3 ms·

Did you read the article?

dhorthy 9mo ago
I read it. i agree this is out of touch. Not because the things its saying are wrong, but because the things its saying have been true for almost a year now. They are not "getting worse" they "have been bad". I am staggered to find this article qualifies as "news". If you're going to write about something that's been true and discussed widely online for a year+, at least have the awareness/integrity to not brand it as "this new thing is happening".
- flumpcakes 9mo ago
  Perhaps the advertising money from the big AI money sinks is running out and we are finally seeing more AI scepticism articles.
- minimaxir 9mo ago
  > They are not "getting worse" they "have been bad". The agents available in January 2025 were much much worse than the agents available in November 2025.
  - Snuggly73 9mo ago
    Yes, and for some cases no. The models are gotten very good, but I rather have an obviously broken pile of crap that I can spot immediately, than something that is deep fried with RL to always succeed, but has subtle problems that someone will lgtm :( I guess its not much different with human written code, but the models seem to have weirdly inhuman failures - like, you would just skim some code, cause you just cant believe that anyone can do it wrong, and it turns out to be.
    - minimaxir 9mo ago
      That's what test cases are for, which is good for both humans and nonhumans.
      - Snuggly73 9mo ago
        Test cases are great, but not a total solution. Can you write a test case for the add_numbers(a, b) function?
        minimaxir 9mo ago
        Of course you can. You can write test cases for anything. Even an add_numbers function can have bugs, e.g. you have to ensure the inputs are numbers. Most coding agents would catch this in loosely-typed languages.
        Snuggly73 9mo ago
        Well, for some reason it doesnt let me respond to the child comments :( The problem (which should be obvious) is that with a/b real you cant construct an exhaustive input/output set. The test case can just prove the presence of a bug, but not its absence. Another category of problems that you cant just test and have to prove is concurrency problems. And so forth and so on.
- Snuggly73 9mo ago
  I mean "have been bad" doesnt exclude "getting worse" right :)

I read it. i agree this is out of touch. Not because the things its saying are wrong, but because the things its saying have been true for almost a year now. They are not "getting worse" they "have been bad". I am staggered to find this article qualifies as "news". If you're going to write about something that's been true and discussed widely online for a year+, at least have the awareness/integrity to not brand it as "this new thing is happening".

flumpcakes 9mo ago
Perhaps the advertising money from the big AI money sinks is running out and we are finally seeing more AI scepticism articles.
minimaxir 9mo ago
> They are not "getting worse" they "have been bad". The agents available in January 2025 were much much worse than the agents available in November 2025.
- Snuggly73 9mo ago
  Yes, and for some cases no. The models are gotten very good, but I rather have an obviously broken pile of crap that I can spot immediately, than something that is deep fried with RL to always succeed, but has subtle problems that someone will lgtm :( I guess its not much different with human written code, but the models seem to have weirdly inhuman failures - like, you would just skim some code, cause you just cant believe that anyone can do it wrong, and it turns out to be.
  - minimaxir 9mo ago
    That's what test cases are for, which is good for both humans and nonhumans.
    - Snuggly73 9mo ago
      Test cases are great, but not a total solution. Can you write a test case for the add_numbers(a, b) function?
      - minimaxir 9mo ago
        Of course you can. You can write test cases for anything. Even an add_numbers function can have bugs, e.g. you have to ensure the inputs are numbers. Most coding agents would catch this in loosely-typed languages.
      - Snuggly73 9mo ago
        Well, for some reason it doesnt let me respond to the child comments :( The problem (which should be obvious) is that with a/b real you cant construct an exhaustive input/output set. The test case can just prove the presence of a bug, but not its absence. Another category of problems that you cant just test and have to prove is concurrency problems. And so forth and so on.
Snuggly73 9mo ago
I mean "have been bad" doesnt exclude "getting worse" right :)