3 ms·

TLDR: Greg Kroah-Hartman says that last month something magical happened and AI output is no longer "slop".

by supernes 6mo ago

abletonlive 6mo ago
[flagged]
- saltcured 6mo ago
  Based on your last sentences, I am pretty sure you will dismiss me. But, I have a null hypothesis to consider... Like you implied, I think a personal threshold crossing gives this false impression that "everything changed" this month or last month or last year. Like you said, the main thing that changed in one particular month was the observer. But, perhaps the AI epiphany is not waking up to recognize how good AI already was. Instead, it could be when an individual's standards degrade such that the same AI usage is seen as a benefit instead of a liability. Both interpretations yield the same basic pattern of adoption and commentary that we see right now. The difference will be in the long-term outcome. Some years from now, will we see that this mass adoption yielded a renaissance of productivity and quality, or a cataclysm of slop-induced liability and loss?
  - jason_oster 6mo ago
    I have to point out that having "high personal standards" is its own fatal flaw. The worst quality code I've seen comes from developers with little self awareness or humility. They call themselves artisans and take no responsibility for the minefield of bugs and security vulnerabilities left in their wake. The Internet is held together with bubblegum and baling wire [1] [2] because artisans reject self improvement. These same artisans complain about how bad AI generated code is. The AI is trained on your bad artisan code. It's like they are looking in the mirror for the first time and being disgusted by what they see. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/29/the-internet-is-held-together-with-bubble-gum-and-baling-wire/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/29/the-internet-is-held-toget... [2]: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/11/the-internet-is-held-together-with-spit-baling-wire/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/11/the-internet-is-held-tog...
  - keeda 6mo ago
    I know appeal to authority can be a fallacy, but there is something to be said for appeal to a preponderence of concurring authorities. Multiple notable personalities known for their technical chops have been endorsing AI assisted coding, so it's hard to argue that every one of them lowered their standards. It's been fun seeing the cognitive dissonance in anti-LLM tech circles as technical giants that they idolized, from Torvalds through Carmack all the way up to Knuth, say something positive about AI, let alone sing praises of it!
georgemcbay 6mo ago
IMO around December of last year LLM output (for coding at least, not for everything) went from "almost 100% certainly slop" to "probably not slop, if you asked for the right thing while being aware of context limitations". A lot of people seem stuck with their older (correct at the time) views of them still always producing slop. FWIW I am more of an AI doomer (in the sense that I think the economic results from them will be disastrous for knowledge workers given our political realities) than booster, but in terms of utility to get work done they did pass a clear inflection point quite recently.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  > if you asked for the right thing while being aware of context limitations So, still pretty likely to produce slop in a large majority of cases If the most useful place for them is where you've already specced things out to that degree of precision then they aren't that useful? Speccing things to that precision is the time consuming and difficult work anyways, after all.
  - georgemcbay 6mo ago
    I think LLMs currently need to be used by someone who knows what they are doing to produce value, but the jump they made from being endless slop machines to useful tools in the right hands is enough for me to assume it is only a matter of time until they will be useful tools in the hands of even the untrained masses. I wish this wasn't true because I think it will economically upend the industry in which I have a career, but sadly the universe doesn't care what I wish.
    - mjr00 6mo ago
      > assume it is only a matter of time until they will be useful tools in the hands of even the untrained masses. IMO this vastly overestimates how good the "untrained masses" are at thinking in a logical, mathematical way. Apparently something as basic as Calculus II has a fail rate of ~50% in most universities.
ramesh31 6mo ago
>TLDR: Greg Kroah-Hartman says that last month something magical happened and AI output is no longer "slop". Opus 4.6 has been a step change. It's simply never wrong anymore. You may need to continue giving it further clarification as to what you want, but it never makes mistakes with what it intends to do now.
- binarymax 6mo ago
  It’s wrong. It made large mistakes on my code literally yesterday.
  - brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
    Wrong context
    - binarymax 6mo ago
      No. Aside from just making an algorithm that didn’t even run, it refused to use an MCP that it had registered in the same context session.
    - 9864247888754 6mo ago
      [dead]
    - banannaise 6mo ago
      Ah, the eternal handwave for anything the AI doesn't do well - it must be user error.
- Balinares 6mo ago
  Yo, just because you can't tell when Claude is wrong, doesn't mean it's right. I do agree that the Q1 2026 models in general have passed a threshold, but goodness almighty Opus 4.6 still screws up a lot.
  - no_shadowban_6 6mo ago
throwaway2027 6mo ago
I noticed it last December.
- no_shadowban_6 6mo ago
  paradigm shift, bro.
- BatFastard 6mo ago
  December for me too, went from hallucinating a lot, to doing really well. I guess it was opus 4.5?
dragonelite 6mo ago
Let me guess the big tech cheque finally cleared?

TLDR: Greg Kroah-Hartman says that last month something magical happened and AI output is no longer "slop".

abletonlive 6mo ago

[flagged]

saltcured 6mo ago
Based on your last sentences, I am pretty sure you will dismiss me. But, I have a null hypothesis to consider... Like you implied, I think a personal threshold crossing gives this false impression that "everything changed" this month or last month or last year. Like you said, the main thing that changed in one particular month was the observer. But, perhaps the AI epiphany is not waking up to recognize how good AI already was. Instead, it could be when an individual's standards degrade such that the same AI usage is seen as a benefit instead of a liability. Both interpretations yield the same basic pattern of adoption and commentary that we see right now. The difference will be in the long-term outcome. Some years from now, will we see that this mass adoption yielded a renaissance of productivity and quality, or a cataclysm of slop-induced liability and loss?
- jason_oster 6mo ago
  I have to point out that having "high personal standards" is its own fatal flaw. The worst quality code I've seen comes from developers with little self awareness or humility. They call themselves artisans and take no responsibility for the minefield of bugs and security vulnerabilities left in their wake. The Internet is held together with bubblegum and baling wire [1] [2] because artisans reject self improvement. These same artisans complain about how bad AI generated code is. The AI is trained on your bad artisan code. It's like they are looking in the mirror for the first time and being disgusted by what they see. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/29/the-internet-is-held-together-with-bubble-gum-and-baling-wire/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/29/the-internet-is-held-toget... [2]: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/11/the-internet-is-held-together-with-spit-baling-wire/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/11/the-internet-is-held-tog...
- keeda 6mo ago
  I know appeal to authority can be a fallacy, but there is something to be said for appeal to a preponderence of concurring authorities. Multiple notable personalities known for their technical chops have been endorsing AI assisted coding, so it's hard to argue that every one of them lowered their standards. It's been fun seeing the cognitive dissonance in anti-LLM tech circles as technical giants that they idolized, from Torvalds through Carmack all the way up to Knuth, say something positive about AI, let alone sing praises of it!

georgemcbay 6mo ago

IMO around December of last year LLM output (for coding at least, not for everything) went from "almost 100% certainly slop" to "probably not slop, if you asked for the right thing while being aware of context limitations". A lot of people seem stuck with their older (correct at the time) views of them still always producing slop. FWIW I am more of an AI doomer (in the sense that I think the economic results from them will be disastrous for knowledge workers given our political realities) than booster, but in terms of utility to get work done they did pass a clear inflection point quite recently.

bluefirebrand 6mo ago
> if you asked for the right thing while being aware of context limitations So, still pretty likely to produce slop in a large majority of cases If the most useful place for them is where you've already specced things out to that degree of precision then they aren't that useful? Speccing things to that precision is the time consuming and difficult work anyways, after all.
- georgemcbay 6mo ago
  I think LLMs currently need to be used by someone who knows what they are doing to produce value, but the jump they made from being endless slop machines to useful tools in the right hands is enough for me to assume it is only a matter of time until they will be useful tools in the hands of even the untrained masses. I wish this wasn't true because I think it will economically upend the industry in which I have a career, but sadly the universe doesn't care what I wish.
  - mjr00 6mo ago
    > assume it is only a matter of time until they will be useful tools in the hands of even the untrained masses. IMO this vastly overestimates how good the "untrained masses" are at thinking in a logical, mathematical way. Apparently something as basic as Calculus II has a fail rate of ~50% in most universities.

ramesh31 6mo ago

>TLDR: Greg Kroah-Hartman says that last month something magical happened and AI output is no longer "slop". Opus 4.6 has been a step change. It's simply never wrong anymore. You may need to continue giving it further clarification as to what you want, but it never makes mistakes with what it intends to do now.

binarymax 6mo ago
It’s wrong. It made large mistakes on my code literally yesterday.
- brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
  Wrong context
  - binarymax 6mo ago
    No. Aside from just making an algorithm that didn’t even run, it refused to use an MCP that it had registered in the same context session.
  - 9864247888754 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - banannaise 6mo ago
    Ah, the eternal handwave for anything the AI doesn't do well - it must be user error.
Balinares 6mo ago
Yo, just because you can't tell when Claude is wrong, doesn't mean it's right. I do agree that the Q1 2026 models in general have passed a threshold, but goodness almighty Opus 4.6 still screws up a lot.
- no_shadowban_6 6mo ago

throwaway2027 6mo ago

I noticed it last December.

no_shadowban_6 6mo ago
paradigm shift, bro.
BatFastard 6mo ago
December for me too, went from hallucinating a lot, to doing really well. I guess it was opus 4.5?

dragonelite 6mo ago

Let me guess the big tech cheque finally cleared?