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The Generative AI Con

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Re: The Generative AI Con

#491

Post by habinero »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #481
habinero wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And, as I stated, your own sources say it's a mild improvement at best. Despite what you're insinuating.

Listen: it's a fun toy. Engineers love toys and shiny distractions.

Don't confuse shiny rocks for gold.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#492

Post by Terretta »

parodysbird wrote: post #132
NewUser76312 wrote: post #24

Hey I have my gripes with the landscape, certainly, but this is just too much. > It sure is! But it doesn't really prove anything other than that people are using the single-most-talked about product in the world. By comparison, billions of people use Facebook and Google. I don't care about this number! > User numbers alone tell you nothing about the sustainability or profitability of a business, or how those people…

This is not a criticism he really mentions explicitly, but the issue I see with the valuation is that these products cannot be used in a production system by a responsible engineer. As in, I can't have LLMs autonomously plugged in as part of my product. The failure modes are not ever going to be predictable enough. Now, Microsoft will probably be able to charge a fortune at enterprise level, and managers will dream o…

You also can't responsibly have a prolific apprentice (intern, first or second year, etc.) plugged directly to production.

On the other hand, today most money for SWEs goes to people who aren't "staff engineer" level. What if most money went to staff engineers who directed these interns and paired with new human apprentices to learn staff eng?

In the past few thousand years, apprentice/journeyman/mastery of trade was how trades worked, with an "up or out" model that kept the role pyramid the right shape for skill to shape the outcomes.

These days, far too many careers stay apprentice skill the entire career, mostly thanks to enterprises failing at engineering management as a skilled trade, so being unable to value and raise staff engineer caliber contributors. The enterprise learning machine is broken by false "efficiency".

LLMs change this. Staff engineer caliber SWEs are able to direct these indefatigable assistants, as if each staff engineer has a team of 10 who never need mental breaks to remain productive. There will of course be some number of junior devs who themselves have enough affinity for the role they will want to stick with the apprentice model and work to the staff engineer level. (And will always be solo or boutique teams of app/saas SWEs.)

As for the enterprise engineering management that couldn't tell the difference between a staff engineer and an apprentice, the LLM multiplies the difference to the point the outcomes are evident even to a non technical observer.

So one possible timeline for this is a raising of the median human skill level by attrition of those unskilled enough or unable to think critically enough to leverage the machine assistants as force multipliers or unable to survive directly mentored skill-up training and observation from the staff engineers.

You talk about personal value. Roughly, I agree with you completely, and am adding who I think those persons could be (or have to be given the current level of "thinking" by these tools) for the hype to deliver on value. (At a higher level of machine, closer to "AGI", this scenario changes.)

As is evident by downsizing a mediocre team and observing output go up and work more reliably, these forces could, if playing out this way, make dollars per human go up, productivity go up, quality go up, and enable a return to the millennia-proven model of apprenticeship for the trade.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#493

Post by leovingi »

ben_w wrote: post #172
trhway wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If i were wrong, those companies would be distributing that cash to shareholders instead of chasing any promise of any big chance. If investment in AI don't pan out (i do think that it will pan out, and those trillions will come) then those companies would just pour even more billions into whatever big thing/promise would come next. Rinse and repeat. Because some of those things do generate tremendous returns, and th…

Markets are funny things. US right now is run by someone whose explicit promises, if actually implemented, have an obvious immedidiate 13-14% reduction in GDP — literally, never mind side effects, I'm not counting any businesses losing confidence in the idea that America is a place to invest, this is just direct impact. DOGE + deportation by themselves do most of that percentage. The tariffs are a rounding error in c…

What timeframe are you working with, as in, when do you expect to see this reduction in GDP?

I just want to know so that I can set a reminder and check back on your comment when the time arrives.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#494

Post by vonneumannstan »

habinero wrote: post #491
vonneumannstan wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And, as I stated, your own sources say it's a mild improvement at best. Despite what you're insinuating. Listen: it's a fun toy. Engineers love toys and shiny distractions. Don't confuse shiny rocks for gold.

> it's a fun toy.

Keep thinking that and don't feel too bad when 21 year old zoomers are 10x more impactful than you are at work.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#495

Post by wizzz »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #482
wizzz wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Yeah you are trying to make a better argument, but picking out-of-context references from random sources that actually goes against your point.

None of the 5 sources say that AI code generation is really making them more productive

Re: The Generative AI Con

#496

Post by sebastiennight »

sambapa wrote: post #465
yunwal wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see you ace even a middle-school level Spanish test with just a dictionary (sub Spanish with some other language if you happen to know Spanish).

It was a figure of speech. But there is nothing superintelligent about acing Spanish tests. Give me a Riemann hypothesis.

Let's define "zeta" as a mathematical function ζ(s) which takes a statement "s" as input, where s is a statement of a breakthrough in LLM capabilities achieved relative to the current date and time and ζ(s) is the probability that a given AI skeptic will honestly recognize "s" as a breakthrough,

then our Riemann-Goalpost hypothesis is that ζ has zeros for every "s" which is a negative integer (every breakthrough that happened in the past is null in value) and only has positive values where s is positive.

We can conclude from the above that given a far enough date in the future, any given breakthrough can be spectacular, but once achieved, will be derided as trivial.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#497

Post by idonotknowwhy »

qingcharles wrote: post #79
simonw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi-modal audio is great. I talk to ChatGPT when I'm cooking or walking the dog. For images I use it for things like helping draft initial alt text for images, extracting tables from screenshots, translating photos of signs in languages I don't speak - and then really fun stuff like "invent a recipe to recreate this plate of food" or "my CSS renders like this, what should I change?" or "How do you think I turn on t…

Multi-modal was the absolute game-changer. Just last night I was digging around in my basement, pulling apart my furnace, showing pics of the inside of it, having GPT explain how it works and what I needed to do to fix it.

Oh right, yeah I've done things like this (phone calls to ChatGPT) or the openwebui Whisper -> LLM -> TTS setup. I thought there might be something more than this by now

Re: The Generative AI Con

#498

Post by bccdee »

automatic6131 wrote: post #97
bccdee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh they'd have been right. Cars are expensive to buy and to maintain. They are difficult to operate—people die every day. They do smell bad, and the particulate matter they emit is extremely bad for you. And they are slow: Traffic is an unsolvable problem in urban centres. Redesigning our cities around cars was one of the big mistakes of the 20th century.

>Redesigning our cities around cars was one of the big mistakes of the 20th century. Cities have been designed around Carriages for millenia. You can go and walk in Pompeii and observe pavements for pedestrians, roads for wheeled carriages with crossing spots of elevated stones for pedestrians. It turns out that cities require a lot of goods to be moved through - more than a pedestrian can carry, and over inclines th…

> The reason why cities are designed around cars is that cars were designed to fit in contemporary cities and they co-evolved over the 20th century

No, the switch to car-centric infrastructure was a deliberate policy choice lobbied for by the automotive industry. [1] We ripped up a lot of good transit to lay down roads this wide and fast.

[1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90781961/how-automakers-insidiou...

> It turns out that cities require a lot of goods to be moved through - more than a pedestrian can carry, and over inclines that human muscle power doesn't like.

Hence the utility of public transit, which kills substantially fewer people and is much cheaper. Though goods are mostly moved with trucks, and trucks aren't my concern. Urban congestion isn't caused by 18-wheelers.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#499

Post by bccdee »

Ancapistani wrote: post #43
bccdee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh they'd have been right. Cars are expensive to buy and to maintain. They are difficult to operate—people die every day. They do smell bad, and the particulate matter they emit is extremely bad for you. And they are slow: Traffic is an unsolvable problem in urban centres. Redesigning our cities around cars was one of the big mistakes of the 20th century.

And yet, they’re better than what they replaced. Horses weren’t cheap when they were a primary mode of transportation. Lots of people have died riding, driving, and breaking horses. They definitely smell bad, and their “particulate matter” was so bad that houses had to be set back and elevated from the street. Cities designed around cars are far superior to cities designed around horses.

Cars replaced streetcars, not horses. Few people in big cities were getting on horseback to commute to work in the morning in the early 20th century. People generally walked or took the streetcar.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#500

Post by bccdee »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #33
bccdee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh they'd have been right. Cars are expensive to buy and to maintain. They are difficult to operate—people die every day. They do smell bad, and the particulate matter they emit is extremely bad for you. And they are slow: Traffic is an unsolvable problem in urban centres. Redesigning our cities around cars was one of the big mistakes of the 20th century.

It's our loss that you weren't around to set everyone straight, I'm sure.

Definitely. Me or anyone else from the future with a century's worth of hindsight.
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