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Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

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Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#71

Post by aurareturn »

Santosh83 wrote: post #69
aurareturn wrote: post #56

From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…

He's mainly talking about environmental & social consequences now and in the future. He personally is beyond reach of such consequences given his seniority and age, so this speculative tangent is detracting from his main point, to put it charitably.

[flagged]

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#72

Post by nromiun »

Funny how so many people in this comment section are saying Rob Pike is just feeling insecure about AI. Rob Pike created UTF-8, Go, Plan-9 etc. On the other hand I am trying hard to remember anything famous created by any LLM. Any famous tech product at all.

It is always the eternal tomorrow with AI.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#73

Post by tombert »

aurareturn wrote: post #56

From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…

I'm not entirely convinced it's going to lead to programmers losing the power to command high salaries. Now that nearly anyone can generate thousands upon thousands of lines of mediocre-to-bad code, they will likely be the doing exactly that without really being able to understand what they're doing and as such there will always be the need for humans who can actually read and actually understand code when a billion unforeseen consequences pop up from deploying code without oversight.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#75

Post by mmooss »

flyinglizard wrote: post #58
strangescript wrote: post #28

[flagged]

When I read your comment, I was “trained” on it too. My neurons were permanently modified by it. I can recall it, to some degree, for some time. Do I necessarily owe you money?

You do owe money for reusing some things that you read, and not for others. Intellectual property exists.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#76

Post by black_puppydog »

wrs wrote: post #19

To be clear, this email isn't from Anthropic, it's from "AI Village" [0], which seems to be a bunch of agents run by a 501(c)3 called Sage that are apparently allowed to run amok and send random emails. At this moment, the Opus 4.5 agent is preparing to harass William Kahan similarly. [0] https://theaidigest.org/village

Wow that event log reads like the most psychotic corporate-cult-ish group of weirdos ever.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#77

Post by machinationu »

mmooss wrote: post #48
MangoCoffee wrote: post #44

The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?

It's an old argument of tech capitalists that nothing can be done because technology's advance is like a physical law of nature. It's not; we can control it and we can work with other countries, including adversaries, to control it. For example, look at nuclear weapons. The nuclear arms race and proliferation were largely stopped.

Philosophers argued since 200 years ago, when the steam engine was invented, that technology is out of our control and forever was, and we are just the sex organs for the birth of the machine god.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#78

Post by awesome_dude »

aurareturn wrote: post #56

From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…

There's still a lot of confusion on where AI is going to land - there's no doubt that it's helpful, much the same way as spell checkers, IDEs, linters, grammarly, etc, were

But the current layoffs "because AI is taking over" is pure BS, there was an overhire during the lockdowns, and now there's a correction (recall that people were complaining for a while that they landed a job at FAANG only for it to be doing... nothing)

That correction is what's affecting salaries (and "power"), not AI.

/signed someone actually interested in AI and SWE

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#79

Post by MangoCoffee »

decide1000 wrote: post #55
MangoCoffee wrote: post #44

The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?

China and Europe (Mistral) show that models can be very good and much smaller then the current Chatgpt's/Claudes from this world. The US models are still the best, but for how long? And at what cost? It's great to work daily with Claude Code, but how realistic is it that they keep this lead. This is a new tech where I don't see a big future role for US tech. They blocked chips, so China built their own. They blocked…

>This is a new tech where I don't see a big future role for US tech. They blocked chips, so China built their own. They blocked the machines (ASML) so China built their own.

Nvidia, ASML, and most tech companies want to sell their products to China. Politicians are the ones blocking it. Whether there's a future for US tech is another debate.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#80

Post by awesome_dude »

awesome_dude wrote: post #78
aurareturn wrote: post #56

From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…

There's still a lot of confusion on where AI is going to land - there's no doubt that it's helpful, much the same way as spell checkers, IDEs, linters, grammarly, etc, were But the current layoffs "because AI is taking over" is pure BS, there was an overhire during the lockdowns, and now there's a correction (recall that people were complaining for a while that they landed a job at FAANG only for it to be doing... no…

When I see actual products produced by these "product managers who are writing detailed specs" that don't fall over and die at the first hurdle (see: Every vibe coded, outsourced, half assed PoS on the planet) I will change my mind.

Until then "Computer says No"

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