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AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

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Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#51

Post by averageRoyalty »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #17
donatj wrote: post #9

My friends job of late has basically become reviewing AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating that mostly seems to work and proving why it's not production-ready. Last week he was telling me about a PR he'd received. It should have been a simple additional CRUD endpoint, but instead it was a 2,000+ loc rats nest adding hooks that manually manipulated their cache system to make it appear to be working w…

The nephew has no programming knowledge. He wants to build a website that will turn him into a bazillionaire. He asks AI how to solve problem X. AI provides direction, but he doesn't quite know how to ask the right questions. Still, the AI manages to give him a 70% solution. He will go to his grave before he learns enough programming to do the remaining 30% himself, or, understand the first 70%. Delegating to AI isn'…

Who is "the nephew"?

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#52

Post by vkou »

romaniv wrote: post #46

We call these workers “pilots,” as opposed to “passengers.” Pilots use gen AI 75% more often at work than passengers, and 95% more often outside of work. Identify a real issue with the technology, then shift the blame to a made-up group of people who (supposedly) aren't trying hard enough to embrace the technology. Embody a pilot mindset, with high agency and optimism Thanks for the career advice.

A pilot has ultimate authority of how a plane is flown, because it's their ass in the fire if the plane can't land.

If you're a low-level office drone, you are not a pilot.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#53

Post by nphardon »

The ai use mandates are odd. My guess is that the c-level execs have very little practical technical skills at this point, probably haven't written a line of code in 20 years. And they believe ALL the ai hype. They think LLM's can do anything, so any employees not using them are clearly wasting time.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#54

Post by Zanfa »

fzeroracer wrote: post #31
oblio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/26/reading-code-is-li... https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... (read the bold text in the middle of the article) These articles are 25 years old.

Sadly, I've seen multiple well-known developers here on HN argue that reading code in fact isn't hard and that it's easy to review AI-generated code. I think fundamentally what AI-generated code is doing is exposing the cracks in many, many engineers across the board that either don't care about code quality or are completely unable to step back and evaluate their own process to see if what they're doing is good or n…

Reviewing code is basically applying the Chesterton’s fence principle to everything. With AI code there’s typically so much incidental noise that trying to identify intention is a challenge.

But then again I’ve found a lot of people are not bothered by overly convoluted code that is the equivalent of using a hammer for screws either…

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#55

Post by legostormtroopr »

zarmin wrote: post #33
givemeethekeys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nephew has no programming knowledge. He wants to build a website that will turn him into a bazillionaire. He asks AI how to solve problem X. AI provides direction, but he doesn't quite know how to ask the right questions. Still, the AI manages to give him a 70% solution. He will go to his grave before he learns enough programming to do the remaining 30% himself, or, understand the first 70%. Delegating to AI isn'…

In the early aughts, I was so adept at navigating my town because I delivered pizza. I could draw a map from memory. My directional skills were A+. Once GPS became ubiquitous, I started relying on it, and over about a decade, my navigational skills degraded to the point of embarrassment. I've lived in the same major city now for 5 years and I still need a GPS to go everywhere. This is happening to many people now, wh…

I’m going to defend your dad here.

AI slop at work is an absolute waste of time and effort.

But your dad is trying to write his story, probably because he wants to leave something behind so he’s not forgotten. It might be cliche-riddled but AI is helping him write his experiences in a form he’s happy with and it’s still his story even if he got help.

He’s also probably only writing it for an audience of one - you. So don’t shit on it, read it. Or you might regret it.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#57

Post by handfuloflight »

varjag wrote: post #29

If you were around for the heyday of Markov chain email and Usenet spam this whole thing is familiar. Sure AI slop generation is not directly comparable to Markov process and generated texts are infinitely smoother yet it has similar mental signature. I believe this similarity puts me squarely in the offended 22%.

[flagged]

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#58

Post by arwhatever »

nphardon wrote: post #53

The ai use mandates are odd. My guess is that the c-level execs have very little practical technical skills at this point, probably haven't written a line of code in 20 years. And they believe ALL the ai hype. They think LLM's can do anything, so any employees not using them are clearly wasting time.

The AI usage mandates are odd because why do the execs doubt that the workers try on their own to get the maximum utility out of the AI tools?

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#59

Post by varjag »

handfuloflight wrote: post #57
varjag wrote: post #29

If you were around for the heyday of Markov chain email and Usenet spam this whole thing is familiar. Sure AI slop generation is not directly comparable to Markov process and generated texts are infinitely smoother yet it has similar mental signature. I believe this similarity puts me squarely in the offended 22%.

[flagged]

See mostly on the subject but just slightly veering off context texts like this is why it's irritating. Arguing something not entirely relevant yet short of complete strawman and debating the tangents that were never brought up while never adding anything of substance.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#60

Post by lkey »

romaniv wrote: post #46

We call these workers “pilots,” as opposed to “passengers.” Pilots use gen AI 75% more often at work than passengers, and 95% more often outside of work. Identify a real issue with the technology, then shift the blame to a made-up group of people who (supposedly) aren't trying hard enough to embrace the technology. Embody a pilot mindset, with high agency and optimism Thanks for the career advice.

Ridiculous, I have it on good authority that embracing the 'hacker ethos' by becoming a 'coding ninja' with a 'wizard' mindset will propel you to next-level synergisms within transformative paradigms like AI and blockchain.
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