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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?

#481

Post by keybored »

Rapzid wrote: post #302
keybored wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expressing a negative sentiment is a trope now?

Keybored is a trending vibe, yeah.

Is anyone else bored of talking about posting with that keybored vibe? Hey, don’t get me wrong!—I’m not some heretic. I love the keybored posting vibe. Lots of sarcasm, complaining about American geopolitical decisions, recommending socialism on some venture capitalist/hacker forum, absolutely no hint of any Show HN bragging rights or any technical accomplishments whatsover, just lots of complaining in general (but I repeat myself). It’s fantastic and I could not go back to posting any other way. But why are talking about it so much? Why not just live it, live that beautiful vibe, and let it permeate our whole Internet persona—in fact just let it become water around us, like we are fish, something vital to our existence and wholly unquestioned until the dam breaks somewhere.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#482

Post by doom2 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #4

How do I answer this without spamming: Yes, very much. Everyone is in their own place adapting (or not) to AI. The disconnect b/w even folks on the same team is just crazy. At least it's gotten more concrete (here's what works for me, what do you do) vs catastrophizing jobpocolypse or "teh singularity", at least on day to day conversations.

What's boring to me is how abstract many of the "AI success stories" tend to be, even on here. A whole blog post about some new way to use LLMs, or a best practice, or whatever, and no link to the code or dotfiles. I understand that how you prompt is a big part of things but all the major providers have a lot of configuration options. There are whole ecosystems of plugins.

It's just not very interesting or useful to me to read about how you got AI to output better quality code or how you can program from your phone now without going into detail. And so many of the conversations are showing off the wins without talking about the tools, configurations, or other parts of the setup that made it possible.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#483

Post by sillyfluke »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #266
palata wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI won't be what acidifies our ocean Tech is what got us where we are. AI allows us to use more energy to produce more of what is currently measurably killing us. > but AGI might save us from it. This is just faith. Some believe that prayers may save us.

"AI energy usage" is a convenient scapegoat not backed by data. Many things are orders of magnitude bigger than AI in the energy usage problem that bring less comparable value.

If the current admin wasn't waging a war on the renewables they don't have personal investments in and propping up their own AI investments energy needs with revitalized fossil fuel barons while they get in on the new pie-in-the-sky "future" energy sources the tech oligarchs point to (nuclear fusion startups) in order to at least get rich if an alternative fuel source they actually invested in pans out, I could perhaps reconsider the notion that this comment isn't worth the pixel it's colored on.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#484

Post by dalmo3 »

hparadiz wrote: post #388
throwawaytea wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. Im a novice self taught developer that somehow pushed through and made a decent PM tool for the construction industry. It works, if your users aren't malicious or too demanding. Now I'm working on a second project, all with AI. I haven't written a single line. It works better than a non programmer would make because I knew what to ask for. But I'll admit I'm not learning anything.

Can't say the same. I've been super hands on with a C project. Really getting into the details of the event bus and how to make things performant. The AI is still writing 99% of the code but I'm being super strict about what I consider acceptable.

[dead]

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#485

Post by RivieraKid »

ej88 wrote: post #334
RivieraKid wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how this is the case if you're anything more than a junior engineer... it unlocks so many possibilities. I really don't understand this way of thinking. Don't you think that AI could replace senior engineers? Sure, companies will be able to do bigger / better / more ambitious stuff - but without any software engineers. > Why is it BS? I'm shocked that anyone with a love and passion for technology can fe…

there doesnt seem to be a limit in terms of the ceiling of what companies can do with software, probably the most elastic demand out of any industry ever the swe role is going to change but problem solving systems thinkers with initiative won't go away

That's a possible outcome. Another possibility is that AI will handle all of the thinking and problem solving part. So the market value of thinking will drop. The bottleneck will still be humans, but their input will be (1) doing physical, real-world stuff (2) providing data that the AI doesn't have, e.g. information about a specific problem domain or how does a user interface feel.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#486

Post by dalmo3 »

simianwords wrote: post #458
nicbou wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only gripe is how myopic the AI discussion on HN is. We barely talk about how it hits everyone else. In the relocation industry, it's losing translators, relocation consultants and immigration lawyers a lot of work. Their cases are also getting tougher because people are getting false information from ChatGPT and arguing with them. This problem is compounded by the lack of training data for that topic. I spent yea…

Half as good and tenth of the cost is a good replacement. I constantly make those choices myself when purchasing things.

I think GPs point is that you'll soon not even be able to make those choices.

Now every toilet on the market only flushes number one. But hey, they're so much cheaper.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#487

Post by JohnFen »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #318
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're reading this and your life hasn't been thrown into disarray you're likely just behind the times. I'd love for discussions of the tech to stop with the genAI version of the cryptobro cry "have fun being poor". It's mildly insulting and adds literally nothing to the conversations. (Not meaning to single you out, just using it as an example. This is a very common rhetorical problem with most of the evangelis…

The difference between "have fun being poor" and the AI craze is that if you have a shred of initiative you can actually do incredible things with AI right now. The detractors are so bizarre to me. I think it's because I work at a big tech that has so thoroughly wired AI into everything we do, and the benefits are so undeniable and totally perspective changing, that it's like arguing with someone that thinks the sun…

I wasn't commenting on whether or not the tech is useful. I was commenting on how such a rhetorical approach is counterproductive and doesn't offer any sort on insight.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#488

Post by GeoAtreides »

xvector wrote: post #480
catlifeonmars wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

> The rapid urbanisation that accompanied the Industrial Revolution in Britain is often argued to have been accompanied by a dramatic worsening of urban conditions [...] However, demographic evidence suggests that death rates were much higher in towns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than in the nineteenth century, and that the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by profound improvements in the survival…

Nobody argued how many people died during the Industrial Revolution or before; quality of life, on the other hand...

That being said.

You cite a study implying (you, not the study) the Industrial Revolution was what lead to lower death rates, so it's all good.

But that's not what the study says:

> These patterns are better explained by changes in breastfeeding practices and the prevalence or virulence of particular pathogens than by changes in sanitary conditions or poverty. Mortality patterns amongst young adult migrants were affected by a shift from acute to chronic infectious diseases over the period.

"than by changes in sanitary conditions or poverty" [my emphasis]

But wait! there's more! from the same study:

> The available evidence indicates a decline in urban mortality in the period c.1750-1820, especially amongst infants and (probably) rural-urban migrants.

"especially amongst infants and (probably) rural-urban migrants" ...where is the industrial revolution here?

And if that was not enough:

>Mortality at ages 1-4 years demonstrated a more complex pattern, falling between 1750 and 1830 before rising abruptly in the mid-nineteenth century.

"rising abruptly in the mid-nineteenth century"

turns out industrial revolution did in fact raise mortality and death rates

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#489

Post by neobrain »

jakelsaunders94 wrote: post #178
mememememememo wrote: post #12

Yes. Go to Mastodon. I accidently stumbled on Mastodon last night (I knew about it of course but largely ignored it). Of the 100 or so posts they were all cool stuff. Only one was AI related and it was more a researchy geeky thing than the brainrot "I fired all my staff an hour ago. They were not happy. CRLF. CRLF. I have an agentic circus and I am the ringmaster of 666 agents. CRLF....." crap you get on Linked in.

I've been meaning to try Mastodon for a long time (I was never really a Twiiter user). As others have said elsewhere though, I'm not sure where to start. Did you just download the app and join mastodon.social?

If you create an account, it may be worth looking into "starter packs", which are lists of accounts around specific topics to follow. That's an easy solution if you run into the "I don't know who to follow and there's no algorithm that'll tell me" problem.

Re: Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

#490

Post by tdeck »

technothrasher wrote: post #351
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach CS at a university in Spain. Most people here are in denial. It is obvious to me that we need to go back to grading based on in-person exams, but in our last university reform (which tried to copy the US/UK in many aspects) there was so much political posturing and indoctrination about exams being evil and coursework having to take the fore that now most people just can't admit the truth before their own eyes…

> Except that if a student wants to learn without using them My son, who is a freshman at a major university in NYC, when he said to his freshman English professor that he wanted to write his papers without using AI, was told that this was "too advanced for a freshman English class" and that using AI was a requirement.

I don't understand what they think it is they're teaching? Will we teach kids to "read" by taking a photo of their bedtime story and hitting a button next?
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