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AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

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Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#521

Post by skydhash »

signatoremo wrote: post #392
jacquesm wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, more people will be sharing stuff. And none of it will have long term staying power. Or do you honestly believe that a project like GCC or Linux would have been created and maintained over as long as they have been by the use of AI tools in the hands of noobs? Technical ability is an absolute requirement for the production of quality work. If the signal drowns in the noise then we are much worse off than where w…

I’m sure you know the majority of GCC and Linux contributors aren’t volunteers, but employees who are paid to contribute. I’m struggling to name a popular project that it isn’t the case. Can you? If AI is powerful enough to flood open source projects with low quality code, it will be powerful enough to be used as gatekeeper. Major players who benefit from OSS, says Google, will make sure of that. We don’t know how it…

> I’m struggling to name a popular project that it isn’t the case. Can you?

There’s emacs, vim, and popular extensions of the two. OpenBSD, lots of distros (some do develop their own software), SDL,…

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#522

Post by dogleash »

hintymad wrote: post #144
yourapostasy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as the field evolves, the phoning home telemetry of closed models creates a centralized intelligence monopoly. If open source atrophies, we lose the public square of architectural and design reasoning, the decision graph that is often just as important as the code. The labs won't just pick up new patterns; they will define them, effectively becoming the high priests of a new closed-loop ecosystem. However, the r…

> It might make the technology itself hit a ceiling because it's no longer being fed novel human problem-solving at scale. My read of the recent discussion is that people assume that the work of far fewer number of elites will define the patterns for the future. For instance, implementation of low-level networking code can be the combination of patterns of zeromq. The underlying assumption is that most people don't k…

>My read of the recent discussion is that people assume that the work of far fewer number of elites will define the patterns for the future.

Even if we assume that's true, what will prevent atrophy of the skillset among the elites with such a small pool of practitioners?

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#523

Post by mattmanser »

tovej wrote: post #258
entrox wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it bizarre? It is inevitable. After all, AI has not ruined creative professions, it merely disrupted and transformed them. And yes, I fully understand my whole comment here being snarky, but please bear with me. Let's rewind 4 years to this HN article titled "The AI Art Apocalypse": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32486133 and read some of the comments. > Actually all progress will definitely will have a…

The premise of those comments, just like the premise in this thread, is ridiculous and fantastical. The only way generative AI has changed the creative arts is that it's made it easier to produce low quality slop. I would not call that a true transformation. I'd call that saving costs at the expense of quality. The same is true of software. The difference is, unlike art, quality in software has very clear safety and…

I still can't get over how bad the coca cola AI generated Xmas advert was. That someone approved it for release too boggles my mind.

And, bizarrely, I've really not bought any since. It's diminished my desire for the brand.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#524

Post by mattmanser »

stephencoyner wrote: post #159
hintymad wrote: post #65

In the latest interview with Claude Code's author: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lennys-podcast-product... , Boris said that writing code is a solved problem. This brings me to a hypothetical question: what if engineers stop contributing to open source, in which case would AI still be powerful enough to learn the knowledge of software development in the future? Or is the field of computer science plateaued to…

I saw Boris give a live demo today. He had a swarm of Claude agents one shot the most upvoted open issue on Excalidraw while he explained Claude code for about 20 minutes. No lines of code written by him at all. The agent used Claude for chrome to test the fix in front of us all and it worked. I think he may be right or close to it.

Did he pick Excalidraw as the project to work on, or did the audience?

It's easy to be conned if you're not looking for the sleight of hand. You need to start channelling your inner Randi whenever AI demos are done, there's a lot of money at stake and a lot of money to prep a polished show.

To be honest, even if the audience "picked" that project, it could have been a plant shouting out the project.

I'm not saying they prepped the answer, I'm saying they prepped picking a project it could definitely work on. An AI solvable problem.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#525

Post by oblio »

notahacker wrote: post #266
0xpgm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is such a thing as a distinct LLM writing style that is not just good structure. Anyone who's read more than five books can tell that. And the comment itself seems completely LLM generated.

That's not just false. It's the antithesis of true. It's not just using rhetorical patterns humans also use which are in some contexts considered good writing. Its overusing them like a high schooler learning the pattern for the first time — and massively overdoing the em dashes and mixing the metaphors

LOL :-))

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#526

Post by justinhj »

wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

AI frontier CEOs are the least reliable sources for what jobs AI will be able to replace.

They are running at valuations that may assume that and have no choice but to claim so. Sama and Dario are both wildly hyperbolic.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#527

Post by Kon5ole »

kfichter wrote: post #511
Kon5ole wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First is the replacement of white-collar labor, then blue-collar labor once robotics is solved. On the road to AGI, your employment, and the ability to feed your family, is a minor nuisance. My attempt to talk you out of it: If nobody has a job then nobody can pay to make the robot and AI companies rich.

Who needs the money when you have an autonomous system to produce all the energy and resources you need? These systems simply do not need the construct of money as we know it at a certain point.

The star trek society is is a remote possibility here. One can hope.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#528

Post by georgeven »

aerhardt wrote: post #493
wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

Dario admitted in the same interview that he's not sure whether current AI techniques will be able to perform well in non-verifiable domains, like "writing a novel or planning an expedition to Mars". I personally think that a lot jobs in the economy deal in non-verifiable or hard-to-verify outcomes, including a lot of tasks in SWE which Dario is so confident will be 100% automated in 2-3 years. So either a lot of tas…

he was not sure, but if i recall correctly, he put the probability at something like 90 percent of being able to do non verifiable tasks.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#529

Post by jrm4 »

wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

Sure, but this is why free software/open source is so important (and why we dodged a bullet due to "AI" being invented in a mostly open source world.)

I just think we'll all have to get comfy fighting fire with fire.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#530

Post by georgeven »

keiferski wrote: post #471
wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

Dwarkesh is a podcaster who benefits from hype, not a neutral observer. The more absurd and outlandish the claims, the more traffic and money he gets.

its probably not even a conscious decision from dwarkesh to be hyperbolic. pod casters who are hyperbolic are just simply watched more
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