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

Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 1001 posts

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#801

Post by egorfine »

totallykvothe wrote: post #569

I don't understand the stance that AI currently is able to automate away non-trivial coding tasks. I've tried this consistently since GPT 3.5 came out, with every single SOTA model up to GPT 5.1 Codex Max and Opus 4.5. Every single time, I get something that works, yes, but then when I start self-reviewing the code, preparing to submit it to coworkers, I end up rewriting about 70% of the thing. So many important deta…

Same experience. The better the model the more complicated are the bugs and brain damages it introduces.

Perhaps one has to be skilled programmer in the first place to spot the problems, which is not easy when the program runs apparently.

Things like mocked tests, you know. Who would care about that.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#802

Post by nikita2206 »

lopatin wrote: post #582
totallykvothe wrote: post #569

I don't understand the stance that AI currently is able to automate away non-trivial coding tasks. I've tried this consistently since GPT 3.5 came out, with every single SOTA model up to GPT 5.1 Codex Max and Opus 4.5. Every single time, I get something that works, yes, but then when I start self-reviewing the code, preparing to submit it to coworkers, I end up rewriting about 70% of the thing. So many important deta…

At work, I have the same difficulty using AI as you. When working on deep Jiras that require a lot of domain knowledge, bespoke testing tools, but maybe just a few lines of actual code changes across a vast codebase, I have not been able to use it effectively. For personal projects on the other hand, it has expedited me what? 10x, 30x? It's not measurable. My output has been so much more than what would have been pos…

> deep Jiras that require a lot of domain knowledge, bespoke testing tools, but maybe just a few lines of actual code changes

How do new hires onboard? Do you spend days of your own time guiding them in person, do they just figure things out on their own after a few quarters of working on small tickets, or are things documented? Basically AI, when working on a codebase, has the same level of context that a new hire would have, so if you want them to get started faster then provide them with ample documentation.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#803

Post by matsemann »

simonw wrote: post #160
systemf_omega wrote: post #8

What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools? The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.

This is a pretty common position: "I don't worry about getting left behind - it will only take a few weeks to catch up again". I don't think that's true. I'm really good at getting great results out of coding agents and LLMs. I've also been using LLMs for code on an almost daily basis since ChatGPT's release on November 30th 2022. That's more than three years ago now. Meanwhile I see a constant flow of complaints fro…

I learned Django 15 years after its inception. After 5 years of experience I'm probably not too far behind someone doing the exact same work as me but for 15 years.

Or would you say people shouldn't learn Django now? As it's useless as they're already far behind? They shouldn't study computer science, as it will be too late?

Every profession have new people continuously entering the workforce, that quickly get up to speed on whatever is in vogue.

Honestly, what you've spent years learning and experimenting with, someone else will be able to learn in months. People will figure out the best ways of using these tools after lots of attempts, and that distilled knowledge will be transferred quickly to others. This is surely painful to hear for those having spent years in the trenches, and is perhaps why you refuse to acknowledge it, but I think it's true.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#804

Post by rasengan0 »

I like my shiny local gewgaw as much as the next person https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLM/

but I find it curious that the many will always pay for the few https://youtu.be/y12yZ7bQizk?si=Mbgg-F7IP8HJXJPz

and at what cost ? https://youtu.be/-sNKfRq1oKg?si=6m8pVM9tvawohUbm

Why not just mechanical turk the codebase? Lotsa jobs even with LLM augmentation at current state.

Where is the long term thinking of utility vs cost?

Until AI can solve its own energy generation issues, the hype is gross.

Thankfully I'll be long dead (hopefully) before a local AQI > 500 is considered the new normal common good trade for high fidelity personalized deep fake pr0n

or the cure for cancer at US healthcare billable rates.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#805

Post by yunohn »

20k wrote: post #788
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-trivial coding tasks I’ve come back to the idea LLMs are super search engines. If you ask it a narrow, specific question, with one answer, you may well get the answer. For the “non-trivial” questions, there always will be multiple answers, and you’ll get from the LLM all of these depending on the precise words you use to prompt it. You won’t get the best answer, and in a complex scenario requiring highly recurs…

I wish LLMs were good at search. I've tried to evaluate them many times for their quality at answering research questions for astrophysics (specifically numerical relativity). If they were good at answering questions, I'd use them in a heartbeat Without exception, every technical question I've ever asked an LLM that I know the answer to, has been substantially wrong in some fashion. This makes it just.. absolutely us…

> I wish LLMs were good at search

The entire situation of web search for LLMs is a mess. None of the existing providers return good or usable results; and Google refuses to provide general access to theirs. As a result, all LLMs (except maybe Gemini) are severely gimped forever until someone solves this.

I seriously believe that the only real new breakthrough for LLM research can be achieved by a clean, trustworthy, comprehensive search index. Maybe someone will build that? Otherwise we’re stuck with subpar results indefinitely.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#806

Post by javier2 »

totallykvothe wrote: post #569

I don't understand the stance that AI currently is able to automate away non-trivial coding tasks. I've tried this consistently since GPT 3.5 came out, with every single SOTA model up to GPT 5.1 Codex Max and Opus 4.5. Every single time, I get something that works, yes, but then when I start self-reviewing the code, preparing to submit it to coworkers, I end up rewriting about 70% of the thing. So many important deta…

This is also my experience with enterprise Java. LLMs have done much better with slightly less convoluted code bases in Go. Its currently clearly better at Go and Typescript than Java in my view

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#807

Post by yunohn »

From the OPs comment section:

> Sociologist Judy Wajcman wrote about the concept of how tech is speeding up tasks precisely like this article describes, however she observed that it has never quite manifested as more free time for the laborer.

Every time I read blogs or tweets or posts like this, this point becomes more and more apparent. The authors are constantly explaining how they were busy with all their work, without time to implement the less important or side-project like things. The point of the post is often that now they can invest whatever free time they had into doing so, thus doing more work than they did before. I have literally never read such a post where the author explains how they have automated away their job and are now working less than before they started using AI.

I think this is a great point to ponder as we continue on this path of overworking and labor value destruction, and not the naive benevolent socialism that the authors all assume will occur magically.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#808

Post by cm2187 »

totallykvothe wrote: post #569

I don't understand the stance that AI currently is able to automate away non-trivial coding tasks. I've tried this consistently since GPT 3.5 came out, with every single SOTA model up to GPT 5.1 Codex Max and Opus 4.5. Every single time, I get something that works, yes, but then when I start self-reviewing the code, preparing to submit it to coworkers, I end up rewriting about 70% of the thing. So many important deta…

Not trying to back the AI hype, but most pre-AI auto generated code is garbage (like winform auto generated code or entity framework SQL in the .net world). But that’s fine, it’s not meant to be read by humans. If you want to change it you can regenerate it. It may be that AI just moves the line between what developers should care and look at vs the boring boiler plate code that has little value added.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#810

Post by ramon156 »

This is through the lens of a programmer (and novel writer), but how should artists adapt to the AI hype? Should they be prompting ideas? Should they generate mock-ups? I don't see a world where digital art benefits from AI as much as programmers do, and I feel for that field.
Post reply on HN