4 ms·

Pretty much. It's missing a tiny detail though. One side is demanding we keep giving hundreds of billions to them and at the same time promising the other side'

by ares623 9mo ago

Pretty much. It's missing a tiny detail though. One side is demanding we keep giving hundreds of billions to them and at the same time promising the other side's unemployment.

lelanthran 9mo ago
> One side is demanding we keep giving hundreds of billions to them and at the same time promising the other side's unemployment. That's a valid take. The problem is that there are, at this time, so many valid takes that it's hard to determine which are more valid/accurate than the other. FWIW, I think this is more insightful than most of the takes I've seen, which basically amount to "side-1: we're moving to a higher level of abstraction" and "side-2: it's not higher abstraction, just less deterministic codegen".
- lubujackson 9mo ago
  I'm on the "higher level of abstraction" side, but that seems to be very much at odds with however Anthropic is defining it. Abstraction is supposed to give you better high-level clarity at the expense of low-level detail. These $20,000 burning, Gas Town-style orchestration matrices do anything but simplify high level concerns. In fact, they seem committed building extremely complex, low-level harnesses of testing and validation and looping cycles around agents upon agents to avoid actually trying to deal with whatever specific problem they are trying to solve. How do you solve a problem you refuse to define explicitly? We end up with these Goodhart's Law solutions: they hit all of the required goals and declare victory, but completely fail in every reasonable metric that matters. Which I guess is an approach you make when you are selling agents by the token, but I don't see why anyone else is enamored with this approach.
FridgeSeal 9mo ago
You’re copping downvotes for this, but you’re not wrong. “It will get better, and then we will use it to make many of you unemployed” Colour-me-shocked that swathes of this industry might have an issue with that.
kristiandupont 9mo ago
I don't feel that I see this anywhere but if so, I guess I'm in a third camp. I am "pro" in the sense that I believe that LLM's are making traditional programming obsolete. In fact there isn't any doubt in my mind. However, I am "anti" in the sense that I am not excited or happy about it at all! And I certainly don't encourage anyone to throw money at accelerating that process.
- bopbopbop7 9mo ago
  > I believe that LLM's are making traditional programming obsolete. In fact there isn't any doubt in my mind. Is this what AI psychosis looks like? How can anyone that is a half decent programmer actually believe that English + non-deterministic code generator will replace "traditional" programming?
  - bux93 9mo ago
    That's also my take, vibe coding as a non-deterministic 4GL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_... 4GLs are productive yes, but also limited, and still require someone to come up with specs that are both informed by (business) realities and engineering considerations. But this is also an arena where bosses expect magic to happen when people are involved; just pronounce a new strategy, and your business magically transforms - without any of that pesky 'figuring out what to do' or 'aligning stakeholders' or 'wondering what drugs the c-suite is doing'. Let LLMs write the specs!
- simianwords 9mo ago
  Of all takes, I find this most honest and believable. Not many would want a disruption of their stable life
kuerbel 9mo ago
And no-one ever stops and thinks about what it means to give up so much control. Maybe one of those companies will come out on top. The others produce garbage in comparison. Capital loves a single throat to choke and doesn't gently pluralise. So of course you buy the best service. And it really can generate any code, get it working, bug free. People unlearn coding on this level. And some day, poof, Microsoft is coming around and having some tiny problem that it can generate a working Office clone. Or whatever, it's just an example. This technology will never be used to set anyone free. Never. The entity that owns the generator owns the effective means of production, even if everyone else can type prompts. The same technology could, in a different political and economic universe, widen human autonomy. But that universe would need strong commons, enforced interoperability, and a cultural refusal to outsource understanding. And why is this different from abstractions that came before? There are people out there understanding what compilers are doing. They understand the model from top to bottom. Tools like compilers extended human agency while preserving a path to mastery. AI code generation offers capability while dissolving the ladder behind you. We are not merely abstracting labor. We are abstracting comprehension itself. And once comprehension becomes optional, it rapidly becomes rare. Once it becomes rare, it becomes political. And once it becomes political, it will not be distributed generously.
- stoneforger 9mo ago
  Nah bro it makes them productive. Get with the program. Amazing . Fantastic. Of course it resonates with idiots because they can't think beyond the vicinity of their own greed. We are doomed , noone gives two cents. Idiocracy is here and it's not Costco.
  - kuerbel 9mo ago
    Sorry! Of course. What an amazing tech. And look, the CEOs are promising us a good future! Maybe we can cool the datacenters with Brawndo. Let me ask chat if that is a good idea.
- nopurpose 9mo ago
  You could make same argument in "information superhighway" days, but it turned out to be the opposite: no company monopolised internet services, despite trying hard. With so many companies in AI race it is already pretty competitive landscape and it doesnt seem likely to me that any of them can build deep enough moat to come ahead.

by ares623 9mo ago

Pretty much. It's missing a tiny detail though. One side is demanding we keep giving hundreds of billions to them and at the same time promising the other side's unemployment.

lelanthran 9mo ago

> One side is demanding we keep giving hundreds of billions to them and at the same time promising the other side's unemployment. That's a valid take. The problem is that there are, at this time, so many valid takes that it's hard to determine which are more valid/accurate than the other. FWIW, I think this is more insightful than most of the takes I've seen, which basically amount to "side-1: we're moving to a higher level of abstraction" and "side-2: it's not higher abstraction, just less deterministic codegen".

lubujackson 9mo ago
I'm on the "higher level of abstraction" side, but that seems to be very much at odds with however Anthropic is defining it. Abstraction is supposed to give you better high-level clarity at the expense of low-level detail. These $20,000 burning, Gas Town-style orchestration matrices do anything but simplify high level concerns. In fact, they seem committed building extremely complex, low-level harnesses of testing and validation and looping cycles around agents upon agents to avoid actually trying to deal with whatever specific problem they are trying to solve. How do you solve a problem you refuse to define explicitly? We end up with these Goodhart's Law solutions: they hit all of the required goals and declare victory, but completely fail in every reasonable metric that matters. Which I guess is an approach you make when you are selling agents by the token, but I don't see why anyone else is enamored with this approach.

FridgeSeal 9mo ago

You’re copping downvotes for this, but you’re not wrong. “It will get better, and then we will use it to make many of you unemployed” Colour-me-shocked that swathes of this industry might have an issue with that.

kristiandupont 9mo ago

I don't feel that I see this anywhere but if so, I guess I'm in a third camp. I am "pro" in the sense that I believe that LLM's are making traditional programming obsolete. In fact there isn't any doubt in my mind. However, I am "anti" in the sense that I am not excited or happy about it at all! And I certainly don't encourage anyone to throw money at accelerating that process.

bopbopbop7 9mo ago
> I believe that LLM's are making traditional programming obsolete. In fact there isn't any doubt in my mind. Is this what AI psychosis looks like? How can anyone that is a half decent programmer actually believe that English + non-deterministic code generator will replace "traditional" programming?
- bux93 9mo ago
  That's also my take, vibe coding as a non-deterministic 4GL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_... 4GLs are productive yes, but also limited, and still require someone to come up with specs that are both informed by (business) realities and engineering considerations. But this is also an arena where bosses expect magic to happen when people are involved; just pronounce a new strategy, and your business magically transforms - without any of that pesky 'figuring out what to do' or 'aligning stakeholders' or 'wondering what drugs the c-suite is doing'. Let LLMs write the specs!
simianwords 9mo ago
Of all takes, I find this most honest and believable. Not many would want a disruption of their stable life

kuerbel 9mo ago

And no-one ever stops and thinks about what it means to give up so much control. Maybe one of those companies will come out on top. The others produce garbage in comparison. Capital loves a single throat to choke and doesn't gently pluralise. So of course you buy the best service. And it really can generate any code, get it working, bug free. People unlearn coding on this level. And some day, poof, Microsoft is coming around and having some tiny problem that it can generate a working Office clone. Or whatever, it's just an example. This technology will never be used to set anyone free. Never. The entity that owns the generator owns the effective means of production, even if everyone else can type prompts. The same technology could, in a different political and economic universe, widen human autonomy. But that universe would need strong commons, enforced interoperability, and a cultural refusal to outsource understanding. And why is this different from abstractions that came before? There are people out there understanding what compilers are doing. They understand the model from top to bottom. Tools like compilers extended human agency while preserving a path to mastery. AI code generation offers capability while dissolving the ladder behind you. We are not merely abstracting labor. We are abstracting comprehension itself. And once comprehension becomes optional, it rapidly becomes rare. Once it becomes rare, it becomes political. And once it becomes political, it will not be distributed generously.

stoneforger 9mo ago
Nah bro it makes them productive. Get with the program. Amazing . Fantastic. Of course it resonates with idiots because they can't think beyond the vicinity of their own greed. We are doomed , noone gives two cents. Idiocracy is here and it's not Costco.
- kuerbel 9mo ago
  Sorry! Of course. What an amazing tech. And look, the CEOs are promising us a good future! Maybe we can cool the datacenters with Brawndo. Let me ask chat if that is a good idea.
nopurpose 9mo ago
You could make same argument in "information superhighway" days, but it turned out to be the opposite: no company monopolised internet services, despite trying hard. With so many companies in AI race it is already pretty competitive landscape and it doesnt seem likely to me that any of them can build deep enough moat to come ahead.