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My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

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Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#621

Post by underdeserver »

cesarb wrote: post #312

This article does not touch on the thing which worries me the most with respect to LLMs: the dependence . Unless you can run the LLM locally, on a computer you own, you are now completely dependent on a remote centralized system to do your work. Whoever controls that system can arbitrarily raise the prices, subtly manipulate the outputs, store and do anything they want with the inputs, or even suddenly cease to opera…

You can also make this argument to varying degrees about your internet connection, cloud provider, OS vendor, etc.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#622

Post by kkylin »

I found this comment especially interesting: "The code in an agent that actually “does stuff” with code is not, itself, AI. This should reassure you. It’s surprisingly simple systems code, wired to ground truth about programming in the same way a Makefile is. You could write an effective coding agent in a weekend. Its strengths would have more to do with how you think about and structure builds and linting and test harnesses than with how advanced o3 or Sonnet have become."

I haven't used coding agents. Can someone who has (or knows about these things) elaborate, or point me to a good resource? Thanks!

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#623

Post by absoluteunit1 »

habosa wrote: post #558

I’m an AI skeptic. I’m probably wrong. This article makes me feel kinda wrong. But I desperately want to be right. Why? Because if I’m not right then I am convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil. It will power scams on an unimaginable scale. It will destabilize labor at a speed that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a gentle breeze. It will concentrate immense power and wealth in the hands of pe…

> I am convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil.

In so many ways too. I cannot fathom the scale of mass data collection and surveillance.

Multiple people I’ve recently spoken with (very smart and educated people) consistently are using it to discuss some of the most intimate things about their life.

Things that no existing social media platforms or any other tools are simply capable of that.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#624

Post by r0s »

Weird to claim the llm does all the boring learning and boilerplate for you as a selling point, but then also insist we still need to responsibly read all the output, and if you can't understand it's a "skill issue".

Also the emphasis on greenfield projects? Starting is by FAR the easiest part. That's not impressive to me. When do we get to code greenfield for important systems? Reminds me of the equally absurd example of language choice. You think you get to choose? What?

Imagine all the code these agents are going to pump out that can never be reviewed in a reasonable time frame. The noise generated at the whim of bike-shedding vibe coders is going to drown all the senior reviewers soon enough. I'll call that Cowboy Coders on Steroids. Anyone with skills will be buried in reviews, won't have time for anything else, and I predict stricter code gen policies to compensate.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#625

Post by bherms »

jhancock wrote: post #511

I'm not a skeptic, but I keep LLMs on a short leash. This is a thoughtful article. Thanks `tptacek My LLM use is: 1 - tedious stuff; web pages interacting with domain back end. 2 - domain discovery. In a recent adventure, I used Claude 4 to tease out parameters in a large graph schema. This is a combination of tedium and domain discovery (it's not my graph and I'm not a domain expert). In the first day, Claude uncove…

Yeah I'm impressed with its ability to do stuff, but not quite with its results. We have been working on more AI assistance adoption so I asked it to do some decently complex things with json/yml schema definitions and validations (outside the typical json schema we wanted things like conditional validation, etc)... It wrote a LOT of code and took a long time, and kept telling me it would work, and it didn't. I finally stepped in and eliminated roughly 75% of the code in about 10 minutes and got it working. It's great at tedious stuff, but outside of that, I'm skeptical.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#626

Post by lechatonnoir »

jhancock wrote: post #511

I'm not a skeptic, but I keep LLMs on a short leash. This is a thoughtful article. Thanks `tptacek My LLM use is: 1 - tedious stuff; web pages interacting with domain back end. 2 - domain discovery. In a recent adventure, I used Claude 4 to tease out parameters in a large graph schema. This is a combination of tedium and domain discovery (it's not my graph and I'm not a domain expert). In the first day, Claude uncove…

One question is whether, even after all that backpedaling, you feel you could've achieved the same or a similar result in those five days. My findings have been that it's a net plus for productivity, but I'm a bit less sure whether I prefer the way work feels when a lot of it is just going back and cleaning up after the growth. (Of course, that sounds like a familiar statement for a lot of engineers before LLMs, too.)

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#627

Post by pier25 »

I'm mostly skeptical about AI capabilities but I also think it will never be a profitable business. Let's not forget AI companies need to recoup a trillion dollars (so far) just to break even [1].

VCs are already doubting if the billions invested into data centers are going to generate a profit [1 and 2].

AI companies will need to generate profits at some point. Would people still be optimistic about Claude etc if they had to pay say $500 per month to use it given its current capabilities? Probably not.

So far the only company generating real profits out of AI is Nvidia.

[1] https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/will-the-1-tr...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/business/ai-data-centers-...

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#628

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

r0s wrote: post #624

Weird to claim the llm does all the boring learning and boilerplate for you as a selling point, but then also insist we still need to responsibly read all the output, and if you can't understand it's a "skill issue". Also the emphasis on greenfield projects? Starting is by FAR the easiest part. That's not impressive to me. When do we get to code greenfield for important systems? Reminds me of the equally absurd examp…

Yeah, I remember five years ago (before being sold this latest VC crock of bull) when reviewing shitty thoughtless code was the tedious and soul-sucking part of programming.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#629

Post by layla5alive »

r0s wrote: post #624

Weird to claim the llm does all the boring learning and boilerplate for you as a selling point, but then also insist we still need to responsibly read all the output, and if you can't understand it's a "skill issue". Also the emphasis on greenfield projects? Starting is by FAR the easiest part. That's not impressive to me. When do we get to code greenfield for important systems? Reminds me of the equally absurd examp…

And (rigorously) reviewing code is easily 10x harder than writing it.

But this won't stop it from happening.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#630

Post by cheevly »

ken47 wrote: post #600

Let’s not conflate LLM’s with AI. LLM’s are a kind of AI that can be a software engineer’s assistant, at best. But the degree of hype is undermining belief in AI among many professionals who the hypesters claim are going to be replaced. No, this iteration is not going to replace doctors or engineers. But the degree to which the hype train wants to do so is alarming.

I'm curious what walls you've hit? I literally can't find the boundaries of what is possible to achieve.
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