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The "I" in AI is just complete bullshit and I can't understand why so many people are in a awe of a bit of software that chains words to another based on some s

The "I" in AI is just complete bullshit and I can't understand why so many people are in a awe of a bit of software that chains words to another based on some statistical model. The sad truth is that ChatGPT is about as good an AI as ELIZA was in 1966, it's just better (granted: much better) at hiding its total lack of actual human understanding. It's nothing more than an expensive parlor trick, IMHO. Github CoPilot? Great, now I have to perform the most mentally taxing part of developing software, namely understanding other people's code (or my own from 6 months ago...) while writing new code. I'm beyond thrilled ... So, no, I don't have an AI fatigue, because we absolutely have no AI anywhere. But I have a massive bullshit and hype fatigue that is getting worse all the time.

whiddershins 4y ago
I wonder if we will look back at this comment (and others like it) as similar to the infamous “takedown” of Dropbox when it was first posted on HN. Time will tell, I certainly can’t predict.
nunodonato 4y ago
I can say with a certain degree of confidence that you haven't actually used CoPilot daily.
- morelisp 4y ago
  This is such a bullshit answer. No, I don't use it daily because I tried it for a couple hours and it suggested nothing useful and several harmful. Why would I keep using it?
  - wokwokwok 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - weeksie 4y ago
      I've used it and it did nothing helpful. I also find autocomplete slows me down. The code it suggested always needed enough reworking I would have been faster writing it out from scratch. It's just not that helpful for me. Maybe if I didn't know the apis that well but I suspect even then it would be as much a liability as a benefit
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > They replace the default autocomplete in a way which largely unnoticeable, but surprisingly effective at complex autocomplete tasks. I've yet to see it. It's barely above IDEAs autocomplete in the rare cases when it manages to trigger on my code, and it has already been wrong more than once in the few times it did deign to provide autocompletion.
    - danaris 4y ago
      Hey, maybe don't outright call people liars about their own lived experiences just because they don't agree with yours...?
    - postexitus 4y ago
      90% of the time CoPilot-bros stop at this point without giving any good examples of how this post-autocomplete monster helped them. Autocomplete works quite well in most use cases - it is low effort, free and most importantly, ethical. CoPilot on the other hand jumps through so many hoops to generate something marginally and arguably better, but at the cost of what? This is exactly like the Search Vs ChatGPT problem - do you want a deterministic, algorithmic, fine tuned experience or some random probabilistic, overconfident crap.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      I don't find basic autocomplete useless, although I probably use it less than most people. (For example, I rarely write Java and when I do I don't use long names or deeply nested structures and I don't implement equals etc. by default.) I think people use autocomplete in two ways; when I use it I know what I want to be in the code and it's a way to type 30 characters by pressing 3 keys or whatever. But I also see a lot of people use it like "I don't know what to do next, what methods are available?" And this is usually to the detriment of the code quality. Copilot is not like autocomplete. It only works in the second mode, because any nontrivial code it generates needs to be read, considered, and understood. (And any trivial code it generates can be done by autocomplete or long-existing non-AI tools.) This is especially true given LLMs' hallucinatory behavior - by definition it will often spit out something that "looks right" even if it's absolutely not - and such code is harder to review than code that looks obviously wrong. So if you do use autocomplete in the second mode, maybe you find Copilot a super-powered version of that. And if you have the same weaknesses as Copilot, reviewing its code after it's done writing it is probably not any different than reviewing your own code after writing it, so for you it takes the same amount of time. For me, that's not the case. When I used it, and when I see others use it, Copilot is like an impossibly overenthusiastic junior developer I will never be able to teach better habits to.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I've worked with teams that used Copilot. They claim it's great "Hey, now I don't have to actually spend any time writing all this boilerplate!" while for me, the person who has to review their code before releasing stuff, easier ways of writing boilerplate is not a positive, it's a negative. If writing boilerplate becomes effortless, then you'll write more of it, instead of feeling the pain of writing it and then trying to reduce it, because you don't want to spend time writing it. And since Copilot was accepted as a way to help the developers on the teams, the increase of boilerplate have been immersive. I'm borderline pissed, but mostly at our own development processes, not at Copilot per se. But damn if I didn't wish it existed somehow, although it was inevitable it would at one point.
  - kristiandupont 4y ago
    >the increase of boilerplate have been immersive Has it really? Or are you worried that this is something that will happen? Of course I don't know how other people use it but I find that it's very much like having a fairly skilled pair programmer on board. I still need to do a lot of work but I get genuine help. I don't find that I personally write more boilerplate code than before, every programming principle applies as it always has.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      I wrote it in past tense, it's based on actual situations :) If you don't believe what I write, I guess it doesn't matter what I write now. Regardless. One simple example that I've had to reject more than once. - Function 1 does something - Developer needs something like Function 1 but minor change - Developer starts typing name of function which has a similar name to Function 1, but again, minor difference - Copilot helpfully suggests copy-pasting Function 1 but with the small change incorporated - Developer accepts it, commits and sends the patch my way Rather than extracting the common behavior into it's own function and call that from both of them, refactors which Copilot doesn't suggest, the developers is fine with just copy-pasting the function. Now we have to maintain two full slightly different functions, rather than 1 full functions + 2 minor ones. Obviously a small example, and it wouldn't be worth extracting it the first time it happens or on a smaller scale. But once you have entire teams doing something like this, it becomes a bit harder to justify copy-paste approach, especially when you want the codebase not to evolve to complete spaghetti. And finally, I'm not blaming the tool, it's not Copilots fault. But it does seem to have made developers who rely on it think less, compared to the ones that don't.
- sbilstein 4y ago
  Yep. I’m personally skeptical of so many other use cases for LLMs but CoPilot is fantastic and basically just autocomplete on rocket fuel. If you can use autocomplete, you can use CoPilot super effectively.
  - weeksie 4y ago
    I almost always turn autocomplete off except in circumstances where the API has bad documentation. I also found that copilot was an aggravation more than a help after using it for a couple weeks.
    - mlboss 4y ago
      We programmers enjoy writing code. We derive satisfaction when a code is perfect and elegant. But its going to end very soon. Artists are freaking out because things that takes them days to create now only take 2 seconds. We are next. The writing is on the wall. Programming as we know it is going to end. We should be embracing these tools and should start moving from software developers to software architects role.
      - weeksie 4y ago
        I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. I'm _faster_ without autocomplete
- naillo 4y ago
  I've used it quite a lot and I agree with the original post. It seemed really useful at first but then it started introducing several bugs in large blocks of code. I've stopped using it in the end since the small snippets on the one line size is trivial enough to write myself (with just vim proficiency) and the larger blocks on the order of a function autocomplete is too bug prone (and kills too much willpower budget to fix).
- dual_dingo 4y ago
  I haven't. Now you know for a fact :) What I have seen about it ranged from things that can be nearly just as well handled by your $EDITOR's snippet functionality to things where my argument kicked in - I have to verify this generated code does what I want, ergo I have to read and understand something not written by me. Paired with the at least somewhat legally and ethical questionable source of the training data, this is not for me.
  - Otek 4y ago
    So stop evangelizing about stuff you haven’t used. Understanding code is easier than writing it from the scratch. That’s why code review doesn’t take as much time as writing code and you still need to prove your code works, even if you wrote it yourself.
    - dual_dingo 4y ago
      I am not evangelizing, I am just stating why this is not for me and my way to write software.
    - selbyk 4y ago
      Understanding code is only easier for simple tasks. I've definitely had copilot spit out complex algorithms that looked right at first glance but actually had major issues that required me to write it from scratch.
      - Otek 4y ago
        Thats why you test, this could also happen with code you wrote so it’s not an argument against copilot. Did you wrote your “complex algorithm” and then run and debugged it in your head? No, you’ve tested it. Do the same with Copilots code
        cmcconomy 4y ago
        If testing is the equalizer, there is no difference between black box code and something you fully understand. Which fair enough, is how ML works in general.
- postexitus 4y ago
  I can say with a higher degree of confidence that you haven't actually used CoPilot daily for any respectably sized project.
  - nunodonato 4y ago
    oops, you are wrong :)
sfpotter 4y ago
“AI” isn’t bull shit, it’s correctly labeled. It’s intelligence which is artificial: i.e. fake, ersatz, specious, not genuine… It’s our fault for not just reading the label. (I absolutely agree with your post and your viewpoint, just to be clear!)
- Diggsey 4y ago
  "Artificial" is not synonymous with "fake". "Fake" implies a level of deception.
  - sfpotter 4y ago
    Not necessarily true. People talk about “fake meat” all the time but it’s clear there’s no level of fraudulence implied by this usage. It’s meant in the sense of “artificial meat”. There are multiple ways the word “fake” is used, and one is as a synonym for “artificial”. However, in this case, it does seem that there is a level of fraudulence and deception. Given that “fake” often is used exactly the way you say, maybe “fake intelligence” would indeed be a more appropriate term.
    - Diggsey 4y ago
      Fake meat is still a form of deception; it's something that's not meat pretending to be meat. If lab grown meat gets good enough to be indistinguishable from "real" meat, then it would no longer be fake, it would just be artificial.
      - sfpotter 4y ago
        Is “fake grass” (i.e. astroturf) a form of deception in your eyes?
        cmoski 4y ago
        When seen at a distance, it can trick people into thinking you have a perfectly manicured lawn. But you're just lazy/evil/it's a holiday house. Deception!
joxel 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- coldtea 4y ago
  [flagged]
rcme 4y ago
As much as I’m sick of AI products, I’m even more sick of the “ChatGPT is bullshit” argument.
- jug 4y ago
  I like this take. It has many clear applications already and LLM's are still only in their infancy. I both criticize and use ChatGPT at work. It has flaws and it has advantages. That it's bullshit or "ELIZA" is a short-sighted view that overvalues the importance of AGI and misses what we're already getting. But yes indeed, there are many, many AI products launched during this era of rapid progress. Even kind of shoddy products can be monetized if they provide value over what we had before. I think the crowded market and all the bullshit and all the awesome, all at once, is a sign of very rapid progress in this space. It will probably not always be like this and who knows what we are approaching.
  - LastTrain 4y ago
    How are you using it at work?
    - matwood 4y ago
      I've used it to proof emails for grammar, and it's done ok. I'll also throw random programming questions into it, and it's been hit and miss. SO is probably still faster, and I like seeing the discussion. The problem with chatGPT right now is it gives an answer like it's certainty when it's often wrong. I can see the benefits of this interaction model (basically summarizing all the things from a search into what feels like a person talking back), but I don't see change the world level hype at the moment. I also wonder if LLMs will get worse over time through propagation error as content is generated by other LLMs.
    - alach11 4y ago
      I’m not the person you replied to but I’ve been using OpenAI’s API a lot for work. Some examples: - Embedding free text data on safety observations, clustering them together, using text completion to automatically label the clusters, and identifying trends - Embedding free text data on equipment failures. Some of our equipment failures have been classified manually by humans into various categories. I use the embeddings to train a model to predict those categories for uncategorized failures. - Analyzing employee development goals and locating common themes. Then using this to identify where there are gaps we can fill in training offerings.
smohare 4y ago
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version_five 4y ago
I agree with you completely. I work in the field and I think your sentiment is way more common amongst people who know about the technology, vs the fair weather fans who have all jumped on the hype bandwagon recently. I actually posted the same thing (that it's no different than Eliza) a month or so ago, and got at least one hilarious dismissal, like the "I bet you make widgets" person that replied to you.
- dual_dingo 4y ago
  Thank you!
- HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
  If you believe that ChatGPT is similar to Eliza, then I can guarantee that you have no rigorous no-wriggle-room definition of what intelligence is. Maybe you think you understand it, or have defined it, but I'm 100% certain any such definition is not 100% reductive and instead relies on other ill-defined works like "reasoning" etc etc.
thejammahimself 4y ago
> Github CoPilot? Great, now I have to perform the most mentally taxing part of developing software, namely understanding other people's code (or my own from 6 months ago...) while writing new code. I'm beyond thrilled ... I think there's an argument to be made that AI is being used here to help you tackle the more trivial tasks so you have more time to focus on the more important, and challenging tasks. Albeit I recognise GitHub CoPilot is legally questionable. But yes, I agree with your overall point that AI has still not been able to 'think' like a human but rather can only still pretend to think like a human, and history has shown that users are often fooled by this.
- exegete 4y ago
  I think the parent’s comment is probably referring to the fact if you use Copilot to write code then you have to go through and try to understand what it wrote and possibly debug it. And you don’t have the opportunity to ask it why it wrote it the way it did when reviewing its code.
  - brookst 4y ago
    I think you’re right, but that just means parent doesn’t understand copilot and is off tilting at windmills. Copilot is amazing for reducing the tedium of typing obvious but lengthy code (and strings!). And it’s inline and passive; it’s not like you go edit -> insert -> copilot function and it dumps in 100 lines of code you have to debug. Which is what it sounds like parent is mistaking it for. I’m reminded of 1995, when an elderly relative told me everything wrong with the internet based on TV news and not having ever actually seen the internet.
    - Joker_vD 4y ago
      > Copilot is amazing for reducing the tedium of typing obvious but lengthy code (and strings!) Which it occasionally mistypes. Then you're off to chase a small piece of error in a tub of boilerplate. Great stuff! For actual example, see [0] [0] https://blog.ploeh.dk/2022/12/05/github-copilot-preliminary-experience-report/#02cb23fc57394a1c963a2f4ebe75ec48 https://blog.ploeh.dk/2022/12/05/github-copilot-preliminary-...
davidkuennen 4y ago
As soon as I open a fresh IDE these days I immediately miss CoPilot and it's the first thing I install. Hype or not, it's incredibly useful and has increased my productivity by at least 20%. Worth every penny.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
ChatGPT is of actual help for me in various daily tasks, which was never the case with ELIZA or earlier chatbots which were only good as a curiosity or to have some fun. Lack of actual human understanding? Of course, by definition a machine will always lack human understanding. Why does that matter so much if it's a helpful tool? For what it's worth, I do agree that there is a lot of hype. But contrary to blockchain, NFTs, web3, etc., this is actually useful for many people in many everyday use cases. I see it as more similar to the dot com hype - buying a domain and creating a silly generic website didn't really multiply the value of your company as some people thought in that era, but that doesn't mean that websites weren't a useful technology with staying power, as time has shown.
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BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
“It’s just statistics” is an evergreen way to dismiss AI. The problem is you’re also just statistics.
- brookst 4y ago
  Shh. The models don’t like hearing that.
- NobleLie 4y ago
  Source for consciousness / intelligence to be "statistics"? I don't think there is any because there is no functional model for what organic intelligence is or how it operates. There are plethora of fascinating attempts / models but only a subset implore that it is solely "statistical". And even if it was statistical, the implementation of the wet system is absolutely not like a gigantic list of vectorized (stripped of their essence) tokens
  - BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
    Look at how Microsoft is instructing GPT to become "Sydney" and re-evaluate your opinions about what is intelligence: https://twitter.com/marvinvonhagen/status/1623658144349011971 https://twitter.com/marvinvonhagen/status/162365814434901197...
  - whiddershins 4y ago
    There’s a man who claims to have solved consciousness as a multilayered Bayesian prediction system. See Scott Alexander for attempts to explain what is apparently impenetrable papers on it.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Sources for intelligence to be magic? I mean we know it's complicated but intelligence also spans the smallest creatures on the planet to humans. This points at intelligence being a reduceable problem that is layered. On top of that it's unlikely we need to model nerve behavior to get something intelligence like output.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
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reaperducer 4y ago
The "I" in AI is just complete bullshit We're about six minutes away from "AI bros" becoming a thing. The same kind of grifters who always latch onto the latest thing and hype it up in order to make a quick buck are already knocking on AI's door. See also: Cryptocurrency, and Beanie Babies.
auctoritas 4y ago
I'm more fatigued by people denying the obvious that ChatGPT and similar models are revolutionary. People have been fantasizing about the dawn of AI for almost a century and none managed to predict the rampant denialism of the past few months. I suppose it makes sense though. Denial is the default response when we face threats to our identity and sense of self worth.
- liveoneggs 4y ago
  So, to you, ChatGPT is approaching AGI?
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    I do believe if we are going to get AGI without some random revolutionary breakthrough, to achieve it iteratively, It's going to come through language models. Think about it. What's the most expressive medium we have which is also absolutely inundated with data? To broadly be able to predict human speech you need to broadly be able to predict the human mind. To broadly predict a human mind requires you build a model of it, and to have a model of a human mind? Welcome to general intelligence. We won't realize we've created an AGI until someone makes a text model, starts throwing random problems at it, and discovers that it's able to solve them.
    - hhjinks 4y ago
      > To broadly be able to predict human speech you need to broadly be able to predict the human mind This is a non sequitur. The human mind does a whole lot more than string words together. Being able to predict which word would logically follow another does not require the ability to predict anything other than just that.
      - Timwi 4y ago
        I think what the commenter is saying is that, in time, language models too will do a lot more than string words together. If it's large enough, and you train it well enough to respond to “what's the best next move in this chess position?” prompts with good moves, it will inevitably learn chess.
sharemywin 4y ago
I'm sorry I don't want it to get much smarter. It you ask it to go through and comment code it does a pretty good job of that. some things better than others(not that great at CSS) need a basic definition of something. got it. tell it to write a function it's not bad. As a BA just tell it what your trying to do and what questions it should ask users. It will get some good ideas for you. Want it to be a PM have create a loop asking every 10 minutes if your done yet. Is it a senior engineer? no. can it pass a senior engineering interview? quite possibly. debug code hit or miss. I think the big thing it's not that great at front end code. It can't see so that probably makes sense. a fine-tuned version of clip that interacted with a browser would probably be pretty scary.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  What's the point of letting it comment code? The programmer who reads the code can run it as well.
traceroute66 4y ago
> The "I" in AI is just complete bullshit and I can't understand why so many people are in a awe I agree. And the worst thing is that the bullshit hype comes round every decade or so, and people run around like headless chickens insisting that "this time its different", and "this time its the REAL THING". As you say, first(ish) there was ELIZA. Than this that and everything else. Then Autonomy and all that dot-com era jazz. Now with compute becoming more powerful and more compact, any man and his dog can stuff some AI bullshit where it doesn't belong. I have seen comments below on this thread where people talk about "well, it's closing the gap". The thing you have to understand is that the gap will always exist. Ultimately you will always be asking a computer to do something. And computers are dumb. They are and will always be beholden to the humans that program them and the information that you feed them. The human will always have the upper hand at any tasks that require actual intelligence (i.e. thoughtful reasoning, adapting to rapidly changing events etc.).
- joyeuse6701 4y ago
  This is not always true, see Chess.
  - vinnydiehl 4y ago
    AlphaGo as well. A few years back people were saying AI could never come close to beating a human at Go.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Man, if this were 1800 you'd be stating that man would never fly and the horse would never be supplanted by the engine. I honestly don't believe you have any scientific or rational reasoning for the point you are attempting to make in your post, because if you were you'd be stating that animal intelligence is magical.
  - traceroute66 4y ago
    > Man, if this were 1800 you'd be stating that man would never fly and the horse would never be supplanted by the engine. I'm sorry, what sort of bullshit argument is that ? Flight and engines are both natural evolution using natural physics and mechanics. Artificial Intelligence is nothing but a square-peg-round-hole, when you have a sledgehammer everything looks like a nut scenario.
matwood 4y ago
I agree. I didn't understand the big deal that it passed a google interview either. IMO, that said more about the uselessness of the interview than the 'AI'. Co-pilot has been semi-useful. It's faster than search SO, but like you said, I still have to review all the code and it's often wrong in subtle ways.
- bombcar 4y ago
  This is the meat of the issue - ChatGPT is exposing certain things a susceptible to bullshit attacks; humans have just been relatively bad at those. It will turn out to be a useful tool for those who know what they’re asking about so they can check the answer quickly; but it will be USED by tons of people who don’t have a way of verifying the answers given.
osigurdson 4y ago
I don't really think of ChatGPT as AI at this point, just an incredibly useful tool.
deleted 4y ago
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whiddershins 4y ago

I wonder if we will look back at this comment (and others like it) as similar to the infamous “takedown” of Dropbox when it was first posted on HN. Time will tell, I certainly can’t predict.

nunodonato 4y ago

I can say with a certain degree of confidence that you haven't actually used CoPilot daily.

morelisp 4y ago
This is such a bullshit answer. No, I don't use it daily because I tried it for a couple hours and it suggested nothing useful and several harmful. Why would I keep using it?
- wokwokwok 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - weeksie 4y ago
    I've used it and it did nothing helpful. I also find autocomplete slows me down. The code it suggested always needed enough reworking I would have been faster writing it out from scratch. It's just not that helpful for me. Maybe if I didn't know the apis that well but I suspect even then it would be as much a liability as a benefit
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > They replace the default autocomplete in a way which largely unnoticeable, but surprisingly effective at complex autocomplete tasks. I've yet to see it. It's barely above IDEAs autocomplete in the rare cases when it manages to trigger on my code, and it has already been wrong more than once in the few times it did deign to provide autocompletion.
  - danaris 4y ago
    Hey, maybe don't outright call people liars about their own lived experiences just because they don't agree with yours...?
  - postexitus 4y ago
    90% of the time CoPilot-bros stop at this point without giving any good examples of how this post-autocomplete monster helped them. Autocomplete works quite well in most use cases - it is low effort, free and most importantly, ethical. CoPilot on the other hand jumps through so many hoops to generate something marginally and arguably better, but at the cost of what? This is exactly like the Search Vs ChatGPT problem - do you want a deterministic, algorithmic, fine tuned experience or some random probabilistic, overconfident crap.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I don't find basic autocomplete useless, although I probably use it less than most people. (For example, I rarely write Java and when I do I don't use long names or deeply nested structures and I don't implement equals etc. by default.) I think people use autocomplete in two ways; when I use it I know what I want to be in the code and it's a way to type 30 characters by pressing 3 keys or whatever. But I also see a lot of people use it like "I don't know what to do next, what methods are available?" And this is usually to the detriment of the code quality. Copilot is not like autocomplete. It only works in the second mode, because any nontrivial code it generates needs to be read, considered, and understood. (And any trivial code it generates can be done by autocomplete or long-existing non-AI tools.) This is especially true given LLMs' hallucinatory behavior - by definition it will often spit out something that "looks right" even if it's absolutely not - and such code is harder to review than code that looks obviously wrong. So if you do use autocomplete in the second mode, maybe you find Copilot a super-powered version of that. And if you have the same weaknesses as Copilot, reviewing its code after it's done writing it is probably not any different than reviewing your own code after writing it, so for you it takes the same amount of time. For me, that's not the case. When I used it, and when I see others use it, Copilot is like an impossibly overenthusiastic junior developer I will never be able to teach better habits to.
capableweb 4y ago
I've worked with teams that used Copilot. They claim it's great "Hey, now I don't have to actually spend any time writing all this boilerplate!" while for me, the person who has to review their code before releasing stuff, easier ways of writing boilerplate is not a positive, it's a negative. If writing boilerplate becomes effortless, then you'll write more of it, instead of feeling the pain of writing it and then trying to reduce it, because you don't want to spend time writing it. And since Copilot was accepted as a way to help the developers on the teams, the increase of boilerplate have been immersive. I'm borderline pissed, but mostly at our own development processes, not at Copilot per se. But damn if I didn't wish it existed somehow, although it was inevitable it would at one point.
- kristiandupont 4y ago
  >the increase of boilerplate have been immersive Has it really? Or are you worried that this is something that will happen? Of course I don't know how other people use it but I find that it's very much like having a fairly skilled pair programmer on board. I still need to do a lot of work but I get genuine help. I don't find that I personally write more boilerplate code than before, every programming principle applies as it always has.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I wrote it in past tense, it's based on actual situations :) If you don't believe what I write, I guess it doesn't matter what I write now. Regardless. One simple example that I've had to reject more than once. - Function 1 does something - Developer needs something like Function 1 but minor change - Developer starts typing name of function which has a similar name to Function 1, but again, minor difference - Copilot helpfully suggests copy-pasting Function 1 but with the small change incorporated - Developer accepts it, commits and sends the patch my way Rather than extracting the common behavior into it's own function and call that from both of them, refactors which Copilot doesn't suggest, the developers is fine with just copy-pasting the function. Now we have to maintain two full slightly different functions, rather than 1 full functions + 2 minor ones. Obviously a small example, and it wouldn't be worth extracting it the first time it happens or on a smaller scale. But once you have entire teams doing something like this, it becomes a bit harder to justify copy-paste approach, especially when you want the codebase not to evolve to complete spaghetti. And finally, I'm not blaming the tool, it's not Copilots fault. But it does seem to have made developers who rely on it think less, compared to the ones that don't.
sbilstein 4y ago
Yep. I’m personally skeptical of so many other use cases for LLMs but CoPilot is fantastic and basically just autocomplete on rocket fuel. If you can use autocomplete, you can use CoPilot super effectively.
- weeksie 4y ago
  I almost always turn autocomplete off except in circumstances where the API has bad documentation. I also found that copilot was an aggravation more than a help after using it for a couple weeks.
  - mlboss 4y ago
    We programmers enjoy writing code. We derive satisfaction when a code is perfect and elegant. But its going to end very soon. Artists are freaking out because things that takes them days to create now only take 2 seconds. We are next. The writing is on the wall. Programming as we know it is going to end. We should be embracing these tools and should start moving from software developers to software architects role.
    - weeksie 4y ago
      I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. I'm _faster_ without autocomplete
naillo 4y ago
I've used it quite a lot and I agree with the original post. It seemed really useful at first but then it started introducing several bugs in large blocks of code. I've stopped using it in the end since the small snippets on the one line size is trivial enough to write myself (with just vim proficiency) and the larger blocks on the order of a function autocomplete is too bug prone (and kills too much willpower budget to fix).
dual_dingo 4y ago
I haven't. Now you know for a fact :) What I have seen about it ranged from things that can be nearly just as well handled by your $EDITOR's snippet functionality to things where my argument kicked in - I have to verify this generated code does what I want, ergo I have to read and understand something not written by me. Paired with the at least somewhat legally and ethical questionable source of the training data, this is not for me.
- Otek 4y ago
  So stop evangelizing about stuff you haven’t used. Understanding code is easier than writing it from the scratch. That’s why code review doesn’t take as much time as writing code and you still need to prove your code works, even if you wrote it yourself.
  - dual_dingo 4y ago
    I am not evangelizing, I am just stating why this is not for me and my way to write software.
  - selbyk 4y ago
    Understanding code is only easier for simple tasks. I've definitely had copilot spit out complex algorithms that looked right at first glance but actually had major issues that required me to write it from scratch.
    - Otek 4y ago
      Thats why you test, this could also happen with code you wrote so it’s not an argument against copilot. Did you wrote your “complex algorithm” and then run and debugged it in your head? No, you’ve tested it. Do the same with Copilots code
      - cmcconomy 4y ago
        If testing is the equalizer, there is no difference between black box code and something you fully understand. Which fair enough, is how ML works in general.
postexitus 4y ago
I can say with a higher degree of confidence that you haven't actually used CoPilot daily for any respectably sized project.
- nunodonato 4y ago
  oops, you are wrong :)

sfpotter 4y ago

“AI” isn’t bull shit, it’s correctly labeled. It’s intelligence which is artificial: i.e. fake, ersatz, specious, not genuine… It’s our fault for not just reading the label. (I absolutely agree with your post and your viewpoint, just to be clear!)

Diggsey 4y ago
"Artificial" is not synonymous with "fake". "Fake" implies a level of deception.
- sfpotter 4y ago
  Not necessarily true. People talk about “fake meat” all the time but it’s clear there’s no level of fraudulence implied by this usage. It’s meant in the sense of “artificial meat”. There are multiple ways the word “fake” is used, and one is as a synonym for “artificial”. However, in this case, it does seem that there is a level of fraudulence and deception. Given that “fake” often is used exactly the way you say, maybe “fake intelligence” would indeed be a more appropriate term.
  - Diggsey 4y ago
    Fake meat is still a form of deception; it's something that's not meat pretending to be meat. If lab grown meat gets good enough to be indistinguishable from "real" meat, then it would no longer be fake, it would just be artificial.
    - sfpotter 4y ago
      Is “fake grass” (i.e. astroturf) a form of deception in your eyes?
      - cmoski 4y ago
        When seen at a distance, it can trick people into thinking you have a perfectly manicured lawn. But you're just lazy/evil/it's a holiday house. Deception!

joxel 4y ago

[flagged]

dang 4y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
coldtea 4y ago
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rcme 4y ago

As much as I’m sick of AI products, I’m even more sick of the “ChatGPT is bullshit” argument.

jug 4y ago
I like this take. It has many clear applications already and LLM's are still only in their infancy. I both criticize and use ChatGPT at work. It has flaws and it has advantages. That it's bullshit or "ELIZA" is a short-sighted view that overvalues the importance of AGI and misses what we're already getting. But yes indeed, there are many, many AI products launched during this era of rapid progress. Even kind of shoddy products can be monetized if they provide value over what we had before. I think the crowded market and all the bullshit and all the awesome, all at once, is a sign of very rapid progress in this space. It will probably not always be like this and who knows what we are approaching.
- LastTrain 4y ago
  How are you using it at work?
  - matwood 4y ago
    I've used it to proof emails for grammar, and it's done ok. I'll also throw random programming questions into it, and it's been hit and miss. SO is probably still faster, and I like seeing the discussion. The problem with chatGPT right now is it gives an answer like it's certainty when it's often wrong. I can see the benefits of this interaction model (basically summarizing all the things from a search into what feels like a person talking back), but I don't see change the world level hype at the moment. I also wonder if LLMs will get worse over time through propagation error as content is generated by other LLMs.
  - alach11 4y ago
    I’m not the person you replied to but I’ve been using OpenAI’s API a lot for work. Some examples: - Embedding free text data on safety observations, clustering them together, using text completion to automatically label the clusters, and identifying trends - Embedding free text data on equipment failures. Some of our equipment failures have been classified manually by humans into various categories. I use the embeddings to train a model to predict those categories for uncategorized failures. - Analyzing employee development goals and locating common themes. Then using this to identify where there are gaps we can fill in training offerings.

smohare 4y ago

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version_five 4y ago

I agree with you completely. I work in the field and I think your sentiment is way more common amongst people who know about the technology, vs the fair weather fans who have all jumped on the hype bandwagon recently. I actually posted the same thing (that it's no different than Eliza) a month or so ago, and got at least one hilarious dismissal, like the "I bet you make widgets" person that replied to you.

dual_dingo 4y ago
Thank you!
HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
If you believe that ChatGPT is similar to Eliza, then I can guarantee that you have no rigorous no-wriggle-room definition of what intelligence is. Maybe you think you understand it, or have defined it, but I'm 100% certain any such definition is not 100% reductive and instead relies on other ill-defined works like "reasoning" etc etc.

thejammahimself 4y ago

> Github CoPilot? Great, now I have to perform the most mentally taxing part of developing software, namely understanding other people's code (or my own from 6 months ago...) while writing new code. I'm beyond thrilled ... I think there's an argument to be made that AI is being used here to help you tackle the more trivial tasks so you have more time to focus on the more important, and challenging tasks. Albeit I recognise GitHub CoPilot is legally questionable. But yes, I agree with your overall point that AI has still not been able to 'think' like a human but rather can only still pretend to think like a human, and history has shown that users are often fooled by this.

exegete 4y ago
I think the parent’s comment is probably referring to the fact if you use Copilot to write code then you have to go through and try to understand what it wrote and possibly debug it. And you don’t have the opportunity to ask it why it wrote it the way it did when reviewing its code.
- brookst 4y ago
  I think you’re right, but that just means parent doesn’t understand copilot and is off tilting at windmills. Copilot is amazing for reducing the tedium of typing obvious but lengthy code (and strings!). And it’s inline and passive; it’s not like you go edit -> insert -> copilot function and it dumps in 100 lines of code you have to debug. Which is what it sounds like parent is mistaking it for. I’m reminded of 1995, when an elderly relative told me everything wrong with the internet based on TV news and not having ever actually seen the internet.
  - Joker_vD 4y ago
    > Copilot is amazing for reducing the tedium of typing obvious but lengthy code (and strings!) Which it occasionally mistypes. Then you're off to chase a small piece of error in a tub of boilerplate. Great stuff! For actual example, see [0] [0] https://blog.ploeh.dk/2022/12/05/github-copilot-preliminary-experience-report/#02cb23fc57394a1c963a2f4ebe75ec48 https://blog.ploeh.dk/2022/12/05/github-copilot-preliminary-...

davidkuennen 4y ago

As soon as I open a fresh IDE these days I immediately miss CoPilot and it's the first thing I install. Hype or not, it's incredibly useful and has increased my productivity by at least 20%. Worth every penny.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

ChatGPT is of actual help for me in various daily tasks, which was never the case with ELIZA or earlier chatbots which were only good as a curiosity or to have some fun. Lack of actual human understanding? Of course, by definition a machine will always lack human understanding. Why does that matter so much if it's a helpful tool? For what it's worth, I do agree that there is a lot of hype. But contrary to blockchain, NFTs, web3, etc., this is actually useful for many people in many everyday use cases. I see it as more similar to the dot com hype - buying a domain and creating a silly generic website didn't really multiply the value of your company as some people thought in that era, but that doesn't mean that websites weren't a useful technology with staying power, as time has shown.

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BulgarianIdiot 4y ago

“It’s just statistics” is an evergreen way to dismiss AI. The problem is you’re also just statistics.

brookst 4y ago
Shh. The models don’t like hearing that.
NobleLie 4y ago
Source for consciousness / intelligence to be "statistics"? I don't think there is any because there is no functional model for what organic intelligence is or how it operates. There are plethora of fascinating attempts / models but only a subset implore that it is solely "statistical". And even if it was statistical, the implementation of the wet system is absolutely not like a gigantic list of vectorized (stripped of their essence) tokens
- BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
  Look at how Microsoft is instructing GPT to become "Sydney" and re-evaluate your opinions about what is intelligence: https://twitter.com/marvinvonhagen/status/1623658144349011971 https://twitter.com/marvinvonhagen/status/162365814434901197...
- whiddershins 4y ago
  There’s a man who claims to have solved consciousness as a multilayered Bayesian prediction system. See Scott Alexander for attempts to explain what is apparently impenetrable papers on it.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Sources for intelligence to be magic? I mean we know it's complicated but intelligence also spans the smallest creatures on the planet to humans. This points at intelligence being a reduceable problem that is layered. On top of that it's unlikely we need to model nerve behavior to get something intelligence like output.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago

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reaperducer 4y ago

The "I" in AI is just complete bullshit We're about six minutes away from "AI bros" becoming a thing. The same kind of grifters who always latch onto the latest thing and hype it up in order to make a quick buck are already knocking on AI's door. See also: Cryptocurrency, and Beanie Babies.

auctoritas 4y ago

I'm more fatigued by people denying the obvious that ChatGPT and similar models are revolutionary. People have been fantasizing about the dawn of AI for almost a century and none managed to predict the rampant denialism of the past few months. I suppose it makes sense though. Denial is the default response when we face threats to our identity and sense of self worth.

liveoneggs 4y ago
So, to you, ChatGPT is approaching AGI?
- bioemerl 4y ago
  I do believe if we are going to get AGI without some random revolutionary breakthrough, to achieve it iteratively, It's going to come through language models. Think about it. What's the most expressive medium we have which is also absolutely inundated with data? To broadly be able to predict human speech you need to broadly be able to predict the human mind. To broadly predict a human mind requires you build a model of it, and to have a model of a human mind? Welcome to general intelligence. We won't realize we've created an AGI until someone makes a text model, starts throwing random problems at it, and discovers that it's able to solve them.
  - hhjinks 4y ago
    > To broadly be able to predict human speech you need to broadly be able to predict the human mind This is a non sequitur. The human mind does a whole lot more than string words together. Being able to predict which word would logically follow another does not require the ability to predict anything other than just that.
    - Timwi 4y ago
      I think what the commenter is saying is that, in time, language models too will do a lot more than string words together. If it's large enough, and you train it well enough to respond to “what's the best next move in this chess position?” prompts with good moves, it will inevitably learn chess.

sharemywin 4y ago

I'm sorry I don't want it to get much smarter. It you ask it to go through and comment code it does a pretty good job of that. some things better than others(not that great at CSS) need a basic definition of something. got it. tell it to write a function it's not bad. As a BA just tell it what your trying to do and what questions it should ask users. It will get some good ideas for you. Want it to be a PM have create a loop asking every 10 minutes if your done yet. Is it a senior engineer? no. can it pass a senior engineering interview? quite possibly. debug code hit or miss. I think the big thing it's not that great at front end code. It can't see so that probably makes sense. a fine-tuned version of clip that interacted with a browser would probably be pretty scary.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
What's the point of letting it comment code? The programmer who reads the code can run it as well.

traceroute66 4y ago

> The "I" in AI is just complete bullshit and I can't understand why so many people are in a awe I agree. And the worst thing is that the bullshit hype comes round every decade or so, and people run around like headless chickens insisting that "this time its different", and "this time its the REAL THING". As you say, first(ish) there was ELIZA. Than this that and everything else. Then Autonomy and all that dot-com era jazz. Now with compute becoming more powerful and more compact, any man and his dog can stuff some AI bullshit where it doesn't belong. I have seen comments below on this thread where people talk about "well, it's closing the gap". The thing you have to understand is that the gap will always exist. Ultimately you will always be asking a computer to do something. And computers are dumb. They are and will always be beholden to the humans that program them and the information that you feed them. The human will always have the upper hand at any tasks that require actual intelligence (i.e. thoughtful reasoning, adapting to rapidly changing events etc.).

joyeuse6701 4y ago
This is not always true, see Chess.
- vinnydiehl 4y ago
  AlphaGo as well. A few years back people were saying AI could never come close to beating a human at Go.
pixl97 4y ago
Man, if this were 1800 you'd be stating that man would never fly and the horse would never be supplanted by the engine. I honestly don't believe you have any scientific or rational reasoning for the point you are attempting to make in your post, because if you were you'd be stating that animal intelligence is magical.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > Man, if this were 1800 you'd be stating that man would never fly and the horse would never be supplanted by the engine. I'm sorry, what sort of bullshit argument is that ? Flight and engines are both natural evolution using natural physics and mechanics. Artificial Intelligence is nothing but a square-peg-round-hole, when you have a sledgehammer everything looks like a nut scenario.

matwood 4y ago

I agree. I didn't understand the big deal that it passed a google interview either. IMO, that said more about the uselessness of the interview than the 'AI'. Co-pilot has been semi-useful. It's faster than search SO, but like you said, I still have to review all the code and it's often wrong in subtle ways.

bombcar 4y ago
This is the meat of the issue - ChatGPT is exposing certain things a susceptible to bullshit attacks; humans have just been relatively bad at those. It will turn out to be a useful tool for those who know what they’re asking about so they can check the answer quickly; but it will be USED by tons of people who don’t have a way of verifying the answers given.

osigurdson 4y ago

I don't really think of ChatGPT as AI at this point, just an incredibly useful tool.

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