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Comment by unshavedyak | Hacker News Reader

Yup. I'm more skeptic than pro-AI these days, but nonetheless i'm still trying to use AI in my workflows.

I don't actually enjoy it, i generally find it difficult to use as i have more trouble explaining what i want than actually just doing it. However it seems clear that this is not going away and to some degree it's "the future". I suspect it's better to learn the new tools of my craft than to be caught unaware.

With that said i still think we're in the infancy of actual tooling around this stuff though. I'm always interested to see novel UXs on this front.

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Probably unrelated to the broader discussion, but I don't think the "skeptic vs pro-AI" distinction even makes that much sense.

For example, I usually come off as being relatively skeptic within the HN crowd, but I'm actually pushing for more usage at work. This kind of "opinion arbitrage" is common with new technologies.

> but I don't think the "skeptic vs pro-AI" distinction even makes that much sense

Tends to be like that with subjects once feelings get involved. Make any skepticism public, even if you don't feel strongly either way, and you get one side of extremists yelling at you about X. At the same time, say anything positive and you get the zealots from the other side yelling at you about Y.

Us who tend to be not so extremist gets push back from both sides, either in the same conversations or in different places, while both see you as belonging to "the other side" while in reality you're just trying to take a somewhat balanced approach.

These "us vs them" never made sense to me, for (almost) any topic. Truth usually sits somewhere around the middle, and a balanced approach seems to usually result in more benefits overall, at least personally for me.

> but I don't think the "skeptic vs pro-AI" distinction even makes that much sense.

Imo it does, because it frames the underlying assumptions around your comment. Ie there was some very pro-AI folks who think it's not just going to replace everything, but already is. That's an extreme example of course.

I view it as valuable anytime there's extreme hype, party lines, etc. If you don't frame it yourself, others will and can misunderstand your comment when viewed through the wrong lens.

Not a big deal of course, but neither is putting a qualifier on a comment.

One recent post I read about improving the discourse (which I seem to have lost the link...) agrees, but in a different way: adding a "capable vs not" axis. that is, "I believe AI is good enough to replace humans, and I am pro" is different than "I believe AI is good enough to replace humans, and I am against" and while "I believe AI is not good enough to replace humans, and I am pro" is a weird position to take, "I believe AI is not good enough to replace humans, and I am against."

These things are also not binary, they're a full grid of space.

> "I believe AI is not good enough to replace humans, and I am pro" is a weird position to take

Huh? The recipe how to be in this position is literally in the readme of the linked project. You don’t even have to believe it, you just have to work it.

I mean at the most extreme: that it can NEVER do so. Someone who holds this position would point to commits like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159659

To that I can only respond with never say never. Not this year? Yes. Not next year? Sign me up. Not in the next 10 years? Let’s say I’m looking at my hardware career options after 20 years in software.

If you should never say never, you are already contradicting yourself.

> "I believe AI is not good enough to replace humans, and I am pro" is a weird position to take

I think that's just the opinion of someone who doesn't think AI currently lives up to the hype but is optimistic about developing it further, not really that weird of a position in my opinion.

Personally I'm moving more into the "I think AI is good enough to replace humans, and I am against" category.

Yeah, I meant like, at the full extreme of "and it never will". Someone with the position you describe wouldn't be at the far end, but somewhere closer to the middle.

I believe compilers are not good enough to replace humans, and I am pro

Someone has mentioned in another thread that there is an increasing divide between "discourse skeptics" and fundamental skeptics, more like luddites.

> I don't actually enjoy it, i generally find it difficult to use as i have more trouble explaining what i want than actually just doing it.

This is my problem I run into quite frequently. I have more trouble trying to explain computing or architectural concepts in natural language to the AI than I do just coding the damn thing in the first place. There are many reasons we don't program in natural language, and this is one of them.

I've never found natural language tools easier to use, in any iteration of them, and so I get no joy out of prompting AI. Outside of the increasingly excellent autocomplete, I find it actually slows me down to try and prompt "correctly."

> I don't actually enjoy it, i generally find it difficult to use as i have more trouble explaining what i want than actually just doing it.

Most people who are good at a skill start here with AI. Over time, they learn how to explain things better to AI. And the output from AI improves significantly as a result. Additionally AI models keep improving over time as well.

If you stay with it, you will reach an inflection point soon enough and will actually start enjoying it.

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