6 ms·

In six months AI has gone from an idiot savant intern to a crappy consultant. I'd call that progress.

echelon 1y ago
AI is a million times better than Google search. I don't see how it doesn't replace Google search in a few years. AI code completion is god mode. While I seldom prompt for new code, AI code autocompletion during refactoring is 1000x faster than plumbing fields manually. I can do extremely complicated and big refactors with ease, and that's coming from someone who made big use of static typing, IDEs, and AST-based refactoring. It's legitimately faster than thought. And finally, it's really nice to ask about new APIs or pose questions you would normally pour over docs or Google and find answers on Stack Overflow. It's so much better and faster. We're watching the world change in the biggest way since smartphones and the internet. AI isn't a crappy consultant. It's an expansion of the mind.
- skydhash 1y ago
  > AI code autocompletion during refactoring is 1000x faster than plumbing fields manually. I can do extremely complicated and big refactors with ease, and that's coming from someone who made big use of static typing, IDEs, and AST-based refactoring. It's legitimately faster than thought. Unless you know Vim!
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    > Unless you know Vim! or the IDE (or text editor for that matter) well. People don't want to spend time understanding, appreciating and learning the tool they use, and call them useless...
    - layer8 1y ago
      That's funny, because I have little patience with having to spend time finding out how to coax the AI into doing what I effing want, and much prefer the reliable and deterministic IDE features.
      - bayindirh 1y ago
        It's funny and sad, and I'm on the same page with you. I use some tools close to two decades and can do things people can't fathom in no time, for a very long time. I don't bend the tool, even. It's what it's designed to do.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  AI is just a weighted graph which stands on shoulders of a million giants. However, it can't cite, can't fact check, doesn't know when it's hallucinating, and its creators doesn't respect any of the work which they need to feed to that graph to make it to fake its all knowledgeable accent. Tech is useful, how it's built is very unethical, and how it's worshiped is sad.
  - jaoane 1y ago
    I think you are a bit outdated, since state of the art AIs can cite and fact check just fine.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      Give them tools, maybe, but "The network" can't do it natively. They doesn't have an understanding, can't filter out "ad absurdum". Plus they can only go so deep. Maybe they can hit snopes and check something, but I don't believe current ones even with tools do detailed cross examination with open ended research and stop when they are convinced that they have enough data.
      - jaoane 1y ago
        That's like saying that humans can't tighten screws because they need screwdrivers.
        bayindirh 1y ago
        Nope. This is akin having no long term memory and don't able to tell when and where you learnt that water boils at 100 degrees C first, and it in fact burns very badly.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - danielbln 1y ago
    Modern LLM offerings can use tools, including search, and that (like most good RAG) enables citation and fact checking. If you use LLMs like it's late 2022 and you just opened ChatGPT, then that's not indicative on how you should be using LLMs today.
- codechicago277 1y ago
  This is true. Just like a crappy consultant, AI lets you offload the repetitive, monotonous work so that you can focus your time on the big architectural problems. Of course you can write a better function if you spend a lot of time on it, but there’s magic in just letting the AI write the off the shelf version and move on.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    Where are these repetitive, monotonous work so I can se send a job application there. Even on a greenfield project, I rarely spend more than a day setting up the scaffolding and that’s for something I’ve not touched before. And for refactoring and tests, this is where Vim/Emacs comes in.
    - cess11 1y ago
      Many people doing code for money never or only rarely used any form of code generation until it was given to them as a SaaS in exchange for copies of the code they work on. I've been surprised by this for a long time, having seen coworkers spend days typing in things manually that they could have put there with IDE capabilities, search-replace, find -exec or a five minute script.
    - echelon 1y ago
      > And for refactoring and tests, this is where Vim/Emacs comes in. I've used Vim bindings and strongly typed languages with IDEs that have strong AST-based refactoring my entire career. Nothing comes close to changing one condition of a test and having the AI autocomplete magically suggest the correct series of ten updates that fix the test. In under the blink of an eye, too. Everything is truly changing in big ways.
      - skydhash 1y ago
        > Nothing comes close to changing one condition of a test and having the AI autocomplete magically suggest the correct series of ten updates that fix the test. In under the blink of an eye, too. But why are you doing this? Granted, you may have a longer career than I do, but I never once think: The test condition is wrong, let's update it. Oh, I wish I could update the code alongside it!.
- tim333 1y ago
  Google sees that and is trying to incorporate AI.
  - echelon 1y ago
    They have to defend 100% of it to just stay in place.
- player1234 1y ago
  How did you measure a million times better than google search, and 1000 faster refactoring. Can you please share your bench marks and methodology?
unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
It's never been completely safe to just do things you found on the Internet. Attach another Rube Goldberg machine to the front, this doesn't fundamentally change. AI accelerates complex search 10x or maybe 100x, but still will occasionally respond to recipe requests by telling you to just substitute some anti-matter for extra calories.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  > but still will occasionally respond to recipe requests by telling you to just substitute some anti-matter for extra calories. or emit (or spew) pages of training data or output when you "please change all headers to green", which I experienced recently.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
What humanity has achieved here is incredible. We couldn’t even build an idiot for decades. What you’re referring to is popular opinion. AI has become so pervasive in our lives that we are used to it and the magnitude of achievement has been lost on us. The fact that it went from stochastic parrot to idiot savant to crappy consultant is from people in denial about reality and then slowly coming to terms with it. In the beginning literally everyone on HN called it a stochastic parrot with the authority of an expert. Clearly they were all wrong.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  Oh, it's still a stochastic parrot. What changed is that people realized it didn't have the authority of an expert. What's a stochastic parrot with dubious authority? It's a crappy consultant.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    It’s not. People in academia are not using this term anymore because it’s utterly clear it can output knowledge that doesn’t exist.
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      > output knowledge that doesn’t exist So can parrots. They'll gladly generate neologisms. I'm interested in how academics define "knowledge that doesn't exist".
      - ninetyninenine 1y ago
        Of course parrots can output knowledge that doesn’t exist. Stochastic parrot is a different term. > "knowledge that doesn't exist". I said that term. So there’s no official definition but you already know that. Basically it’s clear among everyone academics included that LLMs can rudimentarily do what humans do. That means composing knowledge and working things out to form new knowledge that doesn’t exist.

AI is a million times better than Google search. I don't see how it doesn't replace Google search in a few years. AI code completion is god mode. While I seldom prompt for new code, AI code autocompletion during refactoring is 1000x faster than plumbing fields manually. I can do extremely complicated and big refactors with ease, and that's coming from someone who made big use of static typing, IDEs, and AST-based refactoring. It's legitimately faster than thought. And finally, it's really nice to ask about new APIs or pose questions you would normally pour over docs or Google and find answers on Stack Overflow. It's so much better and faster. We're watching the world change in the biggest way since smartphones and the internet. AI isn't a crappy consultant. It's an expansion of the mind.

skydhash 1y ago
> AI code autocompletion during refactoring is 1000x faster than plumbing fields manually. I can do extremely complicated and big refactors with ease, and that's coming from someone who made big use of static typing, IDEs, and AST-based refactoring. It's legitimately faster than thought. Unless you know Vim!
- bayindirh 1y ago
  > Unless you know Vim! or the IDE (or text editor for that matter) well. People don't want to spend time understanding, appreciating and learning the tool they use, and call them useless...
  - layer8 1y ago
    That's funny, because I have little patience with having to spend time finding out how to coax the AI into doing what I effing want, and much prefer the reliable and deterministic IDE features.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      It's funny and sad, and I'm on the same page with you. I use some tools close to two decades and can do things people can't fathom in no time, for a very long time. I don't bend the tool, even. It's what it's designed to do.
bayindirh 1y ago
AI is just a weighted graph which stands on shoulders of a million giants. However, it can't cite, can't fact check, doesn't know when it's hallucinating, and its creators doesn't respect any of the work which they need to feed to that graph to make it to fake its all knowledgeable accent. Tech is useful, how it's built is very unethical, and how it's worshiped is sad.
- jaoane 1y ago
  I think you are a bit outdated, since state of the art AIs can cite and fact check just fine.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    Give them tools, maybe, but "The network" can't do it natively. They doesn't have an understanding, can't filter out "ad absurdum". Plus they can only go so deep. Maybe they can hit snopes and check something, but I don't believe current ones even with tools do detailed cross examination with open ended research and stop when they are convinced that they have enough data.
    - jaoane 1y ago
      That's like saying that humans can't tighten screws because they need screwdrivers.
      - bayindirh 1y ago
        Nope. This is akin having no long term memory and don't able to tell when and where you learnt that water boils at 100 degrees C first, and it in fact burns very badly.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- danielbln 1y ago
  Modern LLM offerings can use tools, including search, and that (like most good RAG) enables citation and fact checking. If you use LLMs like it's late 2022 and you just opened ChatGPT, then that's not indicative on how you should be using LLMs today.
codechicago277 1y ago
This is true. Just like a crappy consultant, AI lets you offload the repetitive, monotonous work so that you can focus your time on the big architectural problems. Of course you can write a better function if you spend a lot of time on it, but there’s magic in just letting the AI write the off the shelf version and move on.
- skydhash 1y ago
  Where are these repetitive, monotonous work so I can se send a job application there. Even on a greenfield project, I rarely spend more than a day setting up the scaffolding and that’s for something I’ve not touched before. And for refactoring and tests, this is where Vim/Emacs comes in.
  - cess11 1y ago
    Many people doing code for money never or only rarely used any form of code generation until it was given to them as a SaaS in exchange for copies of the code they work on. I've been surprised by this for a long time, having seen coworkers spend days typing in things manually that they could have put there with IDE capabilities, search-replace, find -exec or a five minute script.
  - echelon 1y ago
    > And for refactoring and tests, this is where Vim/Emacs comes in. I've used Vim bindings and strongly typed languages with IDEs that have strong AST-based refactoring my entire career. Nothing comes close to changing one condition of a test and having the AI autocomplete magically suggest the correct series of ten updates that fix the test. In under the blink of an eye, too. Everything is truly changing in big ways.
    - skydhash 1y ago
      > Nothing comes close to changing one condition of a test and having the AI autocomplete magically suggest the correct series of ten updates that fix the test. In under the blink of an eye, too. But why are you doing this? Granted, you may have a longer career than I do, but I never once think: The test condition is wrong, let's update it. Oh, I wish I could update the code alongside it!.
tim333 1y ago
Google sees that and is trying to incorporate AI.
- echelon 1y ago
  They have to defend 100% of it to just stay in place.
player1234 1y ago
How did you measure a million times better than google search, and 1000 faster refactoring. Can you please share your bench marks and methodology?

unyttigfjelltol 1y ago

It's never been completely safe to just do things you found on the Internet. Attach another Rube Goldberg machine to the front, this doesn't fundamentally change. AI accelerates complex search 10x or maybe 100x, but still will occasionally respond to recipe requests by telling you to just substitute some anti-matter for extra calories.

bayindirh 1y ago
> but still will occasionally respond to recipe requests by telling you to just substitute some anti-matter for extra calories. or emit (or spew) pages of training data or output when you "please change all headers to green", which I experienced recently.

ninetyninenine 1y ago

What humanity has achieved here is incredible. We couldn’t even build an idiot for decades. What you’re referring to is popular opinion. AI has become so pervasive in our lives that we are used to it and the magnitude of achievement has been lost on us. The fact that it went from stochastic parrot to idiot savant to crappy consultant is from people in denial about reality and then slowly coming to terms with it. In the beginning literally everyone on HN called it a stochastic parrot with the authority of an expert. Clearly they were all wrong.

SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
Oh, it's still a stochastic parrot. What changed is that people realized it didn't have the authority of an expert. What's a stochastic parrot with dubious authority? It's a crappy consultant.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  It’s not. People in academia are not using this term anymore because it’s utterly clear it can output knowledge that doesn’t exist.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    > output knowledge that doesn’t exist So can parrots. They'll gladly generate neologisms. I'm interested in how academics define "knowledge that doesn't exist".
    - ninetyninenine 1y ago
      Of course parrots can output knowledge that doesn’t exist. Stochastic parrot is a different term. > "knowledge that doesn't exist". I said that term. So there’s no official definition but you already know that. Basically it’s clear among everyone academics included that LLMs can rudimentarily do what humans do. That means composing knowledge and working things out to form new knowledge that doesn’t exist.