate change. Thanks.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#445

Post by rolandnsharp »

tapoxi wrote: post #22

It's a black box that thinks for me, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it times out. I am extremely skeptical of AI products anyone builds. It's just using one black box to build scaffolding around another black box and then typically want to charge money for it. I don't see any value there.

[dead]

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#446

Post by scorpioxy »

xvector wrote: post #423
GeoAtreides wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you might want to brush up on the short and medium consequences of the industrial revolution and the dark satanic mills where children were maimed or where people worked for 12h a day in horrendous conditions. Do you think because 2 dev are now super productive with AI, the company will keep the other average 30 devs? no, of course not, they will fire and pocket the difference. Same for other industries, where AI wil…

> Do you think because 2 dev are now super productive with AI, the company will keep the other average 30 devs? no, of course not, they will fire and pocket the difference Yes, they will keep the other devs that can figure out how to use AI well. Businesses want to grow.

That hasn't been my experience or the experience of anyone I know or have talked to about how LLMs have affected their work. The parent comment explains what happened.

The businesses fired the staff and pocketed the difference. The result? Growth, at least on paper, as you're saying. Previously they were paying for 10 people and now they're paying for 2 so more profit yay! Of course this is a short term gain which might result in long term pain. That last part remains to be seen.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#447

Post by dsign »

Yes. The problem is the level of the conversations: "AI is good for this. It's not good. It gaslights." It doesn't come out of that. If we were talking about the actual layers in the models and how they interconnect, at least there would be quite a bit of variety in the conversations. Also conversations about how is all about to end tend to be fun if the interlocutors are creative enough.

But the sooner we get to the part of history with the chromy-killer-robots and people-sabotaging-datacenters-and-foundries, the sooner we will get some meaningful excitement.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#448

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

xvector wrote: post #427
onemoresoop wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow closely on what the detractors say. Most of them are using AI themselves and are just pushing back on the hype or other ludicrous claims and that's a good thing. Is the current crop of Gen AI anything near AGI? Is it worth the current valuation? Can a company fire most staff and run on gen AI? We may see the economy completely crash and not because AI takes over but because of bad investments, hype and greed.

The same detractors I know today that use AI, said that LLMs were useless slop generators that would never amount to anything just a year or two ago. Detractors, doomers, and techno-pessimists have got to be the most consistently wrong group in history. https://pessimistsarchive.org/

I think the techno-pessimists were right about NFTs.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#449

Post by sph »

nancyminusone wrote: post #38

Among non-programmers, you always hear about some fool that fell in love with an AI girlfriend or whatever, but you never hear about the people who open chatgpt up once, tried some things with it, said to themselves "huh, that's kind of neat" and then lost interest a day or two later, having conceived of no further items to which AI could provide assistance.

I have used ChatGPT one afternoon in 2022, said “neat”, said “this is gonna destroy the world”, and haven’t used any other LLM since. Do I qualify?

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#450

Post by sph »

4k93n2 wrote: post #336
JSR_FDED wrote: post #41

I’m sad that it’s crowded out all the interesting stuff I used to love learning about on HN.

you can at least block some of it out with ublock origin? news.ycombinator.com##td.title:has-text(/LLM|AI/i)

It doesn’t matter if nobody votes interesting stuff out of /new because the rest of HN only cares about AI posts.
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