7 ms·

i usually say this about all assistive ai, not just coding. you still need a close-to-expert human at the keyboard who can detect hallucinations. a great answer

i usually say this about all assistive ai, not just coding. you still need a close-to-expert human at the keyboard who can detect hallucinations. a great answer can only be deemed so by someone already very knowledgeable in the technical / deep subject matter.

fifilura 2y ago
Isn't this similar to how for example the food industry has developed. You don't need a baker to make bread, but you need a "food technician" to monitor the bread making machines.
- chii 2y ago
  and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough. So you end up with factory white bread - amazingly fluffy, stores for unusually long without going stale and very shelf stable without refrigeration, has little to no nutrition, but tastes amazing. it's because the type of product that is suited for industrialized, low skill but high automation production is a very different product from artisanal production (which is what sourdough is - you can't easily use automation for sourdough). I reckon ai coded products will have similarities.
  - Ringz 2y ago
    > but tastes amazing What’s amazing to one person might not be to another. Is it rich and nuanced like a well-made, hand-crafted German sourdough bread (hard to get these days, nearly impossible in South Africa), or just overly sweet and processed?
  - nitwit005 2y ago
    Making a lot of sandwich bread didn't somehow made them incapable of making other breads. They'd happily mass produce whatever type of bread people wanted, with whatever method people wanted, if they'd pay for it. Instead people by the cheap sandwich bread.
  - fifilura 2y ago
    No one questions that hand made bread tastes better, just as hand crafted code will always be better in some areas. But will we need the entire army of "coders" that we currently have?
  - eru 2y ago
    > and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough. Germany factory produced sourdough bread is good. (It's better than lots of artisanal stuff in other countries.)
    - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
      If "other countriers" is "the UK" [which you mentioned in another comment] then that makes perfect sense: UK bread is uniformly shite, whether artisanal or not, so much so that I can tell you the one place where I've had decent bread in the last ten years (a sandwich shop in Canary Warf, in the train station; don't know if it's still there). The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK. And I'm nowhere near a baking enthusiast, I just make it at home so I can eat tolerably good bread. But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough. Although I bet the Germans make great pumpernikel.
      - eru 2y ago
        Yes, the UK is part of the other countries. However, I managed to get good bread in London. So it's not completely uniformly bad; just generally bad. (They had some great Ficelle at a small bakery in one of those markets under the rail arches near the Bermondsey beer mile. I think it was 'Little Bread Pedlar', but don't quote me on this. Their other baked goods were also tasty. But this was in 2017.) > The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK. Interesting that you complain about oversalting. We put quite a lot of salt into our wheat/rye-mixed sourdough here in Singapore; partially for taste but also partially to retard the rapid fermentation you get in the local climate. > But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough. You can also get artisanal bread in Germany, and you can get arbitrarily fancy there. If you are in Berlin, try Domberger Brotwerk. (Their yeasted cakes and (open) sandwiches are also great.) You can get decent-ish bread in the countries you mentioned, though I think it's all rather white and wheat-y? I prefer at least some rye mixed in. (So I might prefer a German factory produced Mischbrot over an artisanal white wheat; even though the latter might be a better example of its style.) My point is not that German factory produced bread is the best bread ever. It is not. My point is that it's decent. Decent enough to deny the statement 'and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough.'
  - xxs 2y ago
    >has little to no nutrition, No, it's full of carbohydrates, it might be lacking B vitamins and what not but energy/nutrition it does have. In some cases it would be sweetened with sugar (so both glucose/fructose) What you explain is mostly the demand, though, in north europe the black bread (incl. rye) is common for instance.
- friendzis 2y ago
  Nope, that's quite an opposite. Machines are designed to be as repeatable as possible with deterministic controls. Food engineer then monitors some meta parameters to gauge process deviations. Whereas GPTs are built to be as unrepeatable as possible with non-deterministic controls.
- sksrbWgbfK 2y ago
  At least the bread making machine is predictable. But you now have shitty bread, and a technician that has no knowledge of whether or not the bread is acceptable or not. Exactly like LLMs, we're throwing away the past and forget why it was this way.
  - eru 2y ago
    German factory produced bread is better than most of the 'artisanal' stuff I can buy in Singapore (and most places around the world). So I wouldn't blame the machines for bad bread.
    - fifilura 2y ago
      My impression is that Asian bread culture in general is very different. (Where "different" may be an euphemism) But I don't really have the insights, so I'd love an introduction.
      - eru 2y ago
        I just happen to live in Singapore at the moment. German supermarket (factory produced) bread is also better than most of what you can get in the UK. It's just that German consumers demand a certain level of quality in their sourdough, and the market is big enough for people to build machines to deliver that quality at a good price. Yes, bread here in Singapore is a bit sad. (But we got lots of other great food options to make up for that.)
- xxs 2y ago
  Making bread is like implementing an algorithm, the machines are designed by humans, the parameters are dial in by humans, they are serviced/maintained by humans. The technicians are monitoring the results. I don't think the analogy is any good.

fifilura 2y ago

Isn't this similar to how for example the food industry has developed. You don't need a baker to make bread, but you need a "food technician" to monitor the bread making machines.

chii 2y ago
and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough. So you end up with factory white bread - amazingly fluffy, stores for unusually long without going stale and very shelf stable without refrigeration, has little to no nutrition, but tastes amazing. it's because the type of product that is suited for industrialized, low skill but high automation production is a very different product from artisanal production (which is what sourdough is - you can't easily use automation for sourdough). I reckon ai coded products will have similarities.
- Ringz 2y ago
  > but tastes amazing What’s amazing to one person might not be to another. Is it rich and nuanced like a well-made, hand-crafted German sourdough bread (hard to get these days, nearly impossible in South Africa), or just overly sweet and processed?
- nitwit005 2y ago
  Making a lot of sandwich bread didn't somehow made them incapable of making other breads. They'd happily mass produce whatever type of bread people wanted, with whatever method people wanted, if they'd pay for it. Instead people by the cheap sandwich bread.
- fifilura 2y ago
  No one questions that hand made bread tastes better, just as hand crafted code will always be better in some areas. But will we need the entire army of "coders" that we currently have?
- eru 2y ago
  > and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough. Germany factory produced sourdough bread is good. (It's better than lots of artisanal stuff in other countries.)
  - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
    If "other countriers" is "the UK" [which you mentioned in another comment] then that makes perfect sense: UK bread is uniformly shite, whether artisanal or not, so much so that I can tell you the one place where I've had decent bread in the last ten years (a sandwich shop in Canary Warf, in the train station; don't know if it's still there). The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK. And I'm nowhere near a baking enthusiast, I just make it at home so I can eat tolerably good bread. But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough. Although I bet the Germans make great pumpernikel.
    - eru 2y ago
      Yes, the UK is part of the other countries. However, I managed to get good bread in London. So it's not completely uniformly bad; just generally bad. (They had some great Ficelle at a small bakery in one of those markets under the rail arches near the Bermondsey beer mile. I think it was 'Little Bread Pedlar', but don't quote me on this. Their other baked goods were also tasty. But this was in 2017.) > The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK. Interesting that you complain about oversalting. We put quite a lot of salt into our wheat/rye-mixed sourdough here in Singapore; partially for taste but also partially to retard the rapid fermentation you get in the local climate. > But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough. You can also get artisanal bread in Germany, and you can get arbitrarily fancy there. If you are in Berlin, try Domberger Brotwerk. (Their yeasted cakes and (open) sandwiches are also great.) You can get decent-ish bread in the countries you mentioned, though I think it's all rather white and wheat-y? I prefer at least some rye mixed in. (So I might prefer a German factory produced Mischbrot over an artisanal white wheat; even though the latter might be a better example of its style.) My point is not that German factory produced bread is the best bread ever. It is not. My point is that it's decent. Decent enough to deny the statement 'and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough.'
- xxs 2y ago
  >has little to no nutrition, No, it's full of carbohydrates, it might be lacking B vitamins and what not but energy/nutrition it does have. In some cases it would be sweetened with sugar (so both glucose/fructose) What you explain is mostly the demand, though, in north europe the black bread (incl. rye) is common for instance.
friendzis 2y ago
Nope, that's quite an opposite. Machines are designed to be as repeatable as possible with deterministic controls. Food engineer then monitors some meta parameters to gauge process deviations. Whereas GPTs are built to be as unrepeatable as possible with non-deterministic controls.
sksrbWgbfK 2y ago
At least the bread making machine is predictable. But you now have shitty bread, and a technician that has no knowledge of whether or not the bread is acceptable or not. Exactly like LLMs, we're throwing away the past and forget why it was this way.
- eru 2y ago
  German factory produced bread is better than most of the 'artisanal' stuff I can buy in Singapore (and most places around the world). So I wouldn't blame the machines for bad bread.
  - fifilura 2y ago
    My impression is that Asian bread culture in general is very different. (Where "different" may be an euphemism) But I don't really have the insights, so I'd love an introduction.
    - eru 2y ago
      I just happen to live in Singapore at the moment. German supermarket (factory produced) bread is also better than most of what you can get in the UK. It's just that German consumers demand a certain level of quality in their sourdough, and the market is big enough for people to build machines to deliver that quality at a good price. Yes, bread here in Singapore is a bit sad. (But we got lots of other great food options to make up for that.)
xxs 2y ago
Making bread is like implementing an algorithm, the machines are designed by humans, the parameters are dial in by humans, they are serviced/maintained by humans. The technicians are monitoring the results. I don't think the analogy is any good.