4 ms·

while I think there is a lot to this criticism of AI (and many others as well) I was also able to create a TUI-based JVM visualizer with a step debugger in an e

while I think there is a lot to this criticism of AI (and many others as well) I was also able to create a TUI-based JVM visualizer with a step debugger in an evening for my compilers class: https://x.com/htmx_org/status/1986847755432796185 https://x.com/htmx_org/status/1986847755432796185 this is something that I could build given a few months, but would involve a lot of knowledge that I'm not particularly interested in taking up space in my increasingly old brain (especially TUI development) I gave the clanker very specific, expert directions and it turned out a tool that I think it will make the class better for my students. all to say: not all bad

guerrilla 1y ago
What did you use to do this? Something I'd like to do, while also avoiding the tedium, is to write a working x86-64 disassembler.
- recursivedoubts 1y ago
  claude
ares623 1y ago
Is that worth the negative externalities though? Genuinely asking. I’ve asked myself over and over and always came to the same conclusion.
- recursivedoubts 1y ago
  hard to know
- ChadNauseam 1y ago
  What negative externalities? Those prompts probably resulted in a tiny amount of CO2 emissions and a tiny amount of water usage. Evaporating a gram of water and emitting a milligram of CO2 seems like a good deal for making your class better for all your students.
  - fluoridation 1y ago
    >emitting a milligram of CO2 In the US, on average, generating 1 kWh produces 364.5 g of CO2. 1 kW may be somewhat pessimistic, but I think it's in the right ballpark for power consumption of DC inference. If processing the prompt took a minute of continuous inference (and I'm going to guess it took a fair bit more), that's 6 grams of CO2. >What negative externalities? Off the top of my head, * All the ways AIs can be misused, either by people who don't understand them (by asking them for advice, etc.) or by people who want to take advantage of others (spam, scams, etc.). * The power and resource usage of the above, both for inference as well as to deal with them.
    - ChadNauseam 1y ago
      > If processing the prompt took a minute of continuous inference (and I'm going to guess it took a fair bit more), that's 6 grams of CO2. Neither of us really knows, but I'm going to guess it took a fair bit less. You need to consider the marginal cost of one more prompt, not the cost of running the datacenter in the first place. And with batching, hundreds of requests are executed in parallel on the same hardware. I'll concede that a milligram was an exaggeration though. For comparison, a typical car in the US emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile. And I know few people who beat themselves up over the externalities of unnecessarily driving one mile. > * All the ways AIs can be misused, either by people who don't understand them (by asking them for advice, etc.) or by people who want to take advantage of others (spam, scams, etc.). This is not an externality because it is not a consequence of using AI for good purposes. It's like saying an externality of using a hammer to build a shed is all the ways hammers can be misused. Still, I respect you for considering the externalities of your actions. That's farther than most go. But I think they are outweighed by the benefits in this case
      - fluoridation 1y ago
        >This is not an externality because it is not a consequence of using AI for good purposes. It's like saying an externality of using a hammer to build a shed is all the ways hammers can be misused. I guess we're talking about different questions. You're talking about the externalities of using a piece of technology, while I'm talking about the externalities of a piece of technology existing.
- observationist 1y ago
  Being more specific in what you think the negative externalities are would be a good start - I see a lot of noise and upset over AI that I think is more or less overblown, nearly as much as the hype train on the other end. I'm seeing the potential for civilizational level payoffs in 5 years or less that absolutely dwarf any of the arguments and complaints I've seen so far.
  - genewitch 1y ago
    > civilizational level payoffs but first the investors must recoup their trillions, right?
    - observationist 1y ago
      Yeah, economics is weird like that, and we should probably push as hard as we can to make sure things are as fair as reasonably possible. I've got no problem with trillionaires or megacorps if the system in which they operate is fair. One thing AI is enabling is systematic uncovering of fraud and waste - we'll be able to scan omnibus bills and find corruption, track politicians, interact with the system and communicate at higher levels than before, and there's a shot at AI empowering and enfranchising people more than they've ever had a chance at before. If AI coding alone reaches its potential, then a whole class of corporations lose their leverage in the market. In 10ish years, following moore's law, phones will have enough compute and storage to trivially run your own local search and curation of the internet. Sophisticated search engines that outclass anything currently on the market, working in tandem with a personal local privacy respecting agent. That decentralizes things in such a significant way that Google and Apple and all the gatekeepers lose their ability to manipulate and distort. 20 years from now, even if we're somehow just stuck at the current levels of AI, your personal compute will be totally sufficient to provide all the curation, moderation, proactive interaction, and search capabilities without ever having to deal with ads or bots or cloudflare. There are lots of dangers, and ASI could wreck us, and militarized AI could be a doom scenario, or there could be overbroad stupid regulation that puts control of AI in the hands of a few corps or a government, but there are lots of bright future possibilities, and I don't see any indications that we're directly headed toward any particular doom.
brokencode 1y ago
AI is bad at figuring out what to do, but fantastic at actually doing it. I’ve totally transformed how I write code from writing it to myself to writing detailed instructions and having the AI do it. It’s so much faster and less cognitively demanding. It frees me up to focus on the business logic or the next change I want to make. Or to go grab a coffee.
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  I would say from my experience there's a high variability in AI's ability to actually write code unless you're just writing a lot of scripts and basic UI components.
  - wry_discontent 1y ago
    I would say this does not work in any nontrivial way from what I've seen. Even basic scripts and UI components are fucked up all the time.
    - brokencode 1y ago
      You have to learn how and where to use it. If you give it bad instructions and inadequate context, it will do a bad job.
      - lazide 1y ago
        This is the ‘you’re holding it wrong’ of LLMs.
        brokencode 1y ago
        What tool can’t you hold wrong? Literally every tool worth using in software engineering from the IDE to the debugger to the profiler takes practice and skill to use correctly. Don’t confuse AI with AGI. Treat it like the tool it is.
krackers 1y ago
I had no idea you (ceo of hmtx) were a professor. Do your students know that you live a double life writing banger tweets?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
peterhajas 1y ago
Couldn't agree more. Being a skilled operator with these tools helps you be very effective at creating new things in far less time than it would've taken you before. This is especially true if you know the architecture, but don't have the cycles to implement it yourself.

guerrilla 1y ago

What did you use to do this? Something I'd like to do, while also avoiding the tedium, is to write a working x86-64 disassembler.

recursivedoubts 1y ago
claude

ares623 1y ago

Is that worth the negative externalities though? Genuinely asking. I’ve asked myself over and over and always came to the same conclusion.

recursivedoubts 1y ago
hard to know
ChadNauseam 1y ago
What negative externalities? Those prompts probably resulted in a tiny amount of CO2 emissions and a tiny amount of water usage. Evaporating a gram of water and emitting a milligram of CO2 seems like a good deal for making your class better for all your students.
- fluoridation 1y ago
  >emitting a milligram of CO2 In the US, on average, generating 1 kWh produces 364.5 g of CO2. 1 kW may be somewhat pessimistic, but I think it's in the right ballpark for power consumption of DC inference. If processing the prompt took a minute of continuous inference (and I'm going to guess it took a fair bit more), that's 6 grams of CO2. >What negative externalities? Off the top of my head, * All the ways AIs can be misused, either by people who don't understand them (by asking them for advice, etc.) or by people who want to take advantage of others (spam, scams, etc.). * The power and resource usage of the above, both for inference as well as to deal with them.
  - ChadNauseam 1y ago
    > If processing the prompt took a minute of continuous inference (and I'm going to guess it took a fair bit more), that's 6 grams of CO2. Neither of us really knows, but I'm going to guess it took a fair bit less. You need to consider the marginal cost of one more prompt, not the cost of running the datacenter in the first place. And with batching, hundreds of requests are executed in parallel on the same hardware. I'll concede that a milligram was an exaggeration though. For comparison, a typical car in the US emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile. And I know few people who beat themselves up over the externalities of unnecessarily driving one mile. > * All the ways AIs can be misused, either by people who don't understand them (by asking them for advice, etc.) or by people who want to take advantage of others (spam, scams, etc.). This is not an externality because it is not a consequence of using AI for good purposes. It's like saying an externality of using a hammer to build a shed is all the ways hammers can be misused. Still, I respect you for considering the externalities of your actions. That's farther than most go. But I think they are outweighed by the benefits in this case
    - fluoridation 1y ago
      >This is not an externality because it is not a consequence of using AI for good purposes. It's like saying an externality of using a hammer to build a shed is all the ways hammers can be misused. I guess we're talking about different questions. You're talking about the externalities of using a piece of technology, while I'm talking about the externalities of a piece of technology existing.
observationist 1y ago
Being more specific in what you think the negative externalities are would be a good start - I see a lot of noise and upset over AI that I think is more or less overblown, nearly as much as the hype train on the other end. I'm seeing the potential for civilizational level payoffs in 5 years or less that absolutely dwarf any of the arguments and complaints I've seen so far.
- genewitch 1y ago
  > civilizational level payoffs but first the investors must recoup their trillions, right?
  - observationist 1y ago
    Yeah, economics is weird like that, and we should probably push as hard as we can to make sure things are as fair as reasonably possible. I've got no problem with trillionaires or megacorps if the system in which they operate is fair. One thing AI is enabling is systematic uncovering of fraud and waste - we'll be able to scan omnibus bills and find corruption, track politicians, interact with the system and communicate at higher levels than before, and there's a shot at AI empowering and enfranchising people more than they've ever had a chance at before. If AI coding alone reaches its potential, then a whole class of corporations lose their leverage in the market. In 10ish years, following moore's law, phones will have enough compute and storage to trivially run your own local search and curation of the internet. Sophisticated search engines that outclass anything currently on the market, working in tandem with a personal local privacy respecting agent. That decentralizes things in such a significant way that Google and Apple and all the gatekeepers lose their ability to manipulate and distort. 20 years from now, even if we're somehow just stuck at the current levels of AI, your personal compute will be totally sufficient to provide all the curation, moderation, proactive interaction, and search capabilities without ever having to deal with ads or bots or cloudflare. There are lots of dangers, and ASI could wreck us, and militarized AI could be a doom scenario, or there could be overbroad stupid regulation that puts control of AI in the hands of a few corps or a government, but there are lots of bright future possibilities, and I don't see any indications that we're directly headed toward any particular doom.

brokencode 1y ago

AI is bad at figuring out what to do, but fantastic at actually doing it. I’ve totally transformed how I write code from writing it to myself to writing detailed instructions and having the AI do it. It’s so much faster and less cognitively demanding. It frees me up to focus on the business logic or the next change I want to make. Or to go grab a coffee.

teaearlgraycold 1y ago
I would say from my experience there's a high variability in AI's ability to actually write code unless you're just writing a lot of scripts and basic UI components.
- wry_discontent 1y ago
  I would say this does not work in any nontrivial way from what I've seen. Even basic scripts and UI components are fucked up all the time.
  - brokencode 1y ago
    You have to learn how and where to use it. If you give it bad instructions and inadequate context, it will do a bad job.
    - lazide 1y ago
      This is the ‘you’re holding it wrong’ of LLMs.
      - brokencode 1y ago
        What tool can’t you hold wrong? Literally every tool worth using in software engineering from the IDE to the debugger to the profiler takes practice and skill to use correctly. Don’t confuse AI with AGI. Treat it like the tool it is.

krackers 1y ago

I had no idea you (ceo of hmtx) were a professor. Do your students know that you live a double life writing banger tweets?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

peterhajas 1y ago

Couldn't agree more. Being a skilled operator with these tools helps you be very effective at creating new things in far less time than it would've taken you before. This is especially true if you know the architecture, but don't have the cycles to implement it yourself.