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I don't care how well your "AI" works

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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#491

Post by yosefk »

"AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence."

I still can barely believe a human being could write this, though we have all read this sort of sentence countless times. Which "structure of power and violence" replicated itself into the brains of people, making them think like this? Everything "exists to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence" with these people, and they will not rest until there's anything left to attack and destroy

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#492

Post by idiotsecant »

pixl97 wrote: post #483
idiotsecant wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is that the hacker ethos involved ... Fewer people being excited about programming? I don't think we experienced this on the same planet. Web 1.0 was full of weirdos doing cool weird stuff for the pure joy of discovery. That's the ethos we need back, and it's not incompatible with AI. The wrong turn we took was letting business overtake joy. That's a decision we can undo today by opting out of that whole e…

> That's a decision we can undo today by opting out of that whole ecosystem. Ah yes, we'll also skip out on eating too.

There's a mountain of software work you can do that doesn't involve participating in this rat race. There's nothing that says you need to make 500k and live in silicon valley. It's possible to be perfectly happy working integrating industrial control systems in a sleepy mountain town where cost of living is practically nothing. I am well qualified to make that statement.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#493

Post by kyle-rb »

easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

People assume programmers have the same motivations as luddites but "smashing the autolooms" presumably requires firebombing a whole bunch of datacenters, whereas it's pretty easy to download and run an open-source Chinese autoloom.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#494

Post by thewebguyd »

m000 wrote: post #433
easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

I think you're missing that a lot of what we call "learning" would be categorized as "busy work" after the fact. If we replace this "busy work" with AI, we are becoming collectively more stupid. Which may be a goal on itself for our AI overlords. As mr Miyagi said: "Wax on. Wax off." This may turn out very profitable for the pre-AI generations, as the junior to senior pipeline won't churn seniors at the same rate. Bu…

> If we replace this "busy work" with AI, we are becoming collectively more stupid.

I've seen this same thing said about Google. "If you outsource your memory to Google searching instead, you won't be able to do anything without and you'll become dumber."

Maybe that did happen, but it didn't seem to result in any meaningful change on the whole. Instead, I got to waste less time memorizing things, or spending time leafing through thousand page reference manuals, to find something.

We've been outsourcing parts of our brains to computers for decades now. That's what got me interested and curious about computers when I got my first machine as a kid (this was back in the late 90s/early 00s). "How can I automate as much of the boring stuff as possible to free myself up for more interesting things."

LLMs are the next evolution of that to an extent, but I also think they do come with some harms and that we haven't really figured out best practices yet. But, I can't help but be excited at the prospect of being able to outsource even more to a computer.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#495

Post by MrDarcy »

terminalbraid wrote: post #444
MrDarcy wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a hacker and I’d show respect to that latter person if they did the subcontracting and reviewed their craft well.

But you wouldn't call them a craftsperson because they didn't do any craft other than "be a manager". Reviewing work is not on the same plane as actually creating something.

I honestly don’t understand why you’re presuming to tell me what I think.

I consider myself a craftsman. I craft tools. I also am a manager. I also am a consultant. I am both a subcontractor and I subcontract out.

Above all else I’m a hacker.

I also use LLM’s daily and rather enjoy incorporating this new technology into what I consider my craft.

Please stop arrogantly presuming you know what is best for me to think and feel about all of this.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#496

Post by JustExAWS »

twosdai wrote: post #457
JustExAWS wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been a “software engineer” or closely adjacent for 30 years. During that time, I’ve worked for small and medium “lifestyle companies”, startups, boring Big Enterprise, $BigTech and over the past 5 years (including my time at $BigTech) worked as a customer facing cloud consultant where I’ve seen every type of organization imaginable and how they work. No one ever gave a rip about “craftsmanship”. They hire you fo…

I really agree with your point. I think that this forum being hackernews and all though lends itself to a slightly different kind of tech person. Who really values for themselves and their team, the art of getting stuck in with a deeply technical problem and being able to overcome it.

You really think that people at BigTech are doing it for the “enjoyment” and not for the $250K+ they are making 3 years out of college? From my n=1 experience, they are doing it for the pay + RSUs.

If you see what it takes to get ahead in large corporations, it’s not about those who are “passionate”, it’s about people who know how to play the game.

If you look at the dumb AI companies that YC is funding, those “entrepreneurs” aren’t doing 996 because they enjoy it. They are looking for the big exit.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#497

Post by flatline »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #401
quantummagic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. Mostly I agree with you. But there's a large group of people who are way too contemptuous of craftsmen using AI. We need to push back against this arrogant attitude. Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw.

That's because there's nothing "craftsman" about using AI to do stuff for you. Someone who uses AI to write their programs isn't the equivalent of a carpenter using a table saw, they are the equivalent of a carpenter who subcontracts the piece out to someone else. And we wouldn't show respect to the latter person either.

Almost every bit of work I've hired people to do has been through an intermediary of some sort. Usually one with "contractor" or "engineer" as a title. They are the ones who can organize others, have connections, understand talent, plan and keep schedules, recognize quality, and can identify and troubleshoot problems. They may also be craftsmen, or have once been, but the work is not necessarily their craft. If you want anything project-scoped, you have a team, there is someone in a leadership role (even if informally), someone handling the money, etc. Craftsmanship may or may not happen within that framework, they are somewhat orthogonal concerns, and I don't see any reason to disrespect the people that make room for it to happen.

Of course you can also get useless intermediaries, which may be more akin to vibe coding. Not entirely without merit, but the human in the loop is providing questionable value. I think this is the exception rather than the norm.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#499

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

Well there's more than just one hacker circle. That was never really the case and it's less and less the case as the earth's technologically-inclined population increases.

Culture is emergent. The more you try to define it, the less it becomes culture and the more it becomes a cult. Instead of focusing on culture I prefer to focus on values. I value craftsmanship, so I'm inclined to appreciate normal coding more than AI-assisted coding, for sure. But there's also a craftsmanship to gluing a bunch of AI technologies together and observing some fantastic output. To willfully ignore that is silly.

The OP's rant comes across as a wistful pining for the days of yore, pinning its demise on capitalists and fascists, as if they had this AI thing planned all along. Focusing on boogeymen isn't going to solve anything. You also can't reverse time by demanding compliance with your values or forming a union. AI is here to stay and we're going to have to figure out how to live with it, like it or not.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#500

Post by rozap »

andai wrote: post #447
cool_dude85 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw. Some tools are table saws, and some tools are subcontracting work out to lowest cost bidders to do a crap job. Which of the two is AI?

I've been programming for 20 years and GPT-4 (the one from early 2023) does it better than me. I'm the guy other programmers I know ask for advice. I think your metaphor might be a little uncharitable :) For straightforward stuff, they can handle it. For stuff that isn't straightforward, they've been trained on pattern matching some nontrivial subset of all human writing. So chances are they'll say, "oh, in this situ…

Now tell the AI to distill a bunch of user goals into a living system which has to evolve over time, integrate with other systems, etc etc. And deliver and support that system

I use Claude code every day and it is a slam dunk for situations like the one above, fiddly UIs and the like. Seriously , some of the best money I spend. But it is not good at more abstract stuff. Still a massive time saver for me and does effectively do a lot of work that would have gotten farmed out to junior engineers.

Maybe this will change in a few years and I'll have to become a potato farmer. I'm not going to get into predictions. But to act like it can do what an engineer with 20 years of experience can do means the AI brain worm got you or it says something about your abilities.

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