7 ms·

I thinking that it’s quite a different experience going all Jackson Pollock with AI in your own studio on your own terms, compared to the sorry state of affairs

by elktown 4mo ago

I thinking that it’s quite a different experience going all Jackson Pollock with AI in your own studio on your own terms, compared to the sorry state of affairs of having 100s of Pollocks throwing paint around wildly within a corp to meet a paint quota.

andybak 4mo ago
I very much like this metaphor.
andai 4mo ago
Earlier today: >Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48148337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48148337
- CoderKatrina 4mo ago
  It's the new "counting lines of code". I think many companies are so terrified of falling behind that they're irrationally floundering, trying to appear like they're "with it".
  - xp84 4mo ago
    Yup. My friend said his boss has told them basically that they HAVE TO (do all the AI things) because now ‘our competitors will use AI’ and surpass their product. In my humble opinion good ideas (what to build) are a big part of the bottleneck and those aren’t substantially in greater supply with AI.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - sgc 4mo ago
      > good ideas ... aren’t substantially in greater supply Which is sad because they should be. People should be freed up to think and create better things, instead these companies seem to be doing the equivalent of locking their employees in stalls like they do on some animal farms, so they can churn out 'results' ever faster.
      - Sharlin 4mo ago
        > People should be freed up to think and create better things, Good ideas will never ever be prioritized in the vast majority of companies because good ideas cannot be quantified and turned into performance metrics. At least not without invoking Goodhart's law (see: the academia).
        34df 4mo ago
        Good ideas also take resources like time, free-space to think etc... many firms dont understand this. Moreover many firms believe the C-Suite are the almighty with the gods gift of great ideas.
    - jmalicki 4mo ago
      There is a degree to which quick experimentation helps you find the good ideas, at least for the incremental ones.
  - zelphirkalt 4mo ago
    Actually, it's even more than that, right? Economically, it is pumping up/inflating the bubble some more in a perverted way, where it is not the people themselves believing some horseradish, but their employer forcing them to pump it up more. Quite insane.
    - efitz 4mo ago
      Claude, please crease a routine and run it in a loop continuously. The task in the routine is “create the most complex code possible, in a random programming language, that produces the exact output “My senior leaders are pinheads,”
  - Sharlin 4mo ago
    Counting lines of code starts to look incredibly sane compared to this, where you’re not just counting lines of code, you’re paying for another company for every line produced. There’s exactly one winner here and it’s not any of the companies using AI.
  - warumdarum 4mo ago
    Feels like a worldwide goldrush, but not everyone has gold in those hills.
- drzaiusx11 4mo ago
  Those who burn the most money "win", I guess?
- hunterpayne 4mo ago
  I find that odd given that another division in Amazon is no longer using AI coding tools at all. Its a big company so who knows if this is company wide or just in this one division. I expect its just in one division though.
3dsnano 4mo ago
size of org has a lot to do with the entropy compare 100 pollocks vs 2-3
ycombiredd 4mo ago
> 100s of Pollocks throwing paint around wildly within a corp to meet a paint quota I wish I had written that.
- leptons 4mo ago
  I can't think of a single case of any AI content, be it prose or code, where I thought "I wish I had written that". With AI code, it's more like I wish I hadn't let the AI write that.
  - Daishiman 4mo ago
    How many ways are there of sending a context dictionary to a template where you can say that there are radically superior ways?
  - simonh 4mo ago
    We’re using Copilot at work to build reporting and automation tools. Nothing ground breaking, but very useful and tailored to our needs. Frankly without AI assistance many of these tools just wouldn’t exist at all. We can build stuff in 6 weeks part time as a side project that would have taken at least 3 months full time, and therefore would not have been feasible. Then we can iterate on it at least 2-4 times faster than with hand coding. So I’d love to have an extra few developers to just work on that stuff full time, but I don’t. Whether that means our organisation spend on AI overall is a positive, I really can’t say. Quite possibly not, but my team are getting real benefits.
    - vishnugupta 4mo ago
      I’m building reporting for my company and what you said mirrors my experience nearly 100%. I’m a backend developer so I know what it takes to build a half decent reporting system. Writing all those queries, slice and dice charts and what not takes real time and effort. All that has been outsourced to Claude Code. I now focus on ensuring that the system is sound architecturally and that useful reports are being surfaced.
chr15m 4mo ago
Never mind the Pollocks.
kc-chris 4mo ago
Oh bollocks.
selectedambient 4mo ago
lmao this analogy
zelphirkalt 4mo ago
Can we combine this with the infinite monkey theorem? If we have an infinite number of Pollocks throwing paint at an infinitely large canvas surely they are going to create any piece of art we can imagine...
- sebastiennight 4mo ago
  This does exist, it's the Library of Babel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel#Philosophical_implications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel#Philosoph... There's also an online version of the Library of Babel, I just found out that full pages of my own books are in it[0], https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?379:17 https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?379:17
drzaiusx11 4mo ago
This is the best characterization of the collective corporate madness I've seen yet. Bravo

by elktown 4mo ago

andybak 4mo ago

I very much like this metaphor.

andai 4mo ago

Earlier today: >Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48148337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48148337

CoderKatrina 4mo ago
It's the new "counting lines of code". I think many companies are so terrified of falling behind that they're irrationally floundering, trying to appear like they're "with it".
- xp84 4mo ago
  Yup. My friend said his boss has told them basically that they HAVE TO (do all the AI things) because now ‘our competitors will use AI’ and surpass their product. In my humble opinion good ideas (what to build) are a big part of the bottleneck and those aren’t substantially in greater supply with AI.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - sgc 4mo ago
    > good ideas ... aren’t substantially in greater supply Which is sad because they should be. People should be freed up to think and create better things, instead these companies seem to be doing the equivalent of locking their employees in stalls like they do on some animal farms, so they can churn out 'results' ever faster.
    - Sharlin 4mo ago
      > People should be freed up to think and create better things, Good ideas will never ever be prioritized in the vast majority of companies because good ideas cannot be quantified and turned into performance metrics. At least not without invoking Goodhart's law (see: the academia).
      - 34df 4mo ago
        Good ideas also take resources like time, free-space to think etc... many firms dont understand this. Moreover many firms believe the C-Suite are the almighty with the gods gift of great ideas.
  - jmalicki 4mo ago
    There is a degree to which quick experimentation helps you find the good ideas, at least for the incremental ones.
- zelphirkalt 4mo ago
  Actually, it's even more than that, right? Economically, it is pumping up/inflating the bubble some more in a perverted way, where it is not the people themselves believing some horseradish, but their employer forcing them to pump it up more. Quite insane.
  - efitz 4mo ago
    Claude, please crease a routine and run it in a loop continuously. The task in the routine is “create the most complex code possible, in a random programming language, that produces the exact output “My senior leaders are pinheads,”
- Sharlin 4mo ago
  Counting lines of code starts to look incredibly sane compared to this, where you’re not just counting lines of code, you’re paying for another company for every line produced. There’s exactly one winner here and it’s not any of the companies using AI.
- warumdarum 4mo ago
  Feels like a worldwide goldrush, but not everyone has gold in those hills.
drzaiusx11 4mo ago
Those who burn the most money "win", I guess?
hunterpayne 4mo ago
I find that odd given that another division in Amazon is no longer using AI coding tools at all. Its a big company so who knows if this is company wide or just in this one division. I expect its just in one division though.

3dsnano 4mo ago

size of org has a lot to do with the entropy compare 100 pollocks vs 2-3

ycombiredd 4mo ago

> 100s of Pollocks throwing paint around wildly within a corp to meet a paint quota I wish I had written that.

leptons 4mo ago
I can't think of a single case of any AI content, be it prose or code, where I thought "I wish I had written that". With AI code, it's more like I wish I hadn't let the AI write that.
- Daishiman 4mo ago
  How many ways are there of sending a context dictionary to a template where you can say that there are radically superior ways?
- simonh 4mo ago
  We’re using Copilot at work to build reporting and automation tools. Nothing ground breaking, but very useful and tailored to our needs. Frankly without AI assistance many of these tools just wouldn’t exist at all. We can build stuff in 6 weeks part time as a side project that would have taken at least 3 months full time, and therefore would not have been feasible. Then we can iterate on it at least 2-4 times faster than with hand coding. So I’d love to have an extra few developers to just work on that stuff full time, but I don’t. Whether that means our organisation spend on AI overall is a positive, I really can’t say. Quite possibly not, but my team are getting real benefits.
  - vishnugupta 4mo ago
    I’m building reporting for my company and what you said mirrors my experience nearly 100%. I’m a backend developer so I know what it takes to build a half decent reporting system. Writing all those queries, slice and dice charts and what not takes real time and effort. All that has been outsourced to Claude Code. I now focus on ensuring that the system is sound architecturally and that useful reports are being surfaced.

chr15m 4mo ago

Never mind the Pollocks.

kc-chris 4mo ago

Oh bollocks.

selectedambient 4mo ago

lmao this analogy

zelphirkalt 4mo ago

Can we combine this with the infinite monkey theorem? If we have an infinite number of Pollocks throwing paint at an infinitely large canvas surely they are going to create any piece of art we can imagine...

sebastiennight 4mo ago
This does exist, it's the Library of Babel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel#Philosophical_implications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel#Philosoph... There's also an online version of the Library of Babel, I just found out that full pages of my own books are in it[0], https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?379:17 https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?379:17

drzaiusx11 4mo ago

This is the best characterization of the collective corporate madness I've seen yet. Bravo