If we could design a human would we design them with menstrual cycles? Why would we even target human intelligence. Feels like setting the bar low and not being very creative...
Seriously, the human brain is susceptible to self stroking patterns that result in disordered thinking. We spend inordinate amounts of energy daydreaming, and processing visual and auditory stimulus. We require sleep and don't fully understand why. So why would we target human intelligence? Propaganda. Anyone worried about losing their livelihood to automation is going to take notice. AI has the place in the zeitgeist today that Robots occupied in the 1980s and for the same reason. The wealthy and powerful can see the power it has socially right now and they are doing whatever they can to leverage it. It's why they don't call it LLMs but AI because AI is scarier. It's why all the tech bro CEOs signed the "pause" letter.
If this was about man flying we would be making an airplane instead of talking about how the next breakthrough will make us all into angels. LLMs are clever inventions they're just not independently clever.
I feel this way about Typescript too. There are a lot of people in engineering these days who don't think critically or exercise full observation when using popular technologies. I don't feel like it was like this 15 years ago, but it probably was...
And this is a great example of something I rarely see LLMs doing. I think we're approaching a point where we will use LLMs to manage code the way we use React to manage the DOM. You need an update to a feature? The LLM will just recode it wholesale. All of the problems we have in software development will dissolve in mountains of disposable code. I could see enterprise systems being replaced hourly for security reasons. Less chance of abusing a vulnerability if it only exists for an hour to find and exploit. Since the popularity of LLMs proves that as a society we've stopped caring about quality, I have a hard time seeing any other future.
But all the senior business folks think AI can do no wrong and want to put it out the door anyway, assuming all the experienced engineers are just trying to get more money or something.
Worth noting that there are business leaders who see high LOC and number of commits as metrics of good programmers. To them the 2000 LOC commits from offshore are proof that it's working. Sadly the proof that it's not will show in their sales and customer satisfaction if they keep producing their product long enough. For too long the business model in tech has been to get bought out so this doesn't often matter to business.
This study raises the question, why do we play games? Do we play to win or to enjoy ourselves. Why design a machine to do what we should be enjoying? This goes for writing, creating Art, coding. Wanting a machine to win is the desire to achieve a goal without doing the work to earn it. Same for making art or writing novels. The point of these things (growth and achievement) is lost when done by a machine. I want to see this done with investment, legal strategy or business management. These are better suited to LLMs than what we're making them do, but I'd venture that those who are profiting from LLMs right now would profit less if replaced by LLMs by their boards.
This is a bit harsh on the HN community IMO. This was all nostalgia to me and not about overprotective parents. that said, looking at it in that light, my kids had none of the experiences you did. I think the overprotective instinct of this generation's parents has been steadily teaching them to be more risk averse and protecting them from learning about how to deal with undesirable outcomes to a point of irrational fear. My kids are in this generation and despite having this opinion they're surrounded by other adults and media that teaches them, not how to deal with mistakes, but to avoid them at all costs. I'm not advocating death and dismemberment, but there has to be an in-between.
I live in Jersey and used to work on 3rd Ave. Rather than taking the shuttle or the bus, I just walked it was about a mile from port authority but it was faster and cheaper. NYC really needs more East to West Sunway lines, not that there's room for them under there...
Meh, Trump wants someone as loyal and willing to spy on us as he thinks this guy was for China. I love how the right detests regulation but is okay with arbitrarily monkeying directly in the management of a company like this with no rules around it. No company is safe under this guy.
So... Does anyone else wonder if DOGE defunded them and they had to get New Zealand to bail them out of hypothermia? Why are they being secretive about what the emergency was? Ice collapse due to global warming that the administration is in denial of?
I feel a lot of the issues I have with "vibe coding" come with what feels like an aversion to creativity. We acknowledge that using LLMs to create video and images is affecting creativity but don't acknowledge that we are subverting the act of being creative to "labor". I would argue that in the act of solving problems as developers we are tasked with exhibiting creativity and this creativity creates the patterns that LLMs harvest to produce their responses. As we move away from engaging in low-level creativity, quality and variety in markets will dwindle or shift to more high-level products based on a stagnant foundation that like hardware drivers and legacy healthcare data will become the domain of specialized developers. It's true that non-linear video editing revolutionized video editing, but it didn't replace editing as an Art by producing already edited footage. The taste of an editor comes from years of editing and seeing the difference between choices that would be masked to future editors using AI for the task. Reducing awareness of the options reduces the domain of the Art. Programming is no different.
Hard to figure out if this was due to Musk or poor quality causing the cars to start failing. Still making payments on mine and it's in the shop for electrical failures to the tune of $3k. I think Musk is a tool, but not as big of one as I am for buying this car to begin with.
Interesting observation. There was a thread here recently about LLMs and Art where the OP wh likewise felt unmotivated due to LLMs was accused of creating Art for egotistical reasons. I generally think of my personal projects like I think about Art. Sure the motivation is not 100% this, but it is at least 50% about a sense of accomplishment and bragging rights. LLMs destroy this motivation by making it possible for about anyone to do something. For those just looking for the results one looks stupid for learning it and doing it on their own and a social pressure exists to not do it without using an LLM. The whole thing causes me to vascilate between wanting to not use and fight LLMs and the associated pressure or to just watch TV. It's easy to say that this is transformative financially but I'm finding the motivational impact of these tools to be way out sized personally. As a developer and Artist this feels like the larger society telling me that my passions are worthless and by proxy so am I. Pretty demotivating...
Doesn't this just tip the hand of the whole AI ponzi scheme? Wasn't it the point all along to get folks to trust the results with no documentation so you could spread misinformation? Nuance is not this guy's game at all
Even if they were getting money from a GOP super PAC, any company with a budget would face hardships defending itself legally against nearly infinite budgets on the other side.
AI isn't taking jobs. It's making excuses for layoffs of employees that companies got on loans that carry interest now. Sure AI can help do things, but it's not actually AI, it's sophisticated auto complete. If you had an employee that you could actually replace with AI you should probably not have hired them...
Hopefully the fear of foreign actors will put an end to this too.
I have to hand it to North Korea on the inventive revenue streams. This is a country under sanctions for decades that has developed some of the most clever IT scams for siphoning money from the west. Between this and the Lazarus group the country has brought in Fortune 500 company kinds of money to keep itself afloat.
> but as I was writing it I discovered that I am truly horrified that my car's breaks will be programmed by a contractor using some local 7b model that specializes in writing MIRSA C:2023 ASIL-D compliant software.
I've been a vegetarian for 30 years. Big beef is still raging despite all the Hindus and abstainers. Doesn't mean I'll grill a burger and chow down. It would be great if suddenly the world woke up and thought about consequences of what they do in a myriad of things. It will never happen, but acting unaware when you are aware is something you have to live with. Some people think morals are divine, but I guess some people think of them as "feelings".
This behavior works in a competitive, monopoly averse economy. In the US, this means you will eventuy have no alternative to Amazon.
I've been thinking about the poor quality and availability of Communist goods in the 1980s. I think about the bread lines every time I shop at Costco. What happened to make us so complacent?
As they get bigger competing with them becomes harder and harder as their overhead per transaction reduces due to volume. Eventually they become the only choice. I feel like with Amazon this is nearly the case. Many local brick-and-mortar stores that would have existed in the early 200's are non-existent today. Even chains like RadioShack and Circuit City are gone. This leaves the next alternative to be slower and more expensive online stores that struggle to compete.