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Sure, I totally believe you found it valuable, and it's great that it helped you solve your problem. As with simonw, it sounds like it got you over a hump. One

Sure, I totally believe you found it valuable, and it's great that it helped you solve your problem. As with simonw, it sounds like it got you over a hump. One you could have gotten over on your own, but maybe you didn't want to or couldn't take the time. But in both cases, what GPT coughed up was a dead end in development terms. It's not like you could just ask it to fix your app or to replace your app. This sort of reminds me of the 3d-printing hype cycle. People were very excited! We could make any object! We could soon be 3d-printing 3d printers! But in practice, 3d printing is now mostly useful for small, marginally valuable stuff. That's not nothing; I have friends who are excited about their 3d printers. But I also have friends who are excited about woodworking and accordion playing and falconry. But none of these are particularly world-changing.

simonw 4y ago
Aha! Yeah I see where you're coming from now. There's a huge amount of hype around this stuff which is completely unjustified: it's not going to replace programmers! It's (hopefully) not going to put vast numbers of people out of work. My interest in it is this: given this (flawed) technology exists, what are the things we can use it for that are genuinely useful and help us build interesting things that we may not have built before? I've been finding an increasing number of areas where it gives me a 10-30% productivity boost... and a few areas like the above one where that tips me from "not going to do that project" to "doing that project". Those are what's exciting to me, far away from the breathless hype around this stuff.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Yes, exactly. This article is about how Google wants to put this into everything. "A new internal directive requires 'generative artificial intelligence' to be incorporated into all of its biggest products within months." I think a lot of people are skipping the "what are the things we can use it for that are genuinely useful" step. Glad to see people actually doing that, so thanks for explaining further.

simonw 4y ago

Aha! Yeah I see where you're coming from now. There's a huge amount of hype around this stuff which is completely unjustified: it's not going to replace programmers! It's (hopefully) not going to put vast numbers of people out of work. My interest in it is this: given this (flawed) technology exists, what are the things we can use it for that are genuinely useful and help us build interesting things that we may not have built before? I've been finding an increasing number of areas where it gives me a 10-30% productivity boost... and a few areas like the above one where that tips me from "not going to do that project" to "doing that project". Those are what's exciting to me, far away from the breathless hype around this stuff.

wpietri 4y ago
Yes, exactly. This article is about how Google wants to put this into everything. "A new internal directive requires 'generative artificial intelligence' to be incorporated into all of its biggest products within months." I think a lot of people are skipping the "what are the things we can use it for that are genuinely useful" step. Glad to see people actually doing that, so thanks for explaining further.