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Why I am not going to buy a computer

karlvmuller.com

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Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#91

Post by freediddy »

100percentjake wrote: post #69
freediddy wrote: post #22

> AI is probabilistic and any probabilistic system can inherently never be perfect as it also still makes numerous mistakes. Work still needs to be reviewed by humans. I don't know why people keep saying this. I don't believe code needs to be reviewed by humans. Are humans infallible? I think 80%+ of code is basically human slop. Do we review the assembly language that is generated by compilers? I think given where A…

Compilers are deterministic, though. If you don't put garbage in, you won't get garbage out. With a probabilistic system you can have varying outputs for the same input, thus the need to spend (waste?) effort verifying that your output is quality. No comment on the rest of your comment. The assembly piece just bothered me in particular.

There are still bugs in the compiler as well as in optimization that can be created. The only thing stopping bugs in production are unit tests. That's exactly the same as with AI-generated code as well.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#92

Post by glaslong »

groestl wrote: post #5
datakan wrote: post #3

The uncanny valley is happening with enterprise work. My boss is in love with Copilot writing documentation that we've sorely needed for many years. He and I can bang out tons of it in minutes that would have taken months before. We do this and then no one reads it. I've asked people about it and they seem disillusioned. It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. They view it as AI writing documen…

> It wasn't written by a human so they see no human value in it. Which is true, in a way, the data put down as documentation can now be calculated in seconds, and documentation is just a cache.

Yeah, if a human didn't write it, I might as well have generated it myself. And it'll be better tailored to the information I'm seeking.

I actually still REALLY value the human authorship though. Not for any sweat and blood nostalgia. I find MY generated docs still have lots of little errors, sometimes pretty critical even, which I can only recognize when I have the expertise and comb through carefully on edit.

The hand written author's name was a stronger guarantee that those wouldn't exist (as much), because you could trust in their expertise, and that they had to put down every word. It's much easier to miss the slop on edit and review than in draft, in my experience.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#93

Post by wxw »

> As we become more disconnected from the work we do, let writings and art be created by AI, we forgo the meaning, emotions, and learning behind such work.

Excellent post, and thanks for the introduction to Wendell Berry's essay.

Link for others interested: https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/be...

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#94

Post by munificent »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #89
munificent wrote: post #72

As a user and consumer of objects, sometimes I want a meaningful experience with a thing made lovingly by human hands. I will take a dinner cooked by my friends over take-out any day of the week even if the restaurant makes objectively better food. But sometimes I am happy to use a mass produced utilitarian object because it solves the problem. I don't have an emotional relationship with my stapler. These two perspec…

I don't have answers to such as you put it the existential question of our generation(s) but I do wanted to extend some human connection in forms of appreciation that I (yes a human) really appreciated reading your comment and there were some wonders in the past which created the whole ecosystem where you can type on a keyboard and I can read on a screen and type back almost instantaneously and communicate. What an a…

<3

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#95

Post by archagon »

olalonde wrote: post #88
alain94040 wrote: post #18

Neither the original 1987 story nor the blog post make any sense to me. I feel the authors are focused on a niche aspect: exchanging deep human thoughts with other humans. For that use case, sure, don’t use a computer, don’t use AI. But there’s nothing wrong with a car made by a robot factory. The car is useful, regardless of how it was made. AI lets some people create new products, those may be useful.

Probably not the author's point but to me, the takeaway is that these people are driven by emotion and can't be won over with rational arguments. They have an emotional attachment to their old ways, a fear of being obsoleted, a wish that there is something truly special and mysterious about humans, etc.

And the other side is convinced that there’s nothing truly special and mysterious about humans, which feels inherently disturbing. Like, these people would swap their brains with a computer in a hot second if they thought it would make them do X a little better. Shudder.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#96

Post by archagon »

freediddy wrote: post #22

> AI is probabilistic and any probabilistic system can inherently never be perfect as it also still makes numerous mistakes. Work still needs to be reviewed by humans. I don't know why people keep saying this. I don't believe code needs to be reviewed by humans. Are humans infallible? I think 80%+ of code is basically human slop. Do we review the assembly language that is generated by compilers? I think given where A…

What we get paid for is entirely socially determined, not some immutable axiom.

And AI is not an abstraction.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#97

Post by olalonde »

archagon wrote: post #95
olalonde wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not the author's point but to me, the takeaway is that these people are driven by emotion and can't be won over with rational arguments. They have an emotional attachment to their old ways, a fear of being obsoleted, a wish that there is something truly special and mysterious about humans, etc.

And the other side is convinced that there’s nothing truly special and mysterious about humans, which feels inherently disturbing. Like, these people would swap their brains with a computer in a hot second if they thought it would make them do X a little better. Shudder.

I don't think that's true. I think most people are naturally against this idea emotionally. Why would humans not want to be special? I know I wish it wasn't true.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#98

Post by techjamie »

cogman10 wrote: post #87
fluoridation wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's true. I don't understand why they do that. People don't write like that, we're pretty economical. It's not even that they're repetitive to emphasize a point, they just engage in horrific circumlocution. Is it, like, that the facts of the input only percolate through the network when they emit a token, so they only "think" when they're outputting something? I don't know if that's it, but that's what I wou…

My non-serious assumption is that they prioritized the classic writings of 1800s authors like Johann David Wyss in their training. These authors were paid by the word, which resulted in long pointless chapters in their books just to milk money out of the printers.

Much of the internet from the time the training data was initially collected wasn't much different. Consider how much blogspam and listicle SEO/ad optimized content would've been in the training data that is primarily interested in meandering for as long as possible to milk ad views.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#99

Post by fluoridation »

techjamie wrote: post #98
cogman10 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My non-serious assumption is that they prioritized the classic writings of 1800s authors like Johann David Wyss in their training. These authors were paid by the word, which resulted in long pointless chapters in their books just to milk money out of the printers.

Much of the internet from the time the training data was initially collected wasn't much different. Consider how much blogspam and listicle SEO/ad optimized content would've been in the training data that is primarily interested in meandering for as long as possible to milk ad views.

In text? That doesn't really work. Nowadays that's become sort of a meme in video essays on YouTube, but in text you have complete control of the data rate.

Listicles and those sorts of things were pretty pointless, but they didn't beat around the bush like LLMs do. I really don't exaggerate when I say I've never seen a human write like that. Like, the moment I start reading AI responses I feel the urge to skip ahead to get to the point. I probably read at most like 10% of the words they spit out.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer

#100

Post by soco »

tcoff91 wrote: post #74
munchbunny wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do this and then no one reads it. My experience with AI-written documentation is that, as a category, it contains just enough technical errors that more often than not I end up spending time running down confidently stated errors the old fashioned way: cross-referencing API documentation, reading code, etc. At that point you inevitably end up trying to get in touch with a human from the other team. In other word…

1-shotting documentation with AI is a bad idea. You then have to have multiple verification passes to have any chance of it being worth anything. Like if you have an AI generate a runbook, then you better have the AI actually validate the runbook and make sure it is correct.

Heck even when I generate a runbook, I will re-read it and validate all the steps in it. Sometimes even somebody else (the new one in team)
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