Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 1001 posts

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#541

Post by prima-facie »

Programming is essentially automation. You tell the machine what to do character by character, and if you get it right, the machine will be able to correctly interpret your intention, transform it into a lower level code, and then execute it.

AI is also automation but the instructions are given in a higher level language. You still have to know how to automate it. You need to instruct the machine in sufficient detail, and if done correctly the machine will once again be able to interpret your intention, transform it to a lower level code, and execute it for you.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#542

Post by Madmallard »

lrvick wrote: post #422

As a security engineer that regularly architects and helps implement new defense tactics that no LLM has trained on, I choose not to use LLMs at all, like a cave man. Being differently trained and using different tools than almost everyone else I know in engineering my entire career has allowed me to find solutions and vulnerabilities others have missed time and time again. I exclusively use open source software I ca…

Yeah grinding the domain expertise is definitely the play if you have the resources to do so.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#543

Post by fabrice_d »

jstummbillig wrote: post #453
silcoon wrote: post #445

I perfectly agree with antirez about the importance of AI and the benefit for coders. In the last month we saw a big jump and we all are in the middle of the biggest technological revolution since the internet. He summarised the benefits, but omitted the rest. Why we don't have to be anti-AI? Why in his opinion is just "HYPE"? I didn't find any answer in his post. He doesn't analyse the cons of AI and explain why som…

There is no hard part. The anti-AI position has simply become trite. The idea is that agentic coding does not work. Today, it does work.

Some people are also opposed because of the negative externalities when building and running AI systems (environmental consequences, intellectual property theft), even if they understand that agentic coding "works". This is a valid position.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#544

Post by trinsic2 »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #37

> Whatever you believe about what the Right Thing should be, you can't control it by refusing what is happening right now. Skipping AI is not going to help you or your career. Think about it. Test these new tools, with care, with weeks of work, not in a five minutes test where you can just reinforce your own beliefs. This is the advice I've been giving my friends and coworkers as well for a while now. Forget the hype…

> Whatever you believe about what the Right Thing should be, you can't control it by refusing what is happening right now. Skipping AI is not going to help you or your career. Think about it. Test these new tools, with care, with weeks of work, not in a five minutes test where you can just reinforce your own beliefs.

You can refuse to support it on the grounds that its being used to harm people. That might not do anything but its still important to be on the right side of humanity.

I don't condemn the tech, but the tech depends on factors that are harming people and not supporting that part of it is an act of support for humanity.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#545

Post by wat10000 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #453
silcoon wrote: post #445

I perfectly agree with antirez about the importance of AI and the benefit for coders. In the last month we saw a big jump and we all are in the middle of the biggest technological revolution since the internet. He summarised the benefits, but omitted the rest. Why we don't have to be anti-AI? Why in his opinion is just "HYPE"? I didn't find any answer in his post. He doesn't analyse the cons of AI and explain why som…

There is no hard part. The anti-AI position has simply become trite. The idea is that agentic coding does not work. Today, it does work.

It works for some things, not everything.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#546

Post by dalyons »

simianwords wrote: post #398
threethirtytwo wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is not about whether programming is fun, elegant, creative, or personally fulfilling. It is about business value. Programming exists, at scale, because it produces economic value. That value translates into revenue, leverage, competitive advantage, and ultimately money. For decades, a large portion of that value could only be produced by human labor. Now, increasingly, it cannot be assumed that this will…

I wrote something similar earlier: This is because they have entrenched themselves in a comfortable position that they don’t want to give up. Most won’t admit this to be the actual reason. Think about it: you are a normal hands on self thought software developer. You grew up tinkering with Linux and a bit of hardware. You realise there’s good money to be made in a software career. You do it for 20-30 years; mostly th…

I agree, but is it bad to have this reaction? Upending people’s lives and destroying their careers is a reasonable thing to fear

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#547

Post by Madmallard »

prima-facie wrote: post #541

Programming is essentially automation. You tell the machine what to do character by character, and if you get it right, the machine will be able to correctly interpret your intention, transform it into a lower level code, and then execute it. AI is also automation but the instructions are given in a higher level language. You still have to know how to automate it. You need to instruct the machine in sufficient detail…

"sufficient detail, and if done correctly" -> the machine will once again be able to interpret your intention ...

This does not actually follow from the way LLMs work.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#548

Post by daxfohl »

The last 20 years has seen a brain drain from other engineering and science into software. My guess is we'll see that finally start to reverse. Which, I think is great! How much value can yet another CRUD app possibly add to the world anymore anyway?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#549

Post by PaulHoule »

falcor84 wrote: post #467
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.

> For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. I would argue that it's the same question as whether it's possible to get into a flow state when being the "navigator" in a pair-programming session. I feel you and agree that it's not quite the same flow state as typing the code yourself, but when a session with a human programmer or Claude Code is going well for me, I am definitely in something quite close…

I can say I feel that flow state sometimes when it all works but I certainly don't when it doesn't work.

The other day I was making changes to some CSS that I partially understood.

Without an LLM I would looked at the 50+ CSS spec documents and the 97% wrong answers on Stack Overflow and all the splogs and would have bumbled around and tried a lot of things and gotten it to work in the end and not really understood why and experienced a lot of stress.

As it was I had a conversation with Junie about "I observe ... why does it work this way?", "Should I do A or do B?", "What if I did C?" and came to understand the situation 100% and wrote a few lines of code by hand that did the right thing. After that I could have switched it to Code mode and said "Make it so!" but it was easy when I understood it. And the experience was not stressful at all.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#550

Post by ilaksh »

jfengel wrote: post #480
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.

I could imagine a world where LLM coding was fun. It would sound like "imagine a game, like Galaxians but using tractor trailers, and as a first person shooter." And it pumps out a draft and you say, "No, let's try it again with an army of bagpipers." In other words, getting to be the "ideas guy", but without sounding like a dipstick who can't do anything. I don't think we're anywhere near that point yet. Instead we'…

There are multiple self driving car companies that are fully autonomous and operating in several cities in the US and China. Waymo has been operating for many years.

There are full self driving systems that have been in operation with human driver oversight from multiple companies.

And the capabilities of the LLMs in regards to your specific examples were demonstrated below.

The inability of the public to perceive or accept the actual state of technology due to bias or cognitive issues is holding back society.

Post reply on HN