6 ms·

>> We should be better than genAI. > Why exactly? I think the top reason for most people is so that they're worth hiring. If you offer no more than an AI, wha

by beej71 4mo ago

>> We should be better than genAI. > Why exactly? I think the top reason for most people is so that they're worth hiring. If you offer no more than an AI, what is your value? Is scotty79 human? Was this written by you? Or are you just an AI? And if you are human and wrote it, why did you do that when an AI could do it better than you? And if an AI could do it better, why even communicate with you? I could just go talk to Claude. Other reasons might be to push the SOTA past what an genAI can do. Or to produce human work in human society. Maybe someday we'll be past needing to be hired to eat, and then maybe we just stop worrying and let genAI be better than all of us. But I find that to be undesirable. > And you are definitely not better than you + AI. I think this is what I'm saying. If you're not better, you're just in the way. If you're not better, then you < you + AI. Here's an example: early ChatGPT sucked at remotely complex jq. I wanted a function to do fuzzy comparisons between JSON objects, and it just could not get it right. I didn't speak jq, so it was just me pasting errors and output and cutting code--zero value add. Eventually I gave up. I then spent 3 hours working on learning jq and and came up with a more robust and capable solution than ChatGPT had been working toward. Now you're going to correctly say that ChatGPT didn't have enough training data to perform well with this relatively new and relatively infrequently-used language. But my point is that you need to be better than it so you can do novel things that it can't. All this assumes, of course, that the AI-bro future of AI doing everything doesn't come to pass. If it does, it'll be global economic collapse and we can just go back to feudalism. > I no longer say I wrote a program Other management verbs work well here, I think. "Produced", "oversaw", "managed development of", etc. > In the end I believe the content is the king. I think so, too. The question is, do you have anything to offer, or should I just go to a bot?

scotty79 4mo ago
[flagged]
- beej71 4mo ago
  > Now I just point out behavior that I want to be different and the model figures it out. Often surprisingly quickly. This seems to have low-to-zero value in the medium- to long-term. Probably some 90% of the population has the ability to sit in their living room and ask a genAI to build things. Why do I need to use your software? If I liked it, I'd just have my AI clone it. And if everyone can just groom dogs (using this to mean "non-information work"), the value of that goes through the floor, too. > I see AIs as providing quality (better) and humans as providing flavor Humans are perhaps better than AI at providing flavor? > I see myself now way more useful as contributing unique ideas of what could exist and how (on the high level) it could work. Another example of being better. > Except perhaps a bit of taste when it comes to directory layout and dependencies selection. And another. > I'm sure this comment would be an easier read if the bot read it for you and relied the ideas and information it contains I'm not sure that's the case, but if it were and that's what I was doing, there'd be no point in human flavor. :(
  - scotty79 4mo ago
    > This seems to have low-to-zero value in the medium- to long-term. On one hand, I don't think so. Because idea guys seemed to be doing well even in a world where it's super expensive to convert the idea into anything of value. On the other regardless of what you do you can't earn money if the customer for whatever you are trying to sell has no money to pay you and that might be the case if a lot of people lose their income stream and nobody replaces it with something else. > Probably some 90% of the population has the ability to sit in their living room and ask a genAI to build things. Why do I need to use your software? If I liked it, I'd just have my AI clone it. Yes. And that's the beauty of it. You won't clone my software. Because it's mine. I won't even show it to you, let alone sell it or give it to you. But I'll happily sit in your living room with you to help you build one for yourself. Provided that you'll compensate me for my time and effort. Most software of the future will have userbase of 1. Everybody can exercise, yet people hire trainers. Everyone can live, yet people hire couches for everything imaginable. Can AI be a couch? Some day, but people stubbornly like human touch in that role. > And if everyone can just groom dogs (using this to mean "non-information work"), the value of that goes through the floor, too. My point is, jobs can be invented out of thin air if there's money around to spend. And they were. And they will be. > Humans are perhaps better than AI at providing flavor? Yes. And it might stay like that for a while longer. Just because we have billions of somewhat unique brains in stock. >> Except perhaps a bit of taste when it comes to directory layout and dependencies selection. > And another. Am I to take pride in my skill of directory naming? Am I to tie my self-worth with that? I don't think that's prudent. It will go away soon anyways. I'm already learning new worthy dependencies from what AI built for me. And it does quite reasonable directory naming when prompted already. >> I'm sure this comment would be an easier read if the bot read it for you and relied the ideas and information it contains > I'm not sure that's the case, You can try. Don't be afraid to experiment. It might be bad, but you might have ideas how to make it a bit better. You can tell agent your ideas and see how they pan out. > but if it were and that's what I was doing, there'd be no point in human flavor. If the human has interesting flavor to provide it tends to show up even in the finished product. Regardless of whether machine that built it was made of people and processes or just weights and loops.
    - 4mo ago
- queenkjuul 4mo ago
  I will be sure to die before living in your future
  - solid_fuel 4mo ago
    Right? What a hideous and repulsive vision of the future. No humanity, just artifice and comfortable lies. I’ll take genuine human society any day. I would pay for any tools that block “ai agents” from talking to me. Hell I would pay for a tool right now to filter ai slop from the feeds.
    - scotty79 4mo ago
      Oh no. Comfort. How will we ever suffer it! I don't like lies. So I won't be optimizing for lies. But I also don't like garbage. So I'll be optimizing for filtering it out. Even if the source of garbage are genuine humans. I had a suspicion some time ago that this craving for genuine has masochistic foundations. You just provided me with another point in the pointcloud, I'm trying to infer the shape of reality out of. > Hell I would pay for a tool right now to filter ai slop from the feeds. Agent can build one for you. Even today. But the first step is to take full control of your feed sources. If you are browsing cookie cutter websites with a cookie cutter browser, it might be hard to do.
      - beej71 4mo ago
        > Oh no. Comfort. How will we ever suffer it! You jest, but this is the human condition. People in comfort suffer all the time. It's the basis for the expression "familiarity breeds contempt". You might have someone who has everything they ever wanted, and yet they will still say, "And yet..." This is why people react so strongly. They sense that having their every need taken care of is a special type of Hell. There was a episode of the "new" Twilight Zone in the 80s that used this device, I believe. And the "masochism" is part of that. There is no light without the darkness. People at the equator will never feel the joy of springtime; one must have known the cold of winter in order to do so.
        4mo ago

by beej71 4mo ago

scotty79 4mo ago

[flagged]

beej71 4mo ago
> Now I just point out behavior that I want to be different and the model figures it out. Often surprisingly quickly. This seems to have low-to-zero value in the medium- to long-term. Probably some 90% of the population has the ability to sit in their living room and ask a genAI to build things. Why do I need to use your software? If I liked it, I'd just have my AI clone it. And if everyone can just groom dogs (using this to mean "non-information work"), the value of that goes through the floor, too. > I see AIs as providing quality (better) and humans as providing flavor Humans are perhaps better than AI at providing flavor? > I see myself now way more useful as contributing unique ideas of what could exist and how (on the high level) it could work. Another example of being better. > Except perhaps a bit of taste when it comes to directory layout and dependencies selection. And another. > I'm sure this comment would be an easier read if the bot read it for you and relied the ideas and information it contains I'm not sure that's the case, but if it were and that's what I was doing, there'd be no point in human flavor. :(
- scotty79 4mo ago
  > This seems to have low-to-zero value in the medium- to long-term. On one hand, I don't think so. Because idea guys seemed to be doing well even in a world where it's super expensive to convert the idea into anything of value. On the other regardless of what you do you can't earn money if the customer for whatever you are trying to sell has no money to pay you and that might be the case if a lot of people lose their income stream and nobody replaces it with something else. > Probably some 90% of the population has the ability to sit in their living room and ask a genAI to build things. Why do I need to use your software? If I liked it, I'd just have my AI clone it. Yes. And that's the beauty of it. You won't clone my software. Because it's mine. I won't even show it to you, let alone sell it or give it to you. But I'll happily sit in your living room with you to help you build one for yourself. Provided that you'll compensate me for my time and effort. Most software of the future will have userbase of 1. Everybody can exercise, yet people hire trainers. Everyone can live, yet people hire couches for everything imaginable. Can AI be a couch? Some day, but people stubbornly like human touch in that role. > And if everyone can just groom dogs (using this to mean "non-information work"), the value of that goes through the floor, too. My point is, jobs can be invented out of thin air if there's money around to spend. And they were. And they will be. > Humans are perhaps better than AI at providing flavor? Yes. And it might stay like that for a while longer. Just because we have billions of somewhat unique brains in stock. >> Except perhaps a bit of taste when it comes to directory layout and dependencies selection. > And another. Am I to take pride in my skill of directory naming? Am I to tie my self-worth with that? I don't think that's prudent. It will go away soon anyways. I'm already learning new worthy dependencies from what AI built for me. And it does quite reasonable directory naming when prompted already. >> I'm sure this comment would be an easier read if the bot read it for you and relied the ideas and information it contains > I'm not sure that's the case, You can try. Don't be afraid to experiment. It might be bad, but you might have ideas how to make it a bit better. You can tell agent your ideas and see how they pan out. > but if it were and that's what I was doing, there'd be no point in human flavor. If the human has interesting flavor to provide it tends to show up even in the finished product. Regardless of whether machine that built it was made of people and processes or just weights and loops.
  - 4mo ago
queenkjuul 4mo ago
I will be sure to die before living in your future
- solid_fuel 4mo ago
  Right? What a hideous and repulsive vision of the future. No humanity, just artifice and comfortable lies. I’ll take genuine human society any day. I would pay for any tools that block “ai agents” from talking to me. Hell I would pay for a tool right now to filter ai slop from the feeds.
  - scotty79 4mo ago
    Oh no. Comfort. How will we ever suffer it! I don't like lies. So I won't be optimizing for lies. But I also don't like garbage. So I'll be optimizing for filtering it out. Even if the source of garbage are genuine humans. I had a suspicion some time ago that this craving for genuine has masochistic foundations. You just provided me with another point in the pointcloud, I'm trying to infer the shape of reality out of. > Hell I would pay for a tool right now to filter ai slop from the feeds. Agent can build one for you. Even today. But the first step is to take full control of your feed sources. If you are browsing cookie cutter websites with a cookie cutter browser, it might be hard to do.
    - beej71 4mo ago
      > Oh no. Comfort. How will we ever suffer it! You jest, but this is the human condition. People in comfort suffer all the time. It's the basis for the expression "familiarity breeds contempt". You might have someone who has everything they ever wanted, and yet they will still say, "And yet..." This is why people react so strongly. They sense that having their every need taken care of is a special type of Hell. There was a episode of the "new" Twilight Zone in the 80s that used this device, I believe. And the "masochism" is part of that. There is no light without the darkness. People at the equator will never feel the joy of springtime; one must have known the cold of winter in order to do so.
      - 4mo ago