13 ms·

On a certain level it is a scam. AI slop, vibe coding, tokenmaxxing, blaming employee layoffs on AI, pretty much any comment CEOs make about AI, etc.

standardUser 5mo ago
Jargon isn't a scam. I get more and better work done with AI, to my own satisfaction and to the benefit of my employer. People using dumb terms to describe this doesn't make it less true.
- koutakun 5mo ago
  > I get more and better work done with AI, to my own satisfaction and to the benefit of my employer In the short run, because Anthropic and other providers are heavily subsidizing coding agents to maximize user base. Will your employer still benefit and be satisfied in a couple of years when Anthropic jacks up the price by 5x and dumbs down Opus to the point where 50% of changes are easier to do manually than via an agent?
  - anuramat 5mo ago
    why would anthropic do that?
    - ryantgtg 5mo ago
      The argument is that the sweet deal we're getting now, which involves Anthropic practically giving away a product while they lose lots of money, might not be sustainable for them.
- watwut 5mo ago
  But none of what OP said was jargon. All except one of those terms are things that are either harmful to employer or kind of fraud.
- jmull 5mo ago
  We're in a "both are true" situation here. AI has real benefits, that are game-changing in some areas, even if AI never improve from their current capabilities. People are claiming (whether they truly believe it or not) that AI has incredible capabilities and benefits that they don't currently have, and may never have. There's plenty of scamming going on. The fact that AI has real game-changing capabilities just makes the scams harder to detect. People tend to like to see things as more black-and-white than they actually are, and scammers take advantage of that.
libraryofbabel 5mo ago
Well yes, there is tons of AI bullshit about and all sorts of scammy behavior, but I don’t think that says anything at all either way about whether the core technology is a “scam”, theranos-style. In fact I’m not sure how it could be otherwise: of course there’s going to be all sorts of hype and scamming around a novel, rapidly-progressing and potentially transformative tech like this, even if it works. If you want an analogy, look at the history of the early railroads. Full of hype, bullshitters, scammy investments, robber-barons, unrealistic promises, and with their own legion of naysayers at the time. Yet the core technology worked and it did transform the world in the end.

standardUser 5mo ago

Jargon isn't a scam. I get more and better work done with AI, to my own satisfaction and to the benefit of my employer. People using dumb terms to describe this doesn't make it less true.

koutakun 5mo ago
> I get more and better work done with AI, to my own satisfaction and to the benefit of my employer In the short run, because Anthropic and other providers are heavily subsidizing coding agents to maximize user base. Will your employer still benefit and be satisfied in a couple of years when Anthropic jacks up the price by 5x and dumbs down Opus to the point where 50% of changes are easier to do manually than via an agent?
- anuramat 5mo ago
  why would anthropic do that?
  - ryantgtg 5mo ago
    The argument is that the sweet deal we're getting now, which involves Anthropic practically giving away a product while they lose lots of money, might not be sustainable for them.
watwut 5mo ago
But none of what OP said was jargon. All except one of those terms are things that are either harmful to employer or kind of fraud.
jmull 5mo ago
We're in a "both are true" situation here. AI has real benefits, that are game-changing in some areas, even if AI never improve from their current capabilities. People are claiming (whether they truly believe it or not) that AI has incredible capabilities and benefits that they don't currently have, and may never have. There's plenty of scamming going on. The fact that AI has real game-changing capabilities just makes the scams harder to detect. People tend to like to see things as more black-and-white than they actually are, and scammers take advantage of that.

libraryofbabel 5mo ago

Well yes, there is tons of AI bullshit about and all sorts of scammy behavior, but I don’t think that says anything at all either way about whether the core technology is a “scam”, theranos-style. In fact I’m not sure how it could be otherwise: of course there’s going to be all sorts of hype and scamming around a novel, rapidly-progressing and potentially transformative tech like this, even if it works. If you want an analogy, look at the history of the early railroads. Full of hype, bullshitters, scammy investments, robber-barons, unrealistic promises, and with their own legion of naysayers at the time. Yet the core technology worked and it did transform the world in the end.