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I'm skeptical of arguments like this. If we look at most impactful technologies since the year 2000, AI is not even in my top 3. Social networking, mobile compu
by _jab 1y ago
I'm skeptical of arguments like this. If we look at most impactful technologies since the year 2000, AI is not even in my top 3. Social networking, mobile computing, and cloud computing have all done more to alter society and daily life than has AI.
And yes, I recognize that AI has already created profound change, in that every software engineer now depends heavily on copilots, in that education faces a major integrity challenge, and in that search has been completely changed. I just don't think those changes are on the same level as the normalization of cutting-edge computers in everyone's pockets, as our personal relationships becoming increasingly online, nor as the enablement for startups to scale without having to maintain physical compute infrastructure.
To me, the treating of AI as "different" is still unsubstantiated. Could we get there? Absolutely. We just haven't yet. But some people start to talk about it almost in a way that's reminiscent of Pascal's Wager, as if the slight chance of a godly reward from producing AI means it is rational to devote our all to it. But I'm still holding my breath.
- c0balt 1y ago> in that every software engineer now depends heavily on copilots That is maybe a bubble around the internet. Ime most programmers in my environment rarely use and certainly aren't dependent on it. They do also not only do code monkey-esque web programming so maybe this is sampling bias though it should be enough to refute this point.
- Raphael_Amiard 1y agoCame here to say that. It’s important to remember how biased hacker news is in that regard. I’m just out of ten years in the safety critical market, and I can assure you that our clients are still a long way from being able to use those. I myself work in low level/runtime/compilers, and the output from AIs is often too erratic to be useful
- djeastm 1y ago>our clients are still a long way from being able to use those So it's simply a matter of time >often too erratic to be useful So sometimes it is useful.
- layer8 1y agoToo erratic to be net useful.
- anuramat 1y agoEven for code reviews/test generation/documentation search?
- layer8 1y agoDocumentation search I might agree, but that wasn’t really the context, I think. Code reviews is hit and miss, but maybe doesn’t hurt too much. They aren’t better at writing good tests than at writing good code in the first place.
- anuramat 1y ago> wasn't the context yeah, I'm just curious about the vibe in general > good tests are there any downsides to adding "bad tests" though? as long as you keep generated tests separate, it's basically free regression testing, and if something meaningfully breaks on a refactor, you can promote it to not-actually-slop
- OldfieldFund 1y agoI would say that the average Hacker News user is negatively biased against LLMs and does not use coding agents to their benefit. At least what I can tell from the highly upvoted articles and comments.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoIm on the core sql execution team at a database company and everyone on the team is using AI coding assistants. Certainly not doing any monkey-esque web programming.
- c0balt 1y ago> everyone on the team is using AI coding assistants. Then the tool worked for you(r team). That's great to hear and maybe gives some hope for my projects. It has just mostly been more of a time sink than an improvement ime though it appears to strongly vary by field/application. > Certainly not doing any monkey-esque web programming The point here was not to demean the user (or their usage) but rather to highlight how developers are not being dependent on LLMs as a tool. Your team presumably did the same type of work before without LLMs and won't become unable to do so if there were to become unavailable. That likely was not properly expressed in the original comment by me, sorry.
- atleastoptimal 1y agoAI has already rendered academic take-home assignments moot. No other tech has had an impact like that, even the internet.
- devmor 1y agoWhat? The internet did that ages ago. We just pretended it didn't because some students didn't know how to use Google.
- Davidzheng 1y agodisagree? I had to write essays in high school. I don't think the kids now need to if they don't want to.
- atleastoptimal 1y agoEveryone knows how to use Google. There's a difference between a corpus of data available online and an intelligent chatbot that can answer any permutation of questions with high accuracy with no manual searching or effort.
- simianwords 1y agoDo you really think the jump from books to freely globally accessible data instantly available is a smaller jump than internet to ChatGPT? This is insane!!
- raincole 1y agoIt's not just smaller, but neglectable (in comparison). In the internet era you had to parse the questions with your own brain. You just didn't necessarily need to solve them yourself. In ChatGPT era you don't even need to read the questions. At all. The questions could be written in a language you don't understand, and you still are able generate plausible answers to them.
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- galangalalgol 1y agoAdd LED lighting on there. It is easy to forget what a difference that made. The light pollution, but also just how dim houses were. CFL didn't last very long as a thing between incandescent and LED and houses lit with incandescents have a totally different feel.
- mdaniel 1y agoAnd yet: https://www.axios.com/2023/02/26/car-headlights-too-bright-led https://www.axios.com/2023/02/26/car-headlights-too-bright-l... But, for clarity, I do agree with your sentiment about their use in appropriate situations, I just have an indescribable hatred for driving at night now
- shayief 1y ago> in that every software engineer now depends heavily on copilots With many engineers using copilots and since LLMs output the most frequent patterns, it's possible that more and more software is going to look the same, which would further reinforce the same patterns. For example, emdash thing, requires additional prompts and instructions to override it. Doing anything unusual would require more effort.
- Davidzheng 1y agoOn current societal impact it might be close to the other three. But do you not think it is different in nature to other technological innovations?
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- mmmore 1y agoLLMs with instruction following have been around for 3 years. Your comment gives me "electricity and gas engines will never replace the horse" vibes. Everyone agrees AI has not radically transformed the world yet. The question is whether we should prepare for the profound impacts current technology pretty clearly presages, if not within 5 years then certainly within 10 or 25 years.
- legucy 1y agoI’m skeptical of arguments like this. If we look at most impactful technologies since the year 1980, the Web is not even in my top 3. Personal computers, spreadsheet software, and desktop publishing have all done more to alter society and daily life than has the Web. And yes, I recognize that the Web has already created profound change, in that every researcher now depends heavily on online databases, in that commerce faces a major disruption challenge, and in that information access has been completely changed. I just don’t think those changes are on the same level as the normalization of powerful computers on everyone’s desk, as our business processes becoming increasingly digitized, nor as the enablement for small businesses to produce professional-quality documents without having to maintain expensive typesetting equipment. To me, the treating of the Web as “different” is still unsubstantiated. Could we get there? Absolutely. We just haven’t yet. But some people start to talk about it almost in a way that’s reminiscent of Pascal’s Wager, as if the slight chance of a godly reward from investing in Web technologies means it is rational to devote our all to it. But I’m still holding my breath.
- m_a_g 1y agoThis is not reddit.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- srcreigh 1y ago> Could we get there? Absolutely. We just haven't yet. What else is needed then?
- tymscar 1y agoI don’t know what the answer to the Collatz conjecture is, but I know it’s not “carrot”.
- thomasfromcdnjs 1y agoPretty sure I read Economnics in one lesson because of HN, he makes great arguments about how automation never ruins economies as much as people think. "Chapter 7: The Curse of Machinery"