Every word of this seems objectively false. AI is more than capable of handling the details. I have generated countless tools for myself without needing to know or care about the details.
Every word of this seems objectively false. AI is more than capable of handling the details. I have generated countless tools for myself without needing to know or care about the details.
The pro argument is always quantity based, yet we never get to see the actual gain in quality. It's always "I'm doing SO MUCH more". Never "I'm doing better, with less effort."
It's also what we see in the wild. There are so many things going on, so many news about "AI". Are things getting better in any meaningful way? Why are we getting so much from "AI" yet things keep getting worse? The only real, objective and verifiable gain has been the stock price of a handful of companies, most of them heavily into infrastructure and manufacturing hardware.
Seems like a pretty clear pattern. There's so much output, but everything is worse. And the only argument we hear for why this is actually a good thing is just how much more output there is. Hmmm
I'm doing better, with less effort.
I mostly work on UI (for an internal, science-focused app) and it used be that features would take a sprint or two to grind out, and would always be an MVP to meet just the most essential user requirements, because that's all we could afford, time-wise, to do. And if I figured out while implementing there could be a nicer UI approach to something, it was often too late to change the approach.
Now, I can get to that MVP in under a day. And I can experiment with ten radically different approaches, or change my mind about something significant at any stage in the implementation. I can afford to add refinements and user-pleasing extras that I could never have done before. I'm not delivering features at 10x the speed. There's a limit to the amount of code I can (and should) be submitting for review. But the features I'm building are _better_, and the effort is less. I'm not wasting mental bandwidth typing out a dozen React components full of the same-old state management, form processing code, etc. I'm not trawling through charting library docs, looking for the precise combination of settings to make my chart's x-axis ticks labels rotate 45 degrees. My mental energy is focussed on figuring out what solution is actually _right_, not the minutiae of how to persuade the computer to do it.
> I'm not delivering features at 10x the speed. There's a limit to the amount of code I can (and should) be submitting for review.
My point exactly
> But the features I'm building are _better_, and the effort is less.
Can we cash that check or is it gonna trade heavily discounted like all grand claims on AI since all software all around us together with the economy and the Earth's life supporting systems keep degrading every year? We keep getting promised the better, but we only get to see the more.
> My point exactly
No it wasn't. You said the claims were only based on quantity. I'm saying the opposite. I deliver the same quantity, with higher quality.
> Can we cash that check or is it gonna trade heavily discounted like all grand claims on AI since all software all around us together with the economy and the Earth's life supporting systems keep degrading every year?
I'm not sure what evidence I could offer you that would ever convince you. We've had strong coding models for less than a year, and you've already appear to have closed your mind about them and wrapped them up into your depression.
> The pro argument is always quantity based, yet we never get to see the actual gain in quality. It's always "I'm doing SO MUCH more". Never "I'm doing better, with less effort."
For me, it's "I can do this now; yesterday I could not."
I am not a developer - I am a hack with some experience in a smattering of languages who hits very real obstacles very quickly. AI has allowed me to overcome those obstacles and build things that literally I could not do before.
Yesterday I could not differentiate quake 3 matches within a single demo file.
Today I can split them into separate files and have the server stream them to me so I can watch them on demand.
> For me, it's "I can do this now; yesterday I could not."
Yeah. More.
Better? How would you be able to tell? Can you show us better? Or only more?
To me, being able to do something I could not, is unequivocally better.
It’s basically the same thing as AI generated art, whichever side of that you fall on.
I do IT, I can’t make any kind of art to save my own life. The art the AI generates is neat to me because I get to feel in control of making something beyond my own skills.
The flip side is equally true, though. The things I make are derivative, and not particularly neat to other people (and actively irritate actual artists).
AI software is a lot like that. I’m happy people who aren’t software engineers can make their own thing and be totally in control of that. I’ve also yet to see much AI software that blows existing stuff out of the water. Most of is derivative of something that already exists, if not an outright clone with a slightly different emphasis (think Jira but for a very specific workflow).
I think the author means ecomonically valuable not valuable to you.
As long as these tools remain for your personal use there is nothing wrong with that. The moment other people rely on them however, it would become reckless oversight to operate in that way.
Tools? Yes. Reliable foundations? Eh, mostly not. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but I'm not impressed. Not in the least because in order to get a good system you must have a good image of the system in your head. And if AI builds the system, how will you ever get that system in your head?
How would you do it if you hired an employee in your company to do it? You'd talk to the employee and read the docs they write. Same here.
It’s always tools tho, and AI tools especially. Why not anything else?
It doesn't handle anything, he reproduce statistical patterns. If it seems it cares about the details it's because he's been trained to regurgitate stuff. Another thing is being expert in something and being able to prompt the clanker, and those who are, usually underestimate how much their knowledge is steering the machine in the right direction
Everyone feels like they are now the ceo of their own empire of ai flunkies who do the actual work guided by their above-all-that vision, and they luuuuuuv that.
But useless ceos generate bad output just like useless direct coders.
It's like everyone is adopting the once only-for-the-rich mindset where artisan is actually a derogatory term. Where Micheal Angelo is the same as the cow stall poop shoveler, because they actually do something directly themselves.