Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Generative AI Con

wheresyoured.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 503 posts

Re: The Generative AI Con

#481

Post by vonneumannstan »

habinero wrote: post #459
vonneumannstan wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah unironically. Guido van Rossum - "I use it every day. My biggest adjustment with using Copilot was that instead of writing code, my posture shifted to reviewing code." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DVyjdw4t9I Here's Jeff Dean saying 25% of the characters in new PRs at Google are AI Generated. https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/jeff-dean-and-noam-shazeer Andrej Karpathy - "I basically can't imagine going back to…

These kinds of responses are my favorite dark pattern rhetorical device, because you can assert literally _anything_ in this format and almost nobody will refute you, because the cost of refuting bullshit is 100x the cost of producing it. Anyways, here goes. 1. Guido uses Copilot like I do - as a StackOverflow replacement to write the dumb boilerplate code. A much less flattering quote is "It doesn't save me much thi…

Look in the context of the comment I'm actually replying to your criticisms are just completely misplaced.

>here's a bunch of hubbub and generalized excitement, and lots of talk about what could be done, or what might be done, but not very much actual doing

I am showing that indeed many top people use the tools to make themselves more productive, in direct contradiction to the comment above.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#482

Post by vonneumannstan »

wizzz wrote: post #467
vonneumannstan wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah unironically. Guido van Rossum - "I use it every day. My biggest adjustment with using Copilot was that instead of writing code, my posture shifted to reviewing code." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DVyjdw4t9I Here's Jeff Dean saying 25% of the characters in new PRs at Google are AI Generated. https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/jeff-dean-and-noam-shazeer Andrej Karpathy - "I basically can't imagine going back to…

I believe your examples are - unironically - misleading. 1- he states that the generated code is most likely wrong. He is appreciative of it though because he is a very poor typer so he doesn't have to do that part as much 2- so that's not supporting your argument that the 'top' devs are using it. Besides it doesn't say how it's counted, nor how much time is spent reviewing and correcting it 3- actually okay. But is…

>You might still be right, I definitely do not compare myself to these people, but trying to glue some sources together makes a poor argument.

It makes a better argument then the bold and plainly wrong claim that no one is using them and its all just "a bunch of hubbub".

Re: The Generative AI Con

#483

Post by [deleted] »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #187
roenxi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. While the timeline is unclear; it seems likely that LLMs will obsolete precisely the skills that developers use to earn their income. I imagine a lot of them feel rather threatened by the rapid rate of progress. Pointing out that it is already operating at junior dev quality and rapidly improving is unlikely to quiet the discontent.

Nah. "AI" is just really, really lame and square. People have a visceral reaction to it even when it's actually not that bad. These types of articles are just catching the next meme wave, which will be hating on and making fun of "AI" of all sorts.

[deleted]

Re: The Generative AI Con

#485

Post by Kye »

sebastiennight wrote: post #397
Kye wrote: post #156

I could only skim to verify an automated summary, but if the takeaway is "these AI giants are doomed" then he's right. The future, probably within 10 years, is most tasks being handled by small on-portable-device models (7B parameters or so; see Apple's Intelligence thing), a middle ground of workhorse models (pushing closer to 30s and 70s) running on more capable ML-focused chips in laptops and workstations, and hom…

I'm not on iOS these days, can you elaborate how "Apple's Intelligence thing" has solved the 7B-sized on-portable-device model for everyday users? My understanding of the zeitgest on HN about Apple Intelligence was definitely not leaning towards "they nailed it". Not even in the ballpark of "promising", I'd say.

I didn't say they nailed it. I don't know since I can't run it, but ten years is a long time for any technology. I toyed with the 7B Mistral through MLC Chat and, while slow, the responses were good.

The Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct it comes with is fast but sometimes takes questioning to get accurate answers.

The older Phi variant it has was thorough and accurate, Phi's selling point, but made my phone run hot being too thorough.

I don't know much about Apple's model.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#486

Post by daveguy »

jayd16 wrote: post #18
lukevp wrote: post #12

I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. It’s a new tool that requires some learning, and it’s sometimes not so great, but if you’ve used an IDE with real coding assistance built in (eg. VS Code in Edit with Copilot mode - NOT Chat mode, using Claude 3.5), it’s honestly not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. And if the code is bad you throw it away and try again 10…

Unreliable tools are utterly exhausting. > not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. Is there a greater hell than this!?

LLMs are the "move fast and break things" of AI.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#487

Post by idamantium »

The mismatch between AI’s actual utility and its hype reminded me of Prediction Machines[1], which frames technological change as progressing from point solutions → platform solutions → system solutions.

We’re still in the “what the heck is the point solution here” phase, with a lot of anticipation for platform and system-level shifts. There are some point solutions—like coding assistants—that make existing workflows more efficient and higher quality, but they haven’t translated easily to other domains. Platform solutions require completely rethinking workflows holistically, and system solutions demand restructuring everything that depends on those workflows. That’s going to be slow and messy. Including financially messy.

The book likens this to the introduction of electricity. Initially, electrification meant new individual machines in factories organized around steam power. Steam power was hard to turn on and off and not at all portable. Actually getting the full benefit of electricity meant redesigning factories around electricity use as-needed (not just when the steam engine was running) and spatially organize around task efficiency (not proximity to the steam energy production). All that was not a quick shift.

I very much sympathize with the author's frustration over hype that fails to understand the underlying technology and puts unwarranted faith in a small collection of corporate leaders. But I do think that this technology does have a high degree systems change potential and possibly the momentum to see it through this time. Not that we know how that will play out of which actors or forces will bring it to fruition. It really doesn't feel the same as the other tech crazes of the last two decades.

[1] https://www.predictionmachines.ai/

Re: The Generative AI Con

#488

Post by idamantium »

light_triad wrote: post #336

If you've been in SV long enough, you've seen multiple hype cycles. AI is the latest one. It doesn't mean AI is a con, there's just a tendency to exaggerate and make hyperbolic claims to sell. AI is primarily used to write text and code. Actually integrating it into workflows across markets will take time. A great article that is neither overly pessimistic or optimistic is Benedict Evan's The AI Summer [1]. He argues…

I agree. This is a helpful take. The book Prediction Machines [1] is a longer version, and longer view explanation, of what Ben Evan's shares in the post you link to.

[1] https://www.predictionmachines.ai/

Re: The Generative AI Con

#489

Post by colonial »

tim333 wrote: post #378
Red_Comet_88 wrote: post #180

"We are in the midst of a group delusion — a consequence of an economy ruled by people that do not participate in labor of any kind outside of sending and receiving emails and going to lunches that last several hours — where the people with the money do not understand or care about human beings." Regardless of the hostile tone of the article, this stuck out to me as an incredibly poignant description of the current t…

>non-deterministic outputs, wherein they give different answers to the same question if asked enough times I think you may find some humans do that too.

Only because they're tired of you asking them the same thing over and over, or because they've picked up new knowledge/opinions since you last asked.

"How many r's in strawberry?"

"3."

"How many r's in strawberry?"

"...3?"

"How many r's in strawberry?"

"Piss off!"

Re: The Generative AI Con

#490

Post by ianmcnaney »

It's not totally useless. I have more productive conversations about my aquarium with copilot than I do with aquarium related subreddits, and the results are about as useful. I treat them as interesting anecdotes worthy of further research.
Post reply on HN