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But software works only 99% of the time. For some definition of work: 99% of days it's run, 99% of clicks, 99% of CPU time in given component, 99% of versions r

But software works only 99% of the time. For some definition of work: 99% of days it's run, 99% of clicks, 99% of CPU time in given component, 99% of versions released and linked into some business' production binary, 99% of github tags, 99% of commits, 99% of software that that one guy says is battle-tested

Groxx 2y ago
Software works so much more than 99% of the time that it's a rather deliberate strawman to claim otherwise. Newly-"AI"-branded things that I have touched work substantially less than 90% of the time. There are like 3 orders of magnitude difference, even people who aren't paying any attention at all are noticing it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
BobbyJo 2y ago
Do you have to write your code presuming that sometimes 'a + b' will be wrong? I don't. Software pretty much always "works" when you consider the definition of work to be "does what the programmer told it too". AI? Not so much.
- wruza 2y ago
  It’s all about limits and edge cases. a+b may “fail” at INT_MAX and at 0.1+0.2. You don’t `==` your doubles, you don’t (a+b)/2 your mid, and you don’t ask ai to just book you vacation. You ask it to “collect average sentiment from `these_5k_reviews()` ignoring apparently fake ones, which are defined as <…>”. You don’t care about determinism because it’s a statistical instrument.
  - BobbyJo 2y ago
    > and you don’t ask ai to just book you vacation. You ask it to “collect average sentiment from `these_5k_reviews()` ignoring apparently fake ones, which are defined as <…>”. That's exactly my point. You have to interact directly with the A.I. and be aware of what its doing.
simonw 2y ago
That's not true. If software works correctly today then users can expect it to work correctly tomorrow. If it doesn't work any more that's a bug.
jjmarr 2y ago
If twenty components work 99% of the time, then they only have an 0.99^20 = 82% chance of working as a collective. If your 5.1 GHz (billion instructions per second) CPU had a 0.00000001% chance of failing at a given instruction, you'd have a 40% chance of a crash every second. If a flight had a 1% chance of killing everyone aboard 10 million people/day * 1% = 100,000 people would die every day from a plane.
- diatone 2y ago
  Gamblers fallacy

Groxx 2y ago

Software works so much more than 99% of the time that it's a rather deliberate strawman to claim otherwise. Newly-"AI"-branded things that I have touched work substantially less than 90% of the time. There are like 3 orders of magnitude difference, even people who aren't paying any attention at all are noticing it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

BobbyJo 2y ago

Do you have to write your code presuming that sometimes 'a + b' will be wrong? I don't. Software pretty much always "works" when you consider the definition of work to be "does what the programmer told it too". AI? Not so much.

wruza 2y ago
It’s all about limits and edge cases. a+b may “fail” at INT_MAX and at 0.1+0.2. You don’t `==` your doubles, you don’t (a+b)/2 your mid, and you don’t ask ai to just book you vacation. You ask it to “collect average sentiment from `these_5k_reviews()` ignoring apparently fake ones, which are defined as <…>”. You don’t care about determinism because it’s a statistical instrument.
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  > and you don’t ask ai to just book you vacation. You ask it to “collect average sentiment from `these_5k_reviews()` ignoring apparently fake ones, which are defined as <…>”. That's exactly my point. You have to interact directly with the A.I. and be aware of what its doing.

simonw 2y ago

That's not true. If software works correctly today then users can expect it to work correctly tomorrow. If it doesn't work any more that's a bug.

jjmarr 2y ago

If twenty components work 99% of the time, then they only have an 0.99^20 = 82% chance of working as a collective. If your 5.1 GHz (billion instructions per second) CPU had a 0.00000001% chance of failing at a given instruction, you'd have a 40% chance of a crash every second. If a flight had a 1% chance of killing everyone aboard 10 million people/day * 1% = 100,000 people would die every day from a plane.

diatone 2y ago
Gamblers fallacy