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

fokus.cool

61–70 of 808 posts

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

#61

Everytime I read one of these "I don't use AI" posts, the content is either "my code is handcrafted in a mountain spring and blessed by the universe itself, so no AI can match it", or "everything different from what I do is technofascism or ". Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been; and sometimes code is just code, and AI is just a tool. What am I missing?

There's a lot of overlap between "AI is evil megacapitalism" and "AI is ineffective", and I never understood the latter, but I am increasingly arriving to the understanding that the latter claim isn't real, it's just a soldier in the war being fought over the former.

Ineffective at what? Writing good code, or producing any sort of valuable insight? Yes, it's ineffective. Writing unmaintainable slop at line rate? Or writing internet-filling spam, or propagating their owners' points of view? Very effective.

I just think the things they are effective at are a net negative for most of us.

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

#62
post #3
post #2

> AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence. Exactly. You can see that with the proliferation of chickenized reverse centaurs[1] in all kinds of jobs. Getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop is the aim now that bosses/stakeholders have seen the light. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenize...

Now apply that thinking to computers. Or levers. I've seen the argument that computers let us prop up and even scale governmental systems that would have long since collapsed under their own weight if they’d remained manual more than once. I'm not sure I buy it, but computation undoubtedly shapes society. The author does seem quite keen on computers, but they've been "getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop"…

It’s a good thing that there’s centuries of philosophy on that subject and the general consensus is that no, tools are not “neutral” and do shape the systems they interact with, sometimes against the will of those wielding these tools.

See the nuclear bomb for an example.

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

#63

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm not paid enough to clean up shit after an AI. Behind an intern or junior? Sure, I enjoy that because I can tell them how shit works, where they went off the rails, and I can be sure they will not repeat that mistake and be better programmers afterwards. But an AI? Oh good luck with that and good luck dealing with the "updates" that get forced upon you. Fu…

> I'm not paid enough to clean up shit after an AI.

I enjoy making things work better. I'm lucky in that, because there's always been more brownfield work than greenfield work. I think of it as being an editor, not an author.

Hacking into vibe code with a machete is kinda fun.

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

#64
post #22

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun) You do realise your position of luck is not normal, right? This is not how your average Techie 2025 is.

Every good 'techie' around me has it good.

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

#65
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s been over 1 million people laid off in tech in the past 4 years https://www.trueup.io/layoffs

Again, sucks to be in the US as a programmer today maybe, but this isn't true elsewhere in the world, and especially not if you already have at least some experience.

Definitely true in western Europe, and finding a job is extremely hard for the vast majority of non expert devs.

Of course if you're in south eastern europe or in south asia where all the jobs are being offshored you're having the time of your life.

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

#66
post #23

And then there is the moderate position: Don't be the person refusing the use a calculator / PC / mobile phone / AI. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks. And carry on with your life.

If a calculator gives me 5 when I do 2+2, I throw it away.

If a PC crashes when I uses more than 20% of its soldered memory, i throw it away.

If a mobile phone refuses to connect to a cellular tower, I get another one.

What I want from my tools is reliability. Which is a spectrum, but LLMs are very much on the lower end.

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

#67
post #56

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun) In my Big Tech job, I sometimes forget that some people can really enjoy what they do. It seems like you're in a fortunate position of both high pay and high enjoyment. Congratulations! Out of curiosity, what do you work on?

Right now I'm doing consulting for two companies, maybe a couple of hours per week, mostly having downtime and trying to expand on my machine learning knowledge.

But in general, every job I've had has been "high pay and high enjoyment" even when I initially had "shit pay" compared to other programmers, and the product wasn't really fun, I was still programming, an activity I still love.

Compare this to the jobs I did before, where the physical toll makes it impossible to do anything after work as you're exhausted, and even if I got paid more than my first programming job, that your body is literally unable to move once you get home, makes the pay matter less and feel less.

But for a programmer, you can literally sit still all day, have some meetings in a warm office, talk with some people, type some things into a document, sit and think for a while, and in the end of the month you get a paycheck.

If you never worked in another profession, I think you ("The Programmer") don't realize how lucky you are compared to the rest of the world.

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

#68
post #25

Everytime I read one of these "I don't use AI" posts, the content is either "my code is handcrafted in a mountain spring and blessed by the universe itself, so no AI can match it", or "everything different from what I do is technofascism or ". Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been; and sometimes code is just code, and AI is just a tool. What am I missing?

Not much. Even the argument that AI is another tool to strip people of power is not that great. It's possible to use AI chatbots against the system of power, to help detect and point out manipulation, or lack of nuance in arguments, or political texts. To help decipher legalese in contracts, or point out problematic passages in terms of use. To help with interactions with the sate, even non-trivial ones like FOI requ…

Yes, the black box that has been RLHF'd in god knows what way is surely going to help you gain power, and not its owners...

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

#69
post #3
post #2

> AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence. Exactly. You can see that with the proliferation of chickenized reverse centaurs[1] in all kinds of jobs. Getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop is the aim now that bosses/stakeholders have seen the light. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenize...

Now apply that thinking to computers. Or levers. I've seen the argument that computers let us prop up and even scale governmental systems that would have long since collapsed under their own weight if they’d remained manual more than once. I'm not sure I buy it, but computation undoubtedly shapes society. The author does seem quite keen on computers, but they've been "getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop"…

Tools are not value neutral in any way.

In my third world country, motorbikes, scooters, etc have exploded in popularity and use in the past decade. Many people riding these things have made the roads much more dangerous for all, but particularly for them. They keep dying by the hundreds per month, not only just due to the fact that they choose to ride them at all, but how they ride them: on busy high speed highways, weaving between lanes all the time, swerving in front of speeding cars, with barely any protective equipment whatsoever. A car crash is frequently very survivable; motorcycle crash, not so much. Even if you survive the initial collision, the probability of another vehicle running you over is very high on a busy highway.

On would think, given the clear evidence for how dangerous these things are, why do people (1) ride them at all on the highway, and (2) in such a dangerous manner? One might excuse (1) by recognizing that many are poor and can't buy a car, and the motorbikes represent economic possibility: for use in courier business, of being able to work much further from home, etc.

But here is the thing about (2), A motorbike wants to be ridden that way. No matter how well the rider recognizes the danger, there is only so much time can pass before the sheer expediency of riding that way overrides any sense of due caution. Where it would be safer to stop or keep to a fixed lane without any sudden movements, the rider thinks of the inconvenience of stopping, does a quick mental comparison it to the (in their minds) the minuscule additional risk, and carries on. Stopping or keeping to a proper lane in a car require far less discipline than doing that on a motorbike.

So this is what people mean when they say tech is not value neutral. The tech can theoretically be used in many ways. But some forms of use are so aligned with the form of the tech that in practice it shapes behavior.

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

#70
post #3
post #2

> AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence. Exactly. You can see that with the proliferation of chickenized reverse centaurs[1] in all kinds of jobs. Getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop is the aim now that bosses/stakeholders have seen the light. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenize...

Now apply that thinking to computers. Or levers. I've seen the argument that computers let us prop up and even scale governmental systems that would have long since collapsed under their own weight if they’d remained manual more than once. I'm not sure I buy it, but computation undoubtedly shapes society. The author does seem quite keen on computers, but they've been "getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop"…

> The author does seem quite keen on computers, but they've been "getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop" for decades. I think there might be some unexamined bias here.

Certainly it's biased. I'm not the author, but to me there's a huge difference between computer/software as a tool, designed and planned, with known deterministic behavior/functionality, then put in the hands of humans, vs automating agency. The former I see as a pretty straightforward expansion of humanity's long-standing relationship with tools, from simple sticks to hand axes to chainsaws. The sort of automation AI-hype seems focused on doesn't have a great parallel in history. We're talking about building a statistical system to replace the human wielding the tool, mostly so that companies don't have to worry about hiring employees. Even if the machine does a terrible job and most of humanity, former workers and current users, all suffer, the bet is that it will be worth the cost savings.

ML is very cool technology, and clearly one of the major frontiers of human progress. At this stage though, I wish the effort on the packaging side was being spent on wrapping the technology in the form of reliable capabilities for humans to call on. Stuff like OCR at the OS level or "separate tracks" buttons in audio editors. The market has decided instead that the majority of our collective effort should go towards automated liability-sinks and replacing jobs with automation that doesn't work reliably.

And the end state doesn't even make sense. If all this capital investment does achieve breakthroughs and creat true AGI, do investors really think they'll see returns? They'll have destroyed the entire concept of an economy. The only way to leverage power at that point would be to try to exercise control over a robot army or something similarly sci-fi and ridiculous.

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