7 ms·

My company is huge 100k and lucky enough they also see it a s critical and make it centrally available to us soon. But this will be a problem for big companies

by Qweiuu 3y ago

My company is huge 100k and lucky enough they also see it a s critical and make it centrally available to us soon. But this will be a problem for big companies: small ones normally care less about these types of things. This means big companies have to do something otherwise they will compete with ml enhanced developers.

classified 3y ago
I wouldn't worry about that. Our software contains so much natural stupidity that artificial intelligence, even if it existed, wouldn't have a chance in hell.
viraptor 3y ago
> This means big companies have to do something otherwise they will compete with ml enhanced developers. It's not that bad. In reality if we're looking at large tech companies, they've got senior people who know pretty much anything you want available within minutes/hours - which is something small companies just can't afford. Ml enhanced devs may be a little bit faster and get some usually-correct help, but they won't get any wisdom.
- ryanmcgarvey 3y ago
  I think the AI driven development story is more about leverage than it is about wisdom. Leverage from AI is derived from being able to do more with fewer people. In my experience the great slowdown of growing companies comes from hitting the communication barrier on their products - the point at which the majority of effort is spent coordinating work rather than doing work. I find that the path from majority focus on product to majority focus on coordination isn't linear, but rather more of a watershed. One day you are 80/20, the seemingly overnight after some growth you are 20/80 the other way and never look back. The advantage of being on the right side of that watershed is that you can maintain velocity and agility. Not only can you iterate quickly, but you're in a better position to change course and rebuild as needed. The left hand and the right hand require little effort to coordinate and get it done. Larger companies live and die on their ability to either find a moat large enough to protect them, or build organizational structures that let them keep scaling. It takes decades to get the culture and processes right and baked in across the board for a large company to be able to maintain any velocity and reinvent itself. This is where the gap is. Being small is easy, you simply don't have the coordination problems. But the moment you hit success and need to grow, you immediately are at a disadvantage compared to the big incumbents who have had decades to refine their coordination systems. The extent to which AI can provide more leverage to smaller companies allowing them to "grow" without actually crossing that coordination watershed, they will be in a much better position take on the incumbents.
  - jerf 3y ago
    "I think the AI driven development story is more about leverage than it is about wisdom." One of the things I'm going to be looking for over the next few years is whether extensive use of AI assistance will enhance the development of "wisdom" or inhibit it. I suspect the latter, based on our existing experiences with leaning too much on help, but only time will tell. If it accelerates the development of this wisdom, it will be an invaluable too; if it inhibits it, it will be a career equivalent of taking hard drugs; fun now, deadly over the long term. I'd advise those who are dabbling with it now to 1. keep an eye out on whether or not your own skills are developing and 2. consider whether there's a way to use the tool in a way that your own skills do continue to develop.
    - ryanmcgarvey 3y ago
      In my experience so far it is much more along the lines of the horse and rider than it is a useful decision maker. I'm still in charge of telling it where it go, but it takes me there. Knowing where to go and why is the important bit tied to wisdom.
blibble 3y ago
> This means big companies have to do something otherwise they will compete with ml enhanced developers. I'm sure they're terrified of competing with the legions of boilerplate generators
- illuminati1911 3y ago
  No one said anything about creating boilerplates. It's a significant advantage for developers to ask AI to solve technical problems, get right answers right away and move to a next task vs keep on scratching your head for the next 5h wondering "why it doesn't work".
  - blibble 3y ago
    > It's a significant advantage for developers to ask AI to solve technical problems I can ask my magic 8 ball too, it has about the same success rate
    - hu3 3y ago
      That's a state of the art magic 8 ball if I ever saw one. Perhaps if you provide an API to it you'll secure billions in funding in no time.
      - blibble 3y ago
        > Perhaps if you provide an API to it you'll secure billions in funding in no time. that's not a bad idea actually I just need a way to market it as some sort of AI based decision maker "extreme temperature generative AI" maybe
    - EnragedParrot 3y ago
      ChatGPT is a godsend for junior developers, it isn't very great at providing coherent answers to more complex or codebase specific questions. Maybe that will change with time but right now it's mostly useful as a learning aid.
somenameforme 3y ago
And ML enhanced problems. Use ChatGPT in a domain you're a relative expert in and you run into a million scenarios where it offers a "solution" that will do something close to what was described, but not quite - and you might even not immediately notice the problem as a domain expert. Even worse it may produce side effects suggestive that it is working as desired, when it's not. In the not-so-secret world of Stack Exchange coffee pasta, people would have other skilled humans pointing these issues out. In the world of LLMs, you risk introducing ever more code that looks perfectly correct, but isn't. What happens at scale? The net change in efficiency of LLMs will be quite interesting to see. Because unlike past technologies where there was only user error, we're dealing here with going to a calculator that will not infrequently give you an answer that's wrong, but looks right. And what sort of 'equilibrium' people will settle into with this, is still an open question.
- kaliqt 3y ago
  What I suspect is coding copilot tools and checkers will be the second pair of eyes on all this code. It just needs to be deployed and used more.
graftak 3y ago
My company just got its own instance which prevents their data from being exposed outside of that container, so it won’t be used for (public) training. Surely companies like Apple can do the same.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  If your instance is hosted by Microsoft, I doubt Apple would do the same. My suspicion is that a company like Apple would want it on-prem, or not at all. A hosted instance with a pinky promise not to peek is not attractive to a lot of large businesses out there. Your material point may still be valid. Apple could buy it, assuming MS was willing to give Apple a full copy and let them run it internally. (This would require divulging the details of its model to Apple. So I have no clue whether either of them are interested in dealing on such a basis? It would seem like a deal to me if MS could get the right price from Apple? But people a lot smarter than me make that call.)
  - insane_dreamer 3y ago
    MS could certainly make a version that runs on-prem (while still restricting inspection of the model), if it wanted to. Whether it does or not, remains to be seen.
    - bilbo0s 3y ago
      Not sure how you would do that? As soon as you load the card, all the weights are visible. You need a bit more than that, but not much, to reverse engineer the whole thing. If I had to bet, they won't allow non hosted instances of a model until they are well on their way to completing the next model. That's just my gut feeling. But again, smarter people make those calls.
worewood 3y ago
I don't see issue with big companies having to struggle against small ones.
gumballindie 3y ago
> also see it a s critical and make it centrally available to us soon Why is it critical to use a boilerplate code generator?

by Qweiuu 3y ago

classified 3y ago

I wouldn't worry about that. Our software contains so much natural stupidity that artificial intelligence, even if it existed, wouldn't have a chance in hell.

viraptor 3y ago

> This means big companies have to do something otherwise they will compete with ml enhanced developers. It's not that bad. In reality if we're looking at large tech companies, they've got senior people who know pretty much anything you want available within minutes/hours - which is something small companies just can't afford. Ml enhanced devs may be a little bit faster and get some usually-correct help, but they won't get any wisdom.

ryanmcgarvey 3y ago
I think the AI driven development story is more about leverage than it is about wisdom. Leverage from AI is derived from being able to do more with fewer people. In my experience the great slowdown of growing companies comes from hitting the communication barrier on their products - the point at which the majority of effort is spent coordinating work rather than doing work. I find that the path from majority focus on product to majority focus on coordination isn't linear, but rather more of a watershed. One day you are 80/20, the seemingly overnight after some growth you are 20/80 the other way and never look back. The advantage of being on the right side of that watershed is that you can maintain velocity and agility. Not only can you iterate quickly, but you're in a better position to change course and rebuild as needed. The left hand and the right hand require little effort to coordinate and get it done. Larger companies live and die on their ability to either find a moat large enough to protect them, or build organizational structures that let them keep scaling. It takes decades to get the culture and processes right and baked in across the board for a large company to be able to maintain any velocity and reinvent itself. This is where the gap is. Being small is easy, you simply don't have the coordination problems. But the moment you hit success and need to grow, you immediately are at a disadvantage compared to the big incumbents who have had decades to refine their coordination systems. The extent to which AI can provide more leverage to smaller companies allowing them to "grow" without actually crossing that coordination watershed, they will be in a much better position take on the incumbents.
- jerf 3y ago
  "I think the AI driven development story is more about leverage than it is about wisdom." One of the things I'm going to be looking for over the next few years is whether extensive use of AI assistance will enhance the development of "wisdom" or inhibit it. I suspect the latter, based on our existing experiences with leaning too much on help, but only time will tell. If it accelerates the development of this wisdom, it will be an invaluable too; if it inhibits it, it will be a career equivalent of taking hard drugs; fun now, deadly over the long term. I'd advise those who are dabbling with it now to 1. keep an eye out on whether or not your own skills are developing and 2. consider whether there's a way to use the tool in a way that your own skills do continue to develop.
  - ryanmcgarvey 3y ago
    In my experience so far it is much more along the lines of the horse and rider than it is a useful decision maker. I'm still in charge of telling it where it go, but it takes me there. Knowing where to go and why is the important bit tied to wisdom.

blibble 3y ago

> This means big companies have to do something otherwise they will compete with ml enhanced developers. I'm sure they're terrified of competing with the legions of boilerplate generators

illuminati1911 3y ago
No one said anything about creating boilerplates. It's a significant advantage for developers to ask AI to solve technical problems, get right answers right away and move to a next task vs keep on scratching your head for the next 5h wondering "why it doesn't work".
- blibble 3y ago
  > It's a significant advantage for developers to ask AI to solve technical problems I can ask my magic 8 ball too, it has about the same success rate
  - hu3 3y ago
    That's a state of the art magic 8 ball if I ever saw one. Perhaps if you provide an API to it you'll secure billions in funding in no time.
    - blibble 3y ago
      > Perhaps if you provide an API to it you'll secure billions in funding in no time. that's not a bad idea actually I just need a way to market it as some sort of AI based decision maker "extreme temperature generative AI" maybe
  - EnragedParrot 3y ago
    ChatGPT is a godsend for junior developers, it isn't very great at providing coherent answers to more complex or codebase specific questions. Maybe that will change with time but right now it's mostly useful as a learning aid.

somenameforme 3y ago

And ML enhanced problems. Use ChatGPT in a domain you're a relative expert in and you run into a million scenarios where it offers a "solution" that will do something close to what was described, but not quite - and you might even not immediately notice the problem as a domain expert. Even worse it may produce side effects suggestive that it is working as desired, when it's not. In the not-so-secret world of Stack Exchange coffee pasta, people would have other skilled humans pointing these issues out. In the world of LLMs, you risk introducing ever more code that looks perfectly correct, but isn't. What happens at scale? The net change in efficiency of LLMs will be quite interesting to see. Because unlike past technologies where there was only user error, we're dealing here with going to a calculator that will not infrequently give you an answer that's wrong, but looks right. And what sort of 'equilibrium' people will settle into with this, is still an open question.

kaliqt 3y ago
What I suspect is coding copilot tools and checkers will be the second pair of eyes on all this code. It just needs to be deployed and used more.

graftak 3y ago

My company just got its own instance which prevents their data from being exposed outside of that container, so it won’t be used for (public) training. Surely companies like Apple can do the same.

bilbo0s 3y ago
If your instance is hosted by Microsoft, I doubt Apple would do the same. My suspicion is that a company like Apple would want it on-prem, or not at all. A hosted instance with a pinky promise not to peek is not attractive to a lot of large businesses out there. Your material point may still be valid. Apple could buy it, assuming MS was willing to give Apple a full copy and let them run it internally. (This would require divulging the details of its model to Apple. So I have no clue whether either of them are interested in dealing on such a basis? It would seem like a deal to me if MS could get the right price from Apple? But people a lot smarter than me make that call.)
- insane_dreamer 3y ago
  MS could certainly make a version that runs on-prem (while still restricting inspection of the model), if it wanted to. Whether it does or not, remains to be seen.
  - bilbo0s 3y ago
    Not sure how you would do that? As soon as you load the card, all the weights are visible. You need a bit more than that, but not much, to reverse engineer the whole thing. If I had to bet, they won't allow non hosted instances of a model until they are well on their way to completing the next model. That's just my gut feeling. But again, smarter people make those calls.

worewood 3y ago

I don't see issue with big companies having to struggle against small ones.

gumballindie 3y ago

> also see it a s critical and make it centrally available to us soon Why is it critical to use a boilerplate code generator?