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Comment by munificent

7 months ago

> I hope, rather - that technically minded people who are advocating for the use of ML understand the short comings and hallucinations.

The people I see who are most excited about ML are business types who just see it as a black boxes that makes stock valuation go vroom.

The people that deeply love building things, really enjoy the process of making itself, are profoundly sceptical.

I look at generative AI as sort of like an army of free interns. If your idea of a fun way to make a thing is to dictate orders to a horde of well-meaning but untrained highly-caffienated interns, then using generative AI to make your thing is probably thrilling. You get to feel like an executive producer who can make a lot of stuff happen by simply prompting someone/something to do your bidding.

But if you actually care about the grit and texture of actual creation, then that workflow isn't exactly appealing.

They wouldn’t think this way if stock investors weren’t so often such naive lemmings ready to jump off yet another cliff with each other.

We get it, you're skeptical of the current hype bubble. But that's one helluva no true Scotsman you've got going on there. Because a true builder, one that deeply loves building things wouldn't want to use text to create an image. Anyone who does is a business type or an executive producer. A true builder wouldn't think about what they want to do in such nasty thing as words. Creation comes from the soul, which we all know machines, and business people, don't have.

Using English, instead of C, to get a computer to do something doesn't turn you into a beaurocrat any more than using Python or Javascript instead does.

Only a person that truly loves building things, far deeper than you'll ever know, someone that's never programmed in a compiled language, would get that.

  • > Using English, instead of C, to get a computer to do something doesn't turn you into a beaurocrat any more than using Python or Javascript instead does.

    If one uses English in as precise a way as one crafts code, sure.

    Most people do not (cannot?) use English that precisely.

    There's little technical difference between using English and using code to create...

    ... but there is a huge difference on the other side of the keyboard, as lots of people know English, including people who aren't used to fully thinking through a problem and tackling all the corner cases.

    • > Most people do not (cannot?) use English that precisely.

      No one can, which is why any place human interaction needs anything anywhere close to the determinancy of code, normal natural langauge is abandoned for domain-specific constructed languages built from pieces of natural language with meanings crafted especially for the particular domain as the interface language between the people (and often formalized domain-specific human-to-human communication protocols with specs as detailed as you’d see from the IETF.)

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  • using English has been tried many times in the history computing; Cobol, SQL, just to name a very few.

    Still needed domain experts back then, and, IMHO, in years/decades to come

  • Was it intentional to reply with another no true Scotsman in turn here?

    • Yeah, I was also reading their response and was confused. "Creation comes from the soul, which we all know machines, and business people, don't have" ... "far deeper than you'll ever know", I mean, come on.