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

Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 383 posts

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#71

Post by barnabee »

a_bonobo wrote: post #32

>* For years, despite functional evidence and scientific hints accumulating, certain AI researchers continued to claim LLMs were stochastic parrots: probabilistic machines that would: 1. NOT have any representation about the meaning of the prompt. 2. NOT have any representation about what they were going to say. In 2025 finally almost everybody stopped saying so. Man, Antirez and I walk in very different circles! I s…

I don’t think this is quite true.

I’ve seen them do fine on tasks that are clearly not in the training data, and it seems to me that they struggle when some particular type of task or solution or approach might be something they haven’t been exposed to, rather than the exact task.

In the context of the paragraph you quoted, that’s an important distinction.

It seems quite clear to me that they are getting at the meaning of the prompt and are able, at least somewhat, to generalise and connect aspects of their training to “plan” and output a meaningful response.

This certainly doesn’t seem all that deep (at times frustratingly shallow) and I can see how at first glance it might look like everything was just regurgitated training data, but my repeated experience (especially over the last ~6-9 months) is that there’s something more than that happening, which feels like whet Antirez was getting at.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#72

Post by nurettin »

ajoseps wrote: post #15
torlok wrote: post #12

This is a bunch of "I believe" and "I think" with no sources by a random internet person.

he’s not a “random internet person”, he created Redis. Despite that, I don’t know how authoritative of a figure he is with respect to AI research. He’s definitely a prolific programmer though.

To be fair, you may find equally capable random people in this thread, doesn't mean they speak with any kind of authority.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#73

Post by abricq »

danielfalbo wrote: post #70
abricq wrote: post #68

> * Programmers resistance to AI assisted programming has lowered considerably. Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway: now the return on the investment is acceptable for many more folks. Could not agree more. I myself started 2025 being very skeptical, and finished it very convinced about the usefulness of LLMs f…

> Are we going to be too many developers / software engineers ? What will happen for the rests of us? I propose that we should raise the bar for the quality of software now.

Yes, certainly agree. A few days ago here there was this blog claiming how formal verification would become widely more used with AI. The author claiming that AI will help us with the difficulty barrier to write formal proofs.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#74

Post by exitb »

andy99 wrote: post #53
piker wrote: post #45

> There are certain tasks, like improving a given program for speed, for instance, where in theory the model can continue to make progress with a very clear reward signal for a very long time. Super skeptical of this claim. Yes, if I have some toy poorly optimized python example or maybe a sorting algorithm in ASM, but this won’t work in any non-trivial case. My intuition is that the LLM will spin its wheels at a loc…

There was a discussion the other day where someone asked Claude to improve a code base 200x https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197930

That’s most definitely not the same thing, as „improving a codebase” is an open ended task with no reliable metrics the agent could work against.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#76

Post by rckt »

barnabee wrote: post #56
rckt wrote: post #36

> Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway Here we go again. Statements with the single source in the head of the speaker. And it’s also not true. The llms still produce bad/irrelevant code at such rate that you can spend more time prompting than doing things yourself. I’m tired of this overestimation of llms.

Even where they are not directly using LLMs to write the most critical or core code, nearly every skeptic I know has started using LLMs at very least to do things like write tests, build tools, write glue code, help to debug or refactor, etc. Your statement suffers not only from also coming only from your brain, with no evidence that you've actually tried to learn to use these tools, but it also goes against the weig…

I just want people making statements like the author to be more specific how exactly the llms are being used. Otherwise they contribute to this belief that llms are a magical tool that can do anything.

I am aware of simple routine tasks that LLMs can do. This doesn’t change anything about what I said.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#77

Post by rckt »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #41
rckt wrote: post #36

> Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway Here we go again. Statements with the single source in the head of the speaker. And it’s also not true. The llms still produce bad/irrelevant code at such rate that you can spend more time prompting than doing things yourself. I’m tired of this overestimation of llms.

But you have just repeated what you are complaining about.

Do you want me to spend time to come with a quality response to a lazy statement? It’s like fighting with windmills. I’m fine with having my say the way I did.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#78

Post by antihipocrat »

abricq wrote: post #68

> * Programmers resistance to AI assisted programming has lowered considerably. Even if LLMs make mistakes, the ability of LLMs to deliver useful code and hints improved to the point most skeptics started to use LLMs anyway: now the return on the investment is acceptable for many more folks. Could not agree more. I myself started 2025 being very skeptical, and finished it very convinced about the usefulness of LLMs f…

I like to think of it as adding new lanes to a highway. More will be delivered until it all jams up again.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#79

Post by bartread »

_rpxpx wrote: post #65
dhpe wrote: post #43

I have programmed 30K+ hours. Do LLMs make bad code: yes all the time (at the moment zero clue about good architecture). Are they still useful: yes, extremely so. The secret sauce is that you'd know exactly what to do without them.

OK, maybe. But how many programmers will know this in 10 years' time as use of LLMs is normalized? I like to hear what employers are saying already about recent graduates.

They’d have to be hiring recent graduates for you to hear that perspective.

And, as much as what I’ve just said is hyperbolically pessimistic, there is some truth to it.

In the UK a bunch of factors have coincided to put the brakes on hiring, especially smaller and mid-size businesses. AI is the obvious one that gets all the press (although how much it’s really to blame is open to question in my view), but the recent rise in employer AI contribution, and now (anecdotally) the employee rights bill have come together to make companies quite gunshy when it comes to hiring.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#80

Post by sibellavia »

feverzsj wrote: post #16

Seems they also want some AI money[0]. Guess, I'll keep using Valkey. [0] https://redis.io/redis-for-ai/

In any case, what would be the problem? The page you mentioned simply illustrates how the product can be used in a specific domain; it doesn't seem forced to me.
Post reply on HN