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Warranty Void If Regenerated

nearzero.software

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Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#51

Post by CamperBob2 »

helle253 wrote: post #34

that's funny, i know where this story is set (i grew up there) - or at least, the place Claude was basing things off of some inconsistencies that stuck out/i found interesting: - HWY 29 doesnt run through marshfield, its about 15 miles north. - not a lot of people grow cabbage in central wisconsin ;) - no corrugated sheet metal buildings like in the first image around there - i dont think theres a county road K near…

I think it serves even better as a metaphor for software engineering's future than as a forecast for the future of farming. As you suggest, farmers already had to make the "transition" over the course of the 20th century. A farmer from 1926 wouldn't recognize his counterpart today. They would have nothing to talk about. Software people, though, are still twentieth-century programmers at heart, who are just starting to feel their way through the Kubler-Ross process.

Really a great story, and to the extent it was AI-written, well... even greater.

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#53

Post by robot-wrangler »

jjmarr wrote: post #50
robot-wrangler wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this passes the sniff test only if you're not too familiar with this neighborhood of the training set. Not that the writing is bad but it's just derivative. I listen to stuff like "Lost Scifi" podcast almost daily for example, but there are many similar ones which are focused on reading classic stuff from the golden-age zines because it's all public domain. The premise/structure/flavor of TFA is an almost pit…

It is a pitch perfect interpretation and I assumed that's what OP was going for. Manna (2010) read very similarly.

Can't speak for them but FWIW it does not sound like OP is necessarily aware of the genre at all. They asked Claude to explain something via fiction, and then perhaps Claude made the "creative decision" based simply on the availability of the material.

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#54

Post by arcanemachiner »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #51
helle253 wrote: post #34

that's funny, i know where this story is set (i grew up there) - or at least, the place Claude was basing things off of some inconsistencies that stuck out/i found interesting: - HWY 29 doesnt run through marshfield, its about 15 miles north. - not a lot of people grow cabbage in central wisconsin ;) - no corrugated sheet metal buildings like in the first image around there - i dont think theres a county road K near…

I think it serves even better as a metaphor for software engineering's future than as a forecast for the future of farming. As you suggest, farmers already had to make the "transition" over the course of the 20th century. A farmer from 1926 wouldn't recognize his counterpart today. They would have nothing to talk about. Software people, though, are still twentieth-century programmers at heart, who are just starting t…

Kubler-Ross process -> "A model outlining emotional responses to terminal diagnosis or loss: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance"

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#55

Post by phyzix5761 »

Havoc wrote: post #36

This sort of article really needs at least a vague clue as to what it is about. It's a long article and from skimming I see chat of farming, software, GPS. I can't tell whether this is worth investing time to read if I can't even tell what it may be about

[dead]

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#56

Post by CamperBob2 »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #54
CamperBob2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it serves even better as a metaphor for software engineering's future than as a forecast for the future of farming. As you suggest, farmers already had to make the "transition" over the course of the 20th century. A farmer from 1926 wouldn't recognize his counterpart today. They would have nothing to talk about. Software people, though, are still twentieth-century programmers at heart, who are just starting t…

Kubler-Ross process -> "A model outlining emotional responses to terminal diagnosis or loss: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance"

Exactly. The stages don't always occur in order, or at all, but you can see the general progression play out any day, all day on here.

I'm happily surprised (frankly amazed TBH) that the submitter didn't get bawled out by people flagging the post and accusing him of posting slop.

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#57

Post by brianm »

jjmarr wrote: post #38

Your polishing work made a difference! The prose is like every other work of science fiction I've read. It's written like this is a dystopia but billing $180/45 minutes in rural low cost of living area sounds awesome. And the choreographer billing "more than a truck" for three weeks? The dream!

Huh, I got cottage core, not dystopia!

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#58

Post by nativeit »

> The milk pricing tool consumed the feed tool’s output as one of its cost inputs. The format change hadn’t broken the connection — the data still flowed — but it had caused the pricing tool to misparse one field, reading a per-head cost as a per-hundredweight cost, which made the feed expenses look much higher than they were, which made the margin calculations come out lower, which made the recommended prices drop. “You changed your feed tool,” Tom said.

“Yeah, I updated the silage ratios. What does that have to do with milk prices?”

“Everything.”

He showed Ethan the chain: feed tool regenerated → output format shifted → pricing tool misparsed → margins calculated wrong → prices dropped → contracts auto-negotiated at below-market rates. Five links, each one individually innocuous, collectively costing Ethan roughly $14,000.

Ethan looked ill.

--

I've re-read this a few times now, and can't work out how the interpreted price of feed going up and the interpreted margins going down results in a program setting lower prices on the resulting milk? I feel like this must have gotten reversed in the author's mind, since it's not like it's a typo, there are multiple references in the story for this cause and effect. Am I missing something?

[Edited for clarity]

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#59

Post by tomhow »

andai wrote: post #47

Did this story disappear then re-appear?

Yes, which is why some of the comments are from a day ago but the post is only a couple of hours old. We originally downranked it due to being AI-generated.

But on reflection and discussion with the author, we decided that enough HN users may find that it gratifies intellectual curiosity, because it's interesting to see how a human and an AI bot can collaborate to create writing like this.

We just asked the author to write an introduction to make it clear it's AI-generated and explain their process.

Re: Warranty Void If Regenerated

#60

Post by girvo »

robot-wrangler wrote: post #46
girvo wrote: post #41

I will say this is one of the few pieces of prose I've read that was AI generated that didn't immediately jump out as it (a couple of inconsistencies eventually grabbed me enough to come to the comments and see your post details which mention it - I'd clicked through from the HN homepage), so your polishing definitely worked! Quite a neat little story

I think this passes the sniff test only if you're not too familiar with this neighborhood of the training set. Not that the writing is bad but it's just derivative. I listen to stuff like "Lost Scifi" podcast almost daily for example, but there are many similar ones which are focused on reading classic stuff from the golden-age zines because it's all public domain. The premise/structure/flavor of TFA is an almost pit…

> I think this passes the sniff test only if you're not too familiar with this neighborhood of the training set

Which is totally fair, I'm honestly not! I haven't read much of that myself

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