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FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

vladimir.varank.in

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Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#91

Post by petcat »

slopinthebag wrote: post #78

> I didn’t write any piece of code there. There are several known issues, which I will task the agent to resolve, eventually. Meanwhile, I strongly advise against using it for anything beyond a studying exercise. Months of effort and three separate tries to get something kind of working but which is buggy and untested and not recommended for anyone to use, but unfortunately some folks will just read the headline and…

The author specifically said that they did not read the code or even test the output very thoroughly. It was intentionally just a naive toy they wanted to play around with.

Nothing to do with AI, or even the capabilities of AI. The person intentionally didn't put in much effort.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#93

Post by slopinthebag »

mixdup wrote: post #80
slopinthebag wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, and hear me out here, you go to the existing site or app which sells concert tickets, press the purchase button, and then you have your tickets. Like what are we even doing here...

I know people have done truly amazing things with AI lately, but I feel this in my bones. Almost every demo I see is like, uh, I don't need these extremely simple things in my life automated. I can just go to Delta and buy a plane ticket. I actually want to write my own email to my mom or wife. Of course a demo is just a demo, but also come on

I think it's a fallacy that if you make creating anything easier, more useful things will be created. In reality, you just end up with more useless things being created. Like with art, when it gets easier to create you don't end up with more good art. And with software - it's not like the quality of software has gone up as it's gotten easier to build, it's gotten much worse.

A related fallacy is that great things are easier to build when you can rapidly create stuff. That isn't really how great ideas are generated, it's not a slot machine where if you pull the lever 1000 times you generate a good idea and thus a successful piece of software can be made. This seems like a distinctly Silicon Valley, SFBA type mentality. Steve Jobs didn't invent the iPhone by creating 1000 different throwaway products to test the market. Etc etc.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#94

Post by [deleted] »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #27
petcat wrote: post #2

I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.

Hardware driver bugs frequently manifest as concurrency flakiness or heisenbugs. AI is notoriously bad at dealing with bugs that only cause problems every few weeks.

[deleted]

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#95

Post by dude250711 »

petcat wrote: post #91
slopinthebag wrote: post #78

> I didn’t write any piece of code there. There are several known issues, which I will task the agent to resolve, eventually. Meanwhile, I strongly advise against using it for anything beyond a studying exercise. Months of effort and three separate tries to get something kind of working but which is buggy and untested and not recommended for anyone to use, but unfortunately some folks will just read the headline and…

The author specifically said that they did not read the code or even test the output very thoroughly. It was intentionally just a naive toy they wanted to play around with. Nothing to do with AI, or even the capabilities of AI. The person intentionally didn't put in much effort.

> The person intentionally didn't put in much effort.

Aren't you just describing every vibe code ever?

To think about it, that is probably my main issue with AI art/books etc. They never put in any effort. In fact, even the competition is about putting least effort.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#96

Post by renecito »

It used an existing implementation, in theory this was mostly a porting task.

GPL-wise, I don't know how much is inspiration vs "based on" would this be, it'd be interesting to compare.

This looks like my Company peers, as long as there is any existing implementation they are pretty confident they can deliver, poor suckers that do the "no one has done it before" first pass don't get any recognition.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#97

Post by jomohke »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #27
petcat wrote: post #2

I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.

Hardware driver bugs frequently manifest as concurrency flakiness or heisenbugs. AI is notoriously bad at dealing with bugs that only cause problems every few weeks.

I've thought for a while now that we'll end up moving to stricter languages that have safer concurrency, etc, partly for this reason. The most prominent resistance against such languages was the learning curve, but humans like OP aren't looking at the code now.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#98

Post by Gigachad »

petcat wrote: post #91
slopinthebag wrote: post #78

> I didn’t write any piece of code there. There are several known issues, which I will task the agent to resolve, eventually. Meanwhile, I strongly advise against using it for anything beyond a studying exercise. Months of effort and three separate tries to get something kind of working but which is buggy and untested and not recommended for anyone to use, but unfortunately some folks will just read the headline and…

The author specifically said that they did not read the code or even test the output very thoroughly. It was intentionally just a naive toy they wanted to play around with. Nothing to do with AI, or even the capabilities of AI. The person intentionally didn't put in much effort.

Seems like they did put in quite a bit of effort, but were not knowledgeable enough on wifi drivers to go further.

So hardware drivers are not a solved problem where you can just ask chatgpt for a driver and it spits one out for you.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#100

Post by slopinthebag »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #82
slopinthebag wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, and hear me out here, you go to the existing site or app which sells concert tickets, press the purchase button, and then you have your tickets. Like what are we even doing here...

My point is: such apps wouldn’t need to exist if agents can provide in the future the same functionality for a fraction of the cost. Sure if ticketmaster is here to stay forever and keep their app up to date, we can keep using it. But what about new products? Would companies decide to build a single fixed app that all the users have to use, instead of, well, not building it? Sure the functionality would still need to…

> And typically the ui/ux is not the core value of companies

Huh? The user experience is basically ALL of the core product of a company.

If it's so easy for an AI to create ticket purchasing software that people can generate it themselves, then it's also true that the company can also use AI to generate that software for users who then don't need to generate it themselves. Obviously I think neither of these things are true or likely to happen.

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