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How many other people here had some “dazzling” in-house AI tool quietly fade away because it simply wasn’t useful? Where I work the AI hype faded and executive
by BuyMyBitcoins 2y ago
How many other people here had some “dazzling” in-house AI tool quietly fade away because it simply wasn’t useful? Where I work the AI hype faded and executive leadership went back to the tried and true “just outsource this to overseas contractors” method of trying to reduce staffing costs.
- forgotoldacc 2y agoThe company I work at went all in on ChatGPT subscriptions to help programmers. They tried to get us to use it for debugging and everything. People went from using it nonstop to maybe using it once a week. All subscriptions were canceled and it's basically relegated to toy status now.
- bhhaskin 2y agoIt's just not that good beyond basic tasks.
- TuringNYC 2y ago>> It's just not that good beyond basic tasks. A ton of dev work is basic tasks, esp writing unit tests.
- faizshah 2y agoIt’s not even good at writing unit tests. It’s good at writing bad unit tests but that’s not the same thing.
- energy123 2y agoHave you tried o1-pro or o1-2024-12-17?
- tjpnz 2y agoIME the tests these tools write are complete shit and need to be rewritten by hand.
- otabdeveloper4 2y agoI get you hate writing unit tests (we all do), but in reality it's a more technically difficult and intricate problem than writing business logic code itself. Testing is the very last place I'd trust an AI.
- hamandcheese 2y agoThe hard part is knowing what to test. Once I do, AIs do a pretty good job at doing most of the typing for me.
- benterix 2y agoActually writing tests often requires more contextual knowledge than writing code itself.
- tessierashpool9 2y agowriting useful unit tests is not basic at all. it's only basic if it's purpose is to lift the test coverage.
- blast 2y agoThis is unrelated but I just wanted to thank you for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901622 as it's too late to reply there. You put your finger on something really interesting there!
- tessierashpool9 2y agoprobably the last comment i'd have expected an explicit thank you for. but anyway, you're welcome. care to share why it feels so relevant to you?
- blast 2y agoOnce I read your comment I could feel that quality (something uncanny valley about his "empathy") in those videos, which I hadn't picked up on before you pointed it out.
- quacker 2y agoAgreed. I finally tried Github Copilot for a bit at work. It felt like babysitting a bad developer. I have no confidence in the correctness of the code it produces, so everything requires careful review. Sometimes it spits out very broken code on non trivial tasks. I’m still figuring out if/how it can make me more productive. First impression is it’s more a drain on productivity than not.
- bhhaskin 2y agoI have found it does a ok job of writing simple bash utility scripts. Stuff like "I need a bash script that saves my current git branch into a temp file, then another script to create a new git branch based off the value in the file"
- RSHEPP 2y agoI would guess most people in leadership have no actual clue how they would replace the human in the seat with AI. They are riding the hype that the companies who provide the tools are putting out, but when it comes time to execute they don't have a plan. The steps between generated code to running in production is completely being ignored.
- BuyMyBitcoins 2y agoIronically, LLM’s seem most suited towards replacing many of the functions middle managers perform. But those folks would never allow their own role to be outsourced or automated away.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoThat's not really the dynamic. If director A used to oversee 3 teams, and she discovers that with AI she can now oversee 6 or 9 teams just as efficiently, she's not going to avoid doing it out solidarity with manager B who's looking for space to move up the ladder.
- benterix 2y agoI'd say it's even more complex. Middle-level management exists because CXOs don't want to deal with their employees but at the same time want them to under control. I don't believe CXOs can trust machines to be as efficient at controlling people as managers. And then CXOs would have to deal with these machines that control people which introduces a new class of problems.
- tbrownaw 2y ago> have no actual clue how they would replace the human in the seat with AI That's not how it works. It's not "your job is done by an AI now", it's "you have an AI to help with these specific tasks, so the team is now half the size and you each get twice as much work".
- anothernewdude 2y agoI'm hoping the work in fixing AI hype projects is just as lucrative as fixing overseas contracting projects has been.