7 ms·

Interesting to see an opinion piece on the register pointing out 3 camps, none of which apply to most people I know who work in software development. Mainly th

Interesting to see an opinion piece on the register pointing out 3 camps, none of which apply to most people I know who work in software development. Mainly that ai is a useful tool. Sometimes it is magical but has limits and is often wrong. It can be a great illustrator of sunk cost fallacy when working on very complex problems. But light years faster and more useful than googling for solutions when faced with a difficult debugging challenge. On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not. I think it is a miss that software development is completely omitted in this article, esp a tech or tech adjacent publication that's been around for forever.

catigula 1y ago
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bachmeier 1y ago
> On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not. I agree sort of, but on the other hand we don't know their true cost, whether that's the out-of-pocket expenses, or the pollution and high electricity/water costs that will result.
- marcinzm 1y ago
  Of course we know, it’s not magic, but some people like to spread FUD to further their own agendas.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- AlexandrB 1y ago
  You forget to include the information pollution cost. AI slop is becoming inescapable in Google search results. So this new tool is completely obliterating the usefulness of old tools by flooding them with VC-subsidized crap.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- monster_truck 1y ago
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- petralithic 1y ago
  There are lots of things people do that are much more polluting and less useful or efficient than AI, such as eating meat, driving cars, traveling on airplanes etc, the latter two particularly in terms of business use cases especially when we have video call technology and remote work.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Read on then — the author suggests a 4th camp that I believe you (and I as a matter of fact) can agree with. "I propose a fourth: AI is now as good as it's going to get, and that's neither as good nor as bad as its fans and haters think…" I suppose I disagree with "as good as it's going to get" … but for the time being (this decade?) this might be correct.
- mh- 1y ago
  Taking out the fact we're talking about "AI" for the moment.. doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? (That's directed at El Reg, not you.) Hard to take the rest of it seriously with them taking a position like that. I can't think of a time that's been true for any technology in my career. Whether they were ones I found useful or not.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? No? When new tech arrives there is always a bunch of low hanging fruit around so there is quick progress immediately afterwards, but then it flatlines relatively quickly and progress is as slow as usual again. So its a safe bet that progress will slow down to the usual level sooner or later, and it seems to be around now for text models, as this flatlining happens faster the more you invest into it since you exhaust the low hanging fruit faster.
    - mh- 1y ago
      Sure, slowing is natural for the reason you say. But the statement we're commenting on is: > AI is now as good as it's going to get And that's just silly, from my point of view.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        Why is it silly? Cars haven't fundamentally changed in the past 50 years, they have gotten a lot better but not in a game changing way, society still functions the same with cars as 50 years ago. I see the same thing with text models, you can say they improve but not in a game changing way, and you have the same scenario as cars. It wouldn't be wrong for a person to say "cars are as good as they ever going to get" 50 years ago, in his lifetime he was right, nothing happened with cars that would force him to change his habits during his life. But up to 50 years ago cars changed quite quickly, so you could say it is weird to say cars wouldn't start flying or such in 50 years, but here we are, nothing dramatically changed.

catigula 1y ago

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bachmeier 1y ago

> On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not. I agree sort of, but on the other hand we don't know their true cost, whether that's the out-of-pocket expenses, or the pollution and high electricity/water costs that will result.

marcinzm 1y ago
Of course we know, it’s not magic, but some people like to spread FUD to further their own agendas.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
AlexandrB 1y ago
You forget to include the information pollution cost. AI slop is becoming inescapable in Google search results. So this new tool is completely obliterating the usefulness of old tools by flooding them with VC-subsidized crap.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
monster_truck 1y ago
[flagged]
petralithic 1y ago
There are lots of things people do that are much more polluting and less useful or efficient than AI, such as eating meat, driving cars, traveling on airplanes etc, the latter two particularly in terms of business use cases especially when we have video call technology and remote work.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Read on then — the author suggests a 4th camp that I believe you (and I as a matter of fact) can agree with. "I propose a fourth: AI is now as good as it's going to get, and that's neither as good nor as bad as its fans and haters think…" I suppose I disagree with "as good as it's going to get" … but for the time being (this decade?) this might be correct.

mh- 1y ago
Taking out the fact we're talking about "AI" for the moment.. doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? (That's directed at El Reg, not you.) Hard to take the rest of it seriously with them taking a position like that. I can't think of a time that's been true for any technology in my career. Whether they were ones I found useful or not.
- Jensson 1y ago
  > doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? No? When new tech arrives there is always a bunch of low hanging fruit around so there is quick progress immediately afterwards, but then it flatlines relatively quickly and progress is as slow as usual again. So its a safe bet that progress will slow down to the usual level sooner or later, and it seems to be around now for text models, as this flatlining happens faster the more you invest into it since you exhaust the low hanging fruit faster.
  - mh- 1y ago
    Sure, slowing is natural for the reason you say. But the statement we're commenting on is: > AI is now as good as it's going to get And that's just silly, from my point of view.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      Why is it silly? Cars haven't fundamentally changed in the past 50 years, they have gotten a lot better but not in a game changing way, society still functions the same with cars as 50 years ago. I see the same thing with text models, you can say they improve but not in a game changing way, and you have the same scenario as cars. It wouldn't be wrong for a person to say "cars are as good as they ever going to get" 50 years ago, in his lifetime he was right, nothing happened with cars that would force him to change his habits during his life. But up to 50 years ago cars changed quite quickly, so you could say it is weird to say cars wouldn't start flying or such in 50 years, but here we are, nothing dramatically changed.