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Comment by Havoc

2 days ago

It's definitely not at the make me a photoshop stage but I don't think that angle explains adequately explains the tone of the anti-AI hn discussions taking place at all.

If it was just a toy with no shot at making something real people would go "oh cool have fun with that" and move on with their life. Instead we see pretty emotionally charged posts.

18 comments

Havoc

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maccard  2 days ago

What stage is it at then? Because every new model is met with people saying they haven’t opened an editor in a year, or how they’re 10x more productive. But I’m not seeing 10x more tickets closed, 10x more bugs fixed, or 10x more feature designs that we can smash through. I see verbosity and noise when used by the people who were behind, and I see the same level of quality and excellence from people who use it like it’s another tool in their toolbelt

  • Havoc  2 days ago

    >I see the same level of quality and excellence from people who use it like it’s another tool in their toolbelt

    It's certainly currently an edge if you know what to tell the mystery box of magic in precise terms.

    I don't think this distinction is going to endure though - every level of "it can't do it" has fallen and generally faster & more decisively than predicted. We started with it printing hello world, to autocomplete where you still needed to be able to know what the line should do, to autocompleting functions, to writing entire units, to working out architecture tradeoffs, to doing research planning architecture execution and testing all autonomously. That trajectory plus people retreating to nebulous "I'm adding taste" tells me this is going to sail straight past "tool in toolbelt" territory at Mach 10.

    Everyone has their own perspective but to me "show me the receipt" at a specific point in time is a completely wrong lens for a tech that shows clear signs of exponential improvement (i.e. https://metr.org/ ).

    • maccard  2 days ago

      I’ll agree it’s an edge. But edges aren’t worth the GDP of a middle sized European country.

      > every level of "it can't do it" has fallen and generally faster & more decisively than predicted

      I disagree. The agent + harness model was a huge leap and really moved the bar. The tools became genuinely useful for coding very quickly.

      > Everyone has their own perspective but to me "show me the receipt" at a specific point in time is a completely wrong lens for a tech that shows clear signs of exponential improvement

      At some point, the exponential improvements have to show results or it’s just a Ponzi scheme.

      5 replies →

hunterpayne  2 days ago

"If it was just a toy with no shot at making something real"

This just isn't true. It isn't about what the LLM can do, its about what the executives think the LLM can do that's the problem.

habinero  2 days ago

If people just wanted to make their own stuff and have fun, that's fine. Knock yourself out.

However, it's launched this enormous tidal wave of mediocrity that emboldens the dumbest people to do the dumbest shit and make it my problem. I just had to yell at one of the IT guys for trying to hook up our Duo to Claude, and I'm still mad about it lol.

  • Havoc  2 days ago

    Stupid people are always going to do stupid shit. I don't think that makes the enabling technology the problem & the anger towards it is misdirected.

    >trying to hook up our Duo to Claude

    ngl that is hilarious

    • habinero  2 days ago

      Yeah, but the idiots had to put in effort before, which was difficult for them for obvious reasons.

      Now they have a cheerful idiot robot who can actually do the idiot things they dream up and it tells them how brilliant they are.

eudamoniac  2 days ago

I can't speak for others, but my main emotional issue with it is how it has addled the minds of my employers. If they would judge on output and I couldn't keep up objectively, ok fine I'll use AI. But they judge on usage even if output is worse! Anyone would be upset if forced to abandon their skills and work in a different way that produces worse results and is less enjoyable. It's just stupid.