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When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

theregister.com

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Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#81

Post by Veserv »

user34283 wrote: post #54
santadays wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is entirely too charitable. Basically all this proves is that the agent could run in a loop for a week or so, did anyone doubt that? They marketed as if we were really close to having agents that could build a browser on their own. They rightly deserve the blowback. This is an issue that is very important because of how much money is being thrown at it, and that effects everyone, not just the "stakeholders". At…

I find it hard to believe after running agents fully autonomously for a week you'd end up with something that actually compiles and at least somewhat functions. And I'm an optimist, not one of the AI skeptics heavily present on HN. From the post it sounds like the author would also doubt this when he talks about "glorified autocomplete and refactoring assistants".

It did not compile [1], so your belief was correct.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649046

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#82

Post by owaislone »

jmmv wrote: post #76

If we have been complaining about bloat before, the amount of bloat we are going to witness in the future is unfathomable. How can anyone be proud of a claim like "It's 3M+ lines of code across thousands of files." _especially_ when a lot of this code is relying on external dependencies? Less code is almost always better, not more! I'm also getting really tired of claims like "we are X% more productive with AI now!"…

I mostly agree with you but I AM super productive with AI. I'm working on a side-project and have built in 2-3 months what my quite productive team of 3-4 people would take 4-6 months to build in 2016. And I'm not talking to generative slop but real production grade code that I have reviewed+approved or manually refactored before merging. Like you I'm not impressed by these toy projects but the productivity gain is very real. At least has been for me.

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#83

Post by simonw »

Veserv wrote: post #81
user34283 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe after running agents fully autonomously for a week you'd end up with something that actually compiles and at least somewhat functions. And I'm an optimist, not one of the AI skeptics heavily present on HN. From the post it sounds like the author would also doubt this when he talks about "glorified autocomplete and refactoring assistants".

It did not compile [1], so your belief was correct. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649046

It did compile - the coding agents were compiling it constantly.

It didn't have correctly configured GitHub Actions so the CI build was broken.

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#84

Post by simonw »

user34283 wrote: post #54
santadays wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is entirely too charitable. Basically all this proves is that the agent could run in a loop for a week or so, did anyone doubt that? They marketed as if we were really close to having agents that could build a browser on their own. They rightly deserve the blowback. This is an issue that is very important because of how much money is being thrown at it, and that effects everyone, not just the "stakeholders". At…

I find it hard to believe after running agents fully autonomously for a week you'd end up with something that actually compiles and at least somewhat functions. And I'm an optimist, not one of the AI skeptics heavily present on HN. From the post it sounds like the author would also doubt this when he talks about "glorified autocomplete and refactoring assistants".

You don't run coding agents for a week and THEN compile their code. The best available models would have no chance of that working - you're effectively asking them to one-shot a million lines of code with not a single mistake.

You have the agents compile the code every single step of the way, which is what this project did.

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#85

Post by anthonypasq96 »

santadays wrote: post #10
jey wrote: post #2

I don't think the point was to say "look, AI can just take care of writing a browser now". I think it was to show just how far the tools have come. It's not meant to be production quality, it's meant to be an impressive demo of the state of AI coding. Showing how far it can be taken without completely falling over. EDIT: I retract my claim. I didn't realize this had servo as a dependency.

This is entirely too charitable. Basically all this proves is that the agent could run in a loop for a week or so, did anyone doubt that? They marketed as if we were really close to having agents that could build a browser on their own. They rightly deserve the blowback. This is an issue that is very important because of how much money is being thrown at it, and that effects everyone, not just the "stakeholders". At…

> This is entirely too charitable. Basically all this proves is that the agent could run in a loop for a week or so, did anyone doubt that?

yes, every AI skeptic publicly doubted that right up until they started doing it.

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#86

Post by sealeck »

moomoo11 wrote: post #56
tyre wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish your recent interview had pushed much harder on this. It came across as politely not wanting to bring up how poorly this really went, even for what the engineer intended. They were making claims without the level of rigor to back them up. There was an opportunity to learn some difficult lessons, but—and I don’t think this was your intention—it came across to me as kind of access journalism; not wanting to step…

Why would he push back? His whole schtick is to sell only AI hype. He’s not going to hurt his revenue.

I actually don't think this is true, and certainly of people who cover LLMs Simon Willison is one of the more critical and measured people.

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#87

Post by simonw »

mjr00 wrote: post #71
square_usual wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the comment that started this thread? Let me repeat that, ICYMI: > "So I agree this isn't just wiring up of dependencies, and neither is it copied from existing implementations: it's a uniquely bad design that could never support anything resembling a real-world web engine." It didn't use Servo, and it wasn't just calling dependencies. It was terribly slow and stupid, but your comment is more of a mischa…

You're right in the sense it didn't `use::servo`, merely Servo's CSS parser `cssparser`[0] and Servo's DOM parser `html5ever`[1]. Maybe that dog can do taxes after all. [0] https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Awilsonzlin%2Ffastrender%2... [1] https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Awilsonzlin%2Ffastrender+h...

Taffy is related to Servo too, though apparently not officially part of the Servo project - but Servo does use it.

https://github.com/DioxusLabs/taffy

Used here (I think): https://github.com/servo/servo/tree/c639bb1a7b3aa0fd5e02b40d...

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#88

Post by blibble »

simonw wrote: post #79
testdelacc1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the codebase is meaningless drivel has already been established, you don’t need to defend them. It’s just pure slop, and they’re trying to get people to believe that it’s a working browser. At the time he bragged about that `cargo build` didn’t even run! It was completely broken going back a hundred commits. So it was a complete lie to claim that it “kind of works”. You have a reputation. You don’t need…

Which part of their CEO saying "It kind of works" are you interpreting as "trying to get people to believe that it’s a working browser"? The reason I won't let this one go is that I genuinely believe people are being unfair to the engineer who built this, because some people will jump on ANY opportunity to "debunk" stories about AI. I won't stand for misleading rhetoric like "it's just a Servo wrapper" when that isn'…

> I won't stand for misleading rhetoric like "it's just a Servo wrapper" when that isn't true.

this level of outrage seems absent when it's misleading in the pro-"AI" direction

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#89

Post by antonvs »

iainctduncan wrote: post #43
antonvs wrote: post #36

FTA: > tools like Cursor can be genuinely helpful as glorified autocomplete and refactoring assistants That suggests a fairly strong anti-AI bias by the author. Anyone who thinks that this is all AI coding tools are today is not actually using them seriously. That's not to say that this exercise wasn't overhyped, but a more useful, less biased article that's not trying to push an agenda would look at what went right,…

No, it suggests the sarcasm that is the Registers in house style. See the page tagline.... "Biting the hand that feeds IT"

That’s a dubious assumption. In the context of the rest of this article, it doesn’t seem like sarcasm.

Re: When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

#90

Post by sensanaty »

simonw wrote: post #79
testdelacc1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the codebase is meaningless drivel has already been established, you don’t need to defend them. It’s just pure slop, and they’re trying to get people to believe that it’s a working browser. At the time he bragged about that `cargo build` didn’t even run! It was completely broken going back a hundred commits. So it was a complete lie to claim that it “kind of works”. You have a reputation. You don’t need…

Which part of their CEO saying "It kind of works" are you interpreting as "trying to get people to believe that it’s a working browser"? The reason I won't let this one go is that I genuinely believe people are being unfair to the engineer who built this, because some people will jump on ANY opportunity to "debunk" stories about AI. I won't stand for misleading rhetoric like "it's just a Servo wrapper" when that isn'…

> "It kind of works"

https://github.com/wilsonzlin/fastrender/issues/98

A project that didn't compile at all counts as "kind of" working now?

> I won't stand for misleading rhetoric like "it's just a Servo wrapper" when that isn't true.

True, at least if it was a wrapper then it would actually kind of work, unlike this which is the most obvious case of hyping lies up for investors I've witnessed in the last... Well, week or so, considering how much bullshit spews out of the mouths of AI bros.

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