3 ms·

Spare me the shitty analogies. We write shell scripts because it’s cheap, fast, and the behavior is very predictable. Like it or not, an AI’s behavior is a bla

by xwdv 4y ago

Spare me the shitty analogies. We write shell scripts because it’s cheap, fast, and the behavior is very predictable. Like it or not, an AI’s behavior is a black box and can’t be “proven” to execute exactly the same every time for the scenarios you are targeting. A shell script will do exactly what it has been written to do every time, unless tampered with. And if changes need to be made, it can be done quickly without need for retraining, god knows how long that would take for an AI to learn something new. God help you if you need to maintain “versions” of your AI, trained for different things. Face it, AI are pointless and slow for certain classes of problems.

com2kid 4y ago
> A shell script will do exactly what it has been written to do every time, unless tampered with. Or unless some magic environment variable changes, or one of the runtime dependencies changes, or it is run on a different operating system, or permissions aren't setup right, or one of its tasks errors out. Shell scripts are digital duct tape, the vast majority of shell scripts do not come close to being reliable software. > god knows how long that would take for an AI to learn something new Did you watch OpenAI's demo yesterday? They pasted in new versions of API docs and GPT4 updated its output code. When GPT forgot a parameter, the presenter fed back the error message and GPT added the parameter to the request.
- xwdv 4y ago
  AI proponents are missing the point. Anything you write to make an AI produce something is basically code. Docs are code. You don’t have to feed a developer code or docs, you can give them a high level idea and they’ll figure it out on their own if you want.
  - echelon 4y ago
    That code will eventually fall away. The big thing everyone in this single thread is missing is that AI is a metaheuristic. I wouldn't expect to use AI to run_script.py. That's easy. I'd expect it to look at the business signals and do the work of an intern. To look at metrics and adjust some parameters or notify some people. To quickly come up with and prototype novel ways to glue new things together. To solve brand new problems.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      To do the work of an intern an AI must go on Jira, read a ticket, then find the appropriate repositories where code needs to be modified, write tests for its modification, submit for code review, respond to feedback in code review, deploy its changes. It’s not there yet.
      - echelon 4y ago
        This feels achievable in five years.
        suction 4y ago
        [dead]
        JohnFen 4y ago
        It always feels achievable in five years. People were saying exactly this 30 years ago. Sooner or later it may (or may not) be a true statement, but it's awfully hard for me to say that it's any different right now than it has been before.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        echelon 4y ago
        What's different is that each subtask now feels like a weekend hackathon. Plus a bunch of engineering to ensure high quality results and build the appropriate UI/UX for human drivers. You could solve 5% of cases now and over five years drive it up beyond 100% (where you're getting new customers and startups that had never even tried the previous methods).
        xwdv 4y ago
        What software do people envision themselves creating with these AI slaves? More shitty CRUD apps? Which get easier and easier to pump out everyday with the growing numbers of frameworks, libraries, copying and pasting snippets from stack overflow? Or will AI really write all the code for all our critical systems, operating systems, financial markets, planes, factories, vehicles, spacecraft? And will they do it so confidently and accurately that humans can safely just forget how to code? Sure, perhaps. But by then AI will also be so advanced and independent in its problem solving that it will have no need to listen to human prompts. I don’t really see the point in that.
  - ashes-of-sol 4y ago
    [dead]
  - Analog24 4y ago
    What developer working on anything meaningful does not rely on documentation? You certainly have to make the documentation available similar to how you would have to make it "available" to an LLM. I think you might be missing the point about what the potential use-cases for these systems are.
qup 4y ago
> A shell script will do exactly what it has been written to do every time I wish I lived in that universe.
njarboe 4y ago
Correct. So are humans.

by xwdv 4y ago

com2kid 4y ago

> A shell script will do exactly what it has been written to do every time, unless tampered with. Or unless some magic environment variable changes, or one of the runtime dependencies changes, or it is run on a different operating system, or permissions aren't setup right, or one of its tasks errors out. Shell scripts are digital duct tape, the vast majority of shell scripts do not come close to being reliable software. > god knows how long that would take for an AI to learn something new Did you watch OpenAI's demo yesterday? They pasted in new versions of API docs and GPT4 updated its output code. When GPT forgot a parameter, the presenter fed back the error message and GPT added the parameter to the request.

xwdv 4y ago
AI proponents are missing the point. Anything you write to make an AI produce something is basically code. Docs are code. You don’t have to feed a developer code or docs, you can give them a high level idea and they’ll figure it out on their own if you want.
- echelon 4y ago
  That code will eventually fall away. The big thing everyone in this single thread is missing is that AI is a metaheuristic. I wouldn't expect to use AI to run_script.py. That's easy. I'd expect it to look at the business signals and do the work of an intern. To look at metrics and adjust some parameters or notify some people. To quickly come up with and prototype novel ways to glue new things together. To solve brand new problems.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    To do the work of an intern an AI must go on Jira, read a ticket, then find the appropriate repositories where code needs to be modified, write tests for its modification, submit for code review, respond to feedback in code review, deploy its changes. It’s not there yet.
    - echelon 4y ago
      This feels achievable in five years.
      - suction 4y ago
        [dead]
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        It always feels achievable in five years. People were saying exactly this 30 years ago. Sooner or later it may (or may not) be a true statement, but it's awfully hard for me to say that it's any different right now than it has been before.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        echelon 4y ago
        What's different is that each subtask now feels like a weekend hackathon. Plus a bunch of engineering to ensure high quality results and build the appropriate UI/UX for human drivers. You could solve 5% of cases now and over five years drive it up beyond 100% (where you're getting new customers and startups that had never even tried the previous methods).
        xwdv 4y ago
        What software do people envision themselves creating with these AI slaves? More shitty CRUD apps? Which get easier and easier to pump out everyday with the growing numbers of frameworks, libraries, copying and pasting snippets from stack overflow? Or will AI really write all the code for all our critical systems, operating systems, financial markets, planes, factories, vehicles, spacecraft? And will they do it so confidently and accurately that humans can safely just forget how to code? Sure, perhaps. But by then AI will also be so advanced and independent in its problem solving that it will have no need to listen to human prompts. I don’t really see the point in that.
- ashes-of-sol 4y ago
  [dead]
- Analog24 4y ago
  What developer working on anything meaningful does not rely on documentation? You certainly have to make the documentation available similar to how you would have to make it "available" to an LLM. I think you might be missing the point about what the potential use-cases for these systems are.

qup 4y ago

> A shell script will do exactly what it has been written to do every time I wish I lived in that universe.

njarboe 4y ago

Correct. So are humans.