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I believe this is overly skeptical. While the tech plainly isn't there yet it's easy to see where things are going. Unlike the voice assistants of old, the newe

by lumost 3y ago

I believe this is overly skeptical. While the tech plainly isn't there yet it's easy to see where things are going. Unlike the voice assistants of old, the newer ai tools can be blended into radically different use cases with relatively little work. The big problems which are blocking these products from leaving the impressive demo stage is hallucinations, quality, and constraints. To my knowledge these are all solvable, albeit expensive.

wg0 3y ago
And how accurate they are? An image generator that never generates what you have in mind and you have to convince yourself with the result by accepting it and move on? A Q&A engine who's every answer should be reviewed by an expert or else? A code generator that might generate code that has serious logical bugs or making calls to functions and libraries that don't exist or even might have syntax errors so to be useful, you have to have the above or average knowledge of that language to correct the output?
- madsbuch 3y ago
  This comment is reminiscent of the critical receival of Wikipedia. I spend most of my academic years studying type systems. Unless you work on space crafts or blockchain tech, that level of security is not needed. Modern typesystems is about DX rather than assuring correctness. It is easy to be pessimistic on new technology. Sometimes it is merited. Oftentimes it is noise and needless rant.
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  I have a friend who does marketing for their eshop using AI images turned into videos. They get almost exactly what they had in mind every single time. I use ChatGPT and Copilot for software development daily and it's not giving me any functions that don't exist. Tune your custom instructions. And yes, sure - it shouldn't be used by junior devs in the current state. But it accelerates the seniors so much it's unbelievable.
  - wg0 3y ago
    I cannot deny the productivity boost for seniors though.
    - lumost 3y ago
      biggest win for me as a senior engineer is the ability to quickly prototype something in a new framework/language. In these cases, I generally know what I want and what "good" looks like - but I'm missing context on the exact incantations for the framework. Alternatively, maybe I'm missing some best practices - or the best practices I know are no longer applicable. GPT-4 is fantastic at taking a detailed requirement/question from an expert user and giving a good answer. Curiously, it sometimes doesn't respond well if it perceives one as a non-expert user - it'll start lecturing on BS, or avoid giving an answer.

by lumost 3y ago

wg0 3y ago

And how accurate they are? An image generator that never generates what you have in mind and you have to convince yourself with the result by accepting it and move on? A Q&A engine who's every answer should be reviewed by an expert or else? A code generator that might generate code that has serious logical bugs or making calls to functions and libraries that don't exist or even might have syntax errors so to be useful, you have to have the above or average knowledge of that language to correct the output?

madsbuch 3y ago
This comment is reminiscent of the critical receival of Wikipedia. I spend most of my academic years studying type systems. Unless you work on space crafts or blockchain tech, that level of security is not needed. Modern typesystems is about DX rather than assuring correctness. It is easy to be pessimistic on new technology. Sometimes it is merited. Oftentimes it is noise and needless rant.
throwaway11460 3y ago
I have a friend who does marketing for their eshop using AI images turned into videos. They get almost exactly what they had in mind every single time. I use ChatGPT and Copilot for software development daily and it's not giving me any functions that don't exist. Tune your custom instructions. And yes, sure - it shouldn't be used by junior devs in the current state. But it accelerates the seniors so much it's unbelievable.
- wg0 3y ago
  I cannot deny the productivity boost for seniors though.
  - lumost 3y ago
    biggest win for me as a senior engineer is the ability to quickly prototype something in a new framework/language. In these cases, I generally know what I want and what "good" looks like - but I'm missing context on the exact incantations for the framework. Alternatively, maybe I'm missing some best practices - or the best practices I know are no longer applicable. GPT-4 is fantastic at taking a detailed requirement/question from an expert user and giving a good answer. Curiously, it sometimes doesn't respond well if it perceives one as a non-expert user - it'll start lecturing on BS, or avoid giving an answer.