4 ms·

> I realize the author qualified his or her statement with "know how to harness it," which feels like a cop-out I'm seeing an awful lot in recent explorations o

> I realize the author qualified his or her statement with "know how to harness it," which feels like a cop-out I'm seeing an awful lot in recent explorations of AI's relationship with productivity. "You're doing AI wrong" is the new "you're doing agile wrong" which was the new "you're doing XP wrong".

bitwize 1y ago
More like the new "you're holding it wrong"
pjmlp 1y ago
Unfortunely many of us are old enough to know how those wrong eventually became the new normal, the wrong way.
CuriouslyC 1y ago
At this point I don't even care to argue with people who disagree with me on this. History will decide the winner and if you think you're not on the losing side, best of luck.
- jamesnorden 1y ago
  I'd say you're a bit biased.
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    I am biased, but by my personal experience, not the desire to sell anything to anyone. I don't even have products for sale right now, I'm just building free things to try and help people figure out how to ride this wave safely.
    - svieira 1y ago
      > I don't even have products for sale right now The link in your bio is a long series of tools for various personas with a "schedule a consultation" link next to each one. I'm not sure what "consultation" is if not "a product". But maybe they're all free?
      - CuriouslyC 1y ago
        Please find a post where I've shilled anything that I charge money for. I explicitly don't mention that I do consulting here in the spirit of the community. I'm fine with being called out for a strongly pro-AI stance, but I would appreciate not having my patterns of frankness/honesty/community engagement called into question spuriously.
        svieira 1y ago
        I do not think you are shilling anything at all - merely that you are biased and that bias is somewhat driven by a source of income that you link to your hacker news identity. If you were a Forth hacker with a Forth consultancy, the same thing would apply. That said, I did not intend to call out your bias as a means of questioning your honesty and I apologize if my communication came across as doing so!
        aaronbrethorst 1y ago
        That you, in turn, do not immediately disclose your inevitable biases, makes me dubious of your motives. We all have biases. It’s important to be clear eyed and forthright
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  I've been watching bad technology decisions win since before some of the people on this forum were born.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  I mean, there's no real sharp edge here. If these things ultimately get to the point where they are demonstrably useful, sceptics will presumably adopt them. Given that the ecosystem changes drastically month-to-month, there's little obvious benefit to being an early adopter.
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    Actually I think the pascal's wager goes the other way. We're in a giant game of musical chairs in the software industry, and the people who will keep getting seats at each round are the overall most skilled and capable of using AI, and this is going to bias more towards AI skill over time. The consequence in this model of not being an early AI adopter is that unless you're a rock star performer already, you're going to fall behind the curve and get ejected from the game of software engineering early. The people who stay in the game until the end will be the ones that have vision now. If I'm wrong, then all the people who learned AI now will have just wasted a few years on a low value skill, which is honestly the story of the entire history of tech (hello flash devs?), i.e. not an existential threat to engineers.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      > The consequence in this model of not being an early AI adopter is that unless you're a rock star performer already, you're going to fall behind the curve and get ejected from the game of software engineering early. This is assuming that AI _currently improves productivity_. There's little empirical evidence for this (there is evidence that it causes people to believe that they themselves are more productive, but that's not very useful; _all sorts_ of snake oil cause people to believe that they themselves are more productive). My baseline assumption right now would be that AI does not, in aggregate, improve productivity (at least in software engineering; it may in some other fields); if it ever _does_, then sure, I'll probably start using it?
      - CuriouslyC 1y ago
        AI 100% does currently improve productivity when used correctly. You can say that's a no true Scotsman, but you can look at my company GitHub page to see that I'm delivering. AI delivers results when you understand its characteristics and build a workflow around it designed to play to its strengths. AI doesn't deliver huge results when you try to shoehorn it into AI unfriendly workflows. Even if you took the Stanford 95% study on its face (which you shouldn't, there are a lot of methodological issues), there are still 5% of projects that are returning value, and it's not random, it's process differences.
SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago
You mean "It can’t be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong"
- slaymaker1907 1y ago
  My favorite is when someone is demoing something that AI can do and they have to feed it some gigantic prompt. At that point, I often ask whether the AI has really made things faster/better or if we've just replaced the old way with an opaque black box.
  - naasking 1y ago
    The gigantic prompt has a side benefit though: it's documentation on design and rationale that otherwise would typically not get written.
    - hackable_sand 1y ago
      Null argument. I'd rather have developers who do system design before the system implementation.
      - naasking 1y ago
        Developers who don't document typically do system design beforehand, but that design process often just isn't documented/recorded properly, that's my point. A development environment that records prompt history and lets you use an LLM to query it is a goldmine for auditing and avoiding the pitfalls of Chesterson's fence.
    - ruszki 1y ago
      Until now, it was a code smell if you need those often. There are exceptions to that, but those are a small minority. Also, design and rationale what humans need is different than what LLMs need. Even what is needed according to humans writing code/documentation and what’s needed for reading is different, that’s why we have that many bad documentation. There are ton of Apache projects whose documentation is rather a burden than helpful. They are long and absolutely useless.

bitwize 1y ago

More like the new "you're holding it wrong"

pjmlp 1y ago

Unfortunely many of us are old enough to know how those wrong eventually became the new normal, the wrong way.

CuriouslyC 1y ago

At this point I don't even care to argue with people who disagree with me on this. History will decide the winner and if you think you're not on the losing side, best of luck.

jamesnorden 1y ago
I'd say you're a bit biased.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  I am biased, but by my personal experience, not the desire to sell anything to anyone. I don't even have products for sale right now, I'm just building free things to try and help people figure out how to ride this wave safely.
  - svieira 1y ago
    > I don't even have products for sale right now The link in your bio is a long series of tools for various personas with a "schedule a consultation" link next to each one. I'm not sure what "consultation" is if not "a product". But maybe they're all free?
    - CuriouslyC 1y ago
      Please find a post where I've shilled anything that I charge money for. I explicitly don't mention that I do consulting here in the spirit of the community. I'm fine with being called out for a strongly pro-AI stance, but I would appreciate not having my patterns of frankness/honesty/community engagement called into question spuriously.
      - svieira 1y ago
        I do not think you are shilling anything at all - merely that you are biased and that bias is somewhat driven by a source of income that you link to your hacker news identity. If you were a Forth hacker with a Forth consultancy, the same thing would apply. That said, I did not intend to call out your bias as a means of questioning your honesty and I apologize if my communication came across as doing so!
        aaronbrethorst 1y ago
        That you, in turn, do not immediately disclose your inevitable biases, makes me dubious of your motives. We all have biases. It’s important to be clear eyed and forthright
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
I've been watching bad technology decisions win since before some of the people on this forum were born.
rsynnott 1y ago
I mean, there's no real sharp edge here. If these things ultimately get to the point where they are demonstrably useful, sceptics will presumably adopt them. Given that the ecosystem changes drastically month-to-month, there's little obvious benefit to being an early adopter.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  Actually I think the pascal's wager goes the other way. We're in a giant game of musical chairs in the software industry, and the people who will keep getting seats at each round are the overall most skilled and capable of using AI, and this is going to bias more towards AI skill over time. The consequence in this model of not being an early AI adopter is that unless you're a rock star performer already, you're going to fall behind the curve and get ejected from the game of software engineering early. The people who stay in the game until the end will be the ones that have vision now. If I'm wrong, then all the people who learned AI now will have just wasted a few years on a low value skill, which is honestly the story of the entire history of tech (hello flash devs?), i.e. not an existential threat to engineers.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    > The consequence in this model of not being an early AI adopter is that unless you're a rock star performer already, you're going to fall behind the curve and get ejected from the game of software engineering early. This is assuming that AI _currently improves productivity_. There's little empirical evidence for this (there is evidence that it causes people to believe that they themselves are more productive, but that's not very useful; _all sorts_ of snake oil cause people to believe that they themselves are more productive). My baseline assumption right now would be that AI does not, in aggregate, improve productivity (at least in software engineering; it may in some other fields); if it ever _does_, then sure, I'll probably start using it?
    - CuriouslyC 1y ago
      AI 100% does currently improve productivity when used correctly. You can say that's a no true Scotsman, but you can look at my company GitHub page to see that I'm delivering. AI delivers results when you understand its characteristics and build a workflow around it designed to play to its strengths. AI doesn't deliver huge results when you try to shoehorn it into AI unfriendly workflows. Even if you took the Stanford 95% study on its face (which you shouldn't, there are a lot of methodological issues), there are still 5% of projects that are returning value, and it's not random, it's process differences.

SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago

You mean "It can’t be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong"

slaymaker1907 1y ago
My favorite is when someone is demoing something that AI can do and they have to feed it some gigantic prompt. At that point, I often ask whether the AI has really made things faster/better or if we've just replaced the old way with an opaque black box.
- naasking 1y ago
  The gigantic prompt has a side benefit though: it's documentation on design and rationale that otherwise would typically not get written.
  - hackable_sand 1y ago
    Null argument. I'd rather have developers who do system design before the system implementation.
    - naasking 1y ago
      Developers who don't document typically do system design beforehand, but that design process often just isn't documented/recorded properly, that's my point. A development environment that records prompt history and lets you use an LLM to query it is a goldmine for auditing and avoiding the pitfalls of Chesterson's fence.
  - ruszki 1y ago
    Until now, it was a code smell if you need those often. There are exceptions to that, but those are a small minority. Also, design and rationale what humans need is different than what LLMs need. Even what is needed according to humans writing code/documentation and what’s needed for reading is different, that’s why we have that many bad documentation. There are ton of Apache projects whose documentation is rather a burden than helpful. They are long and absolutely useless.