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Hi there! I appreciate your comment, and I remember reading your article about AI and some of the counterarguments to it helped me get over the imposter syndrom

Hi there! I appreciate your comment, and I remember reading your article about AI and some of the counterarguments to it helped me get over the imposter syndrome I was feeling. To be clear, I did not classify "all the AI-supporters" as being in those three categories, I specifically said the people posting that they are getting 10x improvements thanks to AI. Can you tell me about what you've done to no longer have any hallucinations? I notice them particularly in a language like Terraform, the LLMs add properties that do not exist. They are less common in languages like Javascript but still happen when you import libraries that are less common (e.g. DrizzleORM).

tptacek 1y ago
Can you help me understand which articles you're referring to? A link to the biggest "AI made me a 10x developer" article you've read would certainly clear this up.
- coltonv 1y ago
  My goal here was not to publicly call out any specific individual or article. I don't want to make enemies and I don't want to be cast as dunking on someone. I get that that opens me up to criticism that I'm fighting a strawman, I accept that. Your article does not specifically say 10x, but it does say this: > Kids today don’t just use agents; they use asynchronous agents. They wake up, free-associate 13 different things for their LLMs to work on, make coffee, fill out a TPS report, drive to the Mars Cheese Castle, and then check their notifications. They’ve got 13 PRs to review. Three get tossed and re-prompted. Five of them get the same feedback a junior dev gets. And five get merged. > “I’m sipping rocket fuel right now,” a friend tells me. “The folks on my team who aren’t embracing AI? It’s like they’re standing still.” He’s not bullshitting me. He doesn’t work in SFBA. He’s got no reason to lie. That's not quantifying it specifically enough to say "10x", but it is saying no uncertain terms that AI engineers are moving fast and everyone else is standing still by comparison. Your article was indeed one of the ones I specifically wanted to respond to as the language directly contributed to the anxiety I described here. It made me worry that maybe I was standing still. To me, the engineer you described as sipping rocket fuel is an example both of the "degrees of separation" concept (it confuses me you are pointing to a third party and saying they are trustworthy, why not simply describe your workflow?), and the idea that a quick burst of productivity can feel huge but it just doesn't scale in my experience. Again, can you tell me about what you've done to no longer have any hallucinations? I'm fully open to learning here. As I stated in the article, I did my best to give full AI agent coding a try, I'm open to being proven wrong and adjusting my approach.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    Wait, now you're saying I set the 10x bar? No, I did not.
    - coltonv 1y ago
      > Wait, now you're saying I set the 10x bar? No, I did not. I distinctly did not say that. I said your article was one of the ones that made me feel anxious. And it's one of the ones that spurred me to write this article. I demonstrated how your language implies a massive productivity boost from AI. Does it not? Is this not the entire point of what you wrote? That engineers who aren't using AI are crazy (literally the title) because they are missing out on all this "rocket fuel" productivity? The difference between rocket fuel and standing still has to be a pretty big improvement. The points I make here still apply, there is not some secret well of super-productivity sitting out in the open that luddites are just too grumpy to pick up and use. Those who feel they have gotten massive productivity boosts are being tricked by occasional, rare boosts in productivity. You said you solved hallucinations, could you share some of how you did that?
      - tptacek 1y ago
        I asked for an example of one of the articles you'd read that said that LLMs were turning ordinary developers into 10x developers. You cited my article. My article says nothing of the sort; I find the notion of "10x developers" repellant.
        Quarrelsome 1y ago
        how much faster does an engine on rocket fuel go, than one not on rocket fuel? The article in question[0] has the literal tag line: > My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts how much saner is someone who isn't nuts to someone who is nuts? 10x saner? What do the specific numbers matter given you're not writing a paper? You're enjoying the click bait benefits of using strong language and then acting offended when someone calls you out on it. Yes, maybe you didn't literally say "10x" but you said or quoted things in exactly that same ballpark and its worthy of a counter point like the OP has provided. They're both interesting articles with strong opinions that make the world a more interesting place so idk why you're trying to disown the strength with which you wrote your article. [0] : https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/ https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- claytongulick 1y ago
  A cursory scroll on X, LinkedIn, etc... will show you. That seemed to me be to be the author's point. His article resonated with me. After 30 years of development and dealing with hype cycles, offshoring, no-code "platforms", endless framework churn (this next version will make everything better!), coder tribes ("if you don't do typescript, you're incompetent and should be fired"), endless bickering, improper tech adopting following the FANGs (your startup with 0 users needs kubernetes?) and a gazillion other annoyances we're all familiar with, this AI stuff might be the thing that makes me retire. To be clear: it's not AI that I have a problem with. I'm actually deeply interested in it and actively researching it from a math's up approach. I'm also a big believer in it, I've implemented it in a few different projects that have had remarkable efficiency gains for my users, things like automatically extracting values from a PDF to create a structured record. It is a wonderful way to eliminate a whole class of drudgery based tasks. No, the thing that has me on the verge of throwing in the towel is the wholesale rush towards devaluing human expertise. I'm not just talking about developers, I'm talking about healthcare providers, artists, lawyers, etc... Highly skilled professionals that have, in some cases, spent their entire lives developing mastery of their craft. They demand a compensation rate commensurate to that value, and in response society gleefully says "meh, I think you can be replaced with this gizmo for a fraction of the cost." It's an insult. It would be one thing if it were true - my objection could safely be dismissed as the grumbling of a buggy whip manufacturer, however this is objectively, measurably wrong. Most of the energy of the people pushing the AI hype goes towards obscuring this. When objective reality is presented to them in irrefutable ways, the response is inevitably: "but the next version will!" It won't. Not with the current approach. The stochastic parrot will never learn to think. That doesn't mean it's not useful. It demonstrably is, it's an incredibly valuable tool for entire classes of problems, but using it as a cheap replacement for skilled professionals is madness. What will the world be left with when we drive those professionals out? Do you want an AI deciding your healthcare? Do you want a codebase that you've invested your life savings into written by an AI that can't think? How will we innovate? Who will be able to do fundamental research and create new things? Why would you bother going into the profession at all? So we're left with AIs training on increasingly polluted data, and relying on them to push us forward. It's a farce. I've been seriously considering hanging up my spurs and munching popcorn through the inevitable chaos that will come if we don't course correct.

tptacek 1y ago

Can you help me understand which articles you're referring to? A link to the biggest "AI made me a 10x developer" article you've read would certainly clear this up.

coltonv 1y ago
My goal here was not to publicly call out any specific individual or article. I don't want to make enemies and I don't want to be cast as dunking on someone. I get that that opens me up to criticism that I'm fighting a strawman, I accept that. Your article does not specifically say 10x, but it does say this: > Kids today don’t just use agents; they use asynchronous agents. They wake up, free-associate 13 different things for their LLMs to work on, make coffee, fill out a TPS report, drive to the Mars Cheese Castle, and then check their notifications. They’ve got 13 PRs to review. Three get tossed and re-prompted. Five of them get the same feedback a junior dev gets. And five get merged. > “I’m sipping rocket fuel right now,” a friend tells me. “The folks on my team who aren’t embracing AI? It’s like they’re standing still.” He’s not bullshitting me. He doesn’t work in SFBA. He’s got no reason to lie. That's not quantifying it specifically enough to say "10x", but it is saying no uncertain terms that AI engineers are moving fast and everyone else is standing still by comparison. Your article was indeed one of the ones I specifically wanted to respond to as the language directly contributed to the anxiety I described here. It made me worry that maybe I was standing still. To me, the engineer you described as sipping rocket fuel is an example both of the "degrees of separation" concept (it confuses me you are pointing to a third party and saying they are trustworthy, why not simply describe your workflow?), and the idea that a quick burst of productivity can feel huge but it just doesn't scale in my experience. Again, can you tell me about what you've done to no longer have any hallucinations? I'm fully open to learning here. As I stated in the article, I did my best to give full AI agent coding a try, I'm open to being proven wrong and adjusting my approach.
- tptacek 1y ago
  Wait, now you're saying I set the 10x bar? No, I did not.
  - coltonv 1y ago
    > Wait, now you're saying I set the 10x bar? No, I did not. I distinctly did not say that. I said your article was one of the ones that made me feel anxious. And it's one of the ones that spurred me to write this article. I demonstrated how your language implies a massive productivity boost from AI. Does it not? Is this not the entire point of what you wrote? That engineers who aren't using AI are crazy (literally the title) because they are missing out on all this "rocket fuel" productivity? The difference between rocket fuel and standing still has to be a pretty big improvement. The points I make here still apply, there is not some secret well of super-productivity sitting out in the open that luddites are just too grumpy to pick up and use. Those who feel they have gotten massive productivity boosts are being tricked by occasional, rare boosts in productivity. You said you solved hallucinations, could you share some of how you did that?
    - tptacek 1y ago
      I asked for an example of one of the articles you'd read that said that LLMs were turning ordinary developers into 10x developers. You cited my article. My article says nothing of the sort; I find the notion of "10x developers" repellant.
      - Quarrelsome 1y ago
        how much faster does an engine on rocket fuel go, than one not on rocket fuel? The article in question[0] has the literal tag line: > My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts how much saner is someone who isn't nuts to someone who is nuts? 10x saner? What do the specific numbers matter given you're not writing a paper? You're enjoying the click bait benefits of using strong language and then acting offended when someone calls you out on it. Yes, maybe you didn't literally say "10x" but you said or quoted things in exactly that same ballpark and its worthy of a counter point like the OP has provided. They're both interesting articles with strong opinions that make the world a more interesting place so idk why you're trying to disown the strength with which you wrote your article. [0] : https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/ https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
claytongulick 1y ago
A cursory scroll on X, LinkedIn, etc... will show you. That seemed to me be to be the author's point. His article resonated with me. After 30 years of development and dealing with hype cycles, offshoring, no-code "platforms", endless framework churn (this next version will make everything better!), coder tribes ("if you don't do typescript, you're incompetent and should be fired"), endless bickering, improper tech adopting following the FANGs (your startup with 0 users needs kubernetes?) and a gazillion other annoyances we're all familiar with, this AI stuff might be the thing that makes me retire. To be clear: it's not AI that I have a problem with. I'm actually deeply interested in it and actively researching it from a math's up approach. I'm also a big believer in it, I've implemented it in a few different projects that have had remarkable efficiency gains for my users, things like automatically extracting values from a PDF to create a structured record. It is a wonderful way to eliminate a whole class of drudgery based tasks. No, the thing that has me on the verge of throwing in the towel is the wholesale rush towards devaluing human expertise. I'm not just talking about developers, I'm talking about healthcare providers, artists, lawyers, etc... Highly skilled professionals that have, in some cases, spent their entire lives developing mastery of their craft. They demand a compensation rate commensurate to that value, and in response society gleefully says "meh, I think you can be replaced with this gizmo for a fraction of the cost." It's an insult. It would be one thing if it were true - my objection could safely be dismissed as the grumbling of a buggy whip manufacturer, however this is objectively, measurably wrong. Most of the energy of the people pushing the AI hype goes towards obscuring this. When objective reality is presented to them in irrefutable ways, the response is inevitably: "but the next version will!" It won't. Not with the current approach. The stochastic parrot will never learn to think. That doesn't mean it's not useful. It demonstrably is, it's an incredibly valuable tool for entire classes of problems, but using it as a cheap replacement for skilled professionals is madness. What will the world be left with when we drive those professionals out? Do you want an AI deciding your healthcare? Do you want a codebase that you've invested your life savings into written by an AI that can't think? How will we innovate? Who will be able to do fundamental research and create new things? Why would you bother going into the profession at all? So we're left with AIs training on increasingly polluted data, and relying on them to push us forward. It's a farce. I've been seriously considering hanging up my spurs and munching popcorn through the inevitable chaos that will come if we don't course correct.