I fear AI is going to be used for everything not because it's the best solution, but because people are inherently lazy and just want to get their thing done, and they don't care so much about the quality.
"low effort and convenient" seems to consistently win over "best quality" and this is going to be a downgrade in everything, for everyone
We already see the slopification of everything as companies have been reducing the quality of their output for many years. Look at windows 11 vs 98. Yes it does more and crashes less but is it actually better apart from that? Of the things both of them do, which one does them better? Which one runs faster? Which one is easier to use?
Windows is the result of having almost the entire market. There has been no reason for Microsoft to improve windows because it won't sell more licenses. They have already sold Windows to every person who will possibly buy it. So the only avenue for growth is selling additional services on top like cloud subscriptions, AI products, etc.
Contrast that to the last 10 years in Linux where things have become immensely better.
Given the hardware these systems run on, and the compilers and development tools they had available, Win98 was actually the more impressive piece of engineering.
I assume for a lot of people, an llm is going to produce higher quality results for most knowledge tasks than they could do on their own. I think that's okay
He heavily leans on developers for his points on coding, and then spices it up.
> For example, major media outlets will gladly write that “AI can build software,” but said sentence suggests that you can just type “build me Slack 2” into Claude and have it fart out a fully-functional, production-ready piece of software, rather than a quasi-functional mound of code-slop that can do enough to trick a business idiot or lazy journalist, but little else.
Here is the latest point he made on development and that seems accurate to me? If a non-technical person hands AI an under-specified prompt you get quasi-functional slop.
Can you link the piece where he says it's only relevant for small hobby projects?
I'm not a huge fan of his or anything but your comment is just.. pulling stuff completely out of no-where.
around 9:30
"this is a thing that has its use for the little things, but the moment you start expanding it"
This is just plain wrong. We deal with codebases in double digit millions LOCs with models - it takes genuine skills and instrumentation to do right, but it does work. And I know devs who take this view - that AI is dumb, useless, a gimmick - and what they have in common is they have not tried to put in the hours to learn how to tame the beast.
Anyway, I am losing interest in debating the topic, the efficient markets will deal with this objectively. I can't see how a company employing the usual high-low mix of developers can compete with a company that has a small number of elite devs equipped with those tools and unencumbered by having to manage large development teams and associated bureaucracies. Time will tell.
You can't just take one sentence out of context. Huh?
"...you're just kicking the can. You're still going to have to read all this code to make sure it makes sense"
He's commenting on that maybe it's not a huge productivity boost once you include the reviewing- if you want to get good results you have to know what you're doing, direct it, review it. If you skip this, you get aimless slop.
How on earth is this "plain wrong"?
> the efficient markets will deal with this objectively
> sentence suggests that you can just type “build me Slack 2” into Claude and have it fart out a fully-functional, production-ready piece of software, rather than a quasi-functional mound of code-slop
How's that different from randomly selected human developer team? Other than price, time and hr. Most software project always failed for a reason.
That's normal in sense of being a practical outcome of most software development projects.
The truth is, software development process always produced mostly garbage. Looking at only successful projects and saying "see? that's what humans do, completely unlike AI" is a bucket of survivorship bias.
Release date seems like a terrible x axis with how much more compute they are using. Not to mention while
I like what METR is trying to measure, it is an uber specific metric. And frankly, me just complaining, they’re prompts I feel do most of the work for the AI. I’ve never gotten as detailed instructions as they give the AI for the task
Whilst true, if you had unlimited compute 5 years ago, we wouldn't be anywhere near Mythos level purely because the technology behind the models wasn't refined enough.
It is really hard to believe you actually believe this unless there really is this class of people that are so addicted to social media that they have confused performativity with actual thinking.
That is 1000x better than griping about the privacy policy, capacity issues, token costs, and how trendy the names are for the new models (???). The bar is on the floor and I just want it at my knees.
No it's not. The Privacy Policy is worthy of discussion. People declaring the quality of the model after 2 seconds is just noise, arguably worse than nothing.
Okay (I disagree because most privacy policy discussions on HN go in the exact same direction and turn into outrage threads but this is a reasonable disagreement since not all of these discussions do), but model naming of all things? Come on. This is low level reaction slop and it's obvious.
As often happens with random oddball things which become traditions in web communities, the replies asking what it is or complaining about it, begin to gain their own humor value.
Almost all Musk related negative news gets [flagged] and never hits the the front page, so there is still a silent base on the other "team" apparently.
It depends on the gym and their business model! A super-budget gym like Planet Fitness that charges $15/month is going to lose money on heavy users, but they count on most of their members being infrequent gym-goers. A luxury gym like Equinox that charges $300/month can target heavy users without any issues, and they'd actually rather members go more so they stay and spend money on expensive salads and smoothies.
Right now all these AI subscriptions are priced like Planet Fitness, but they're used like Equinox. They're hoping that the new a la carte offerings will move their pricing more in that direction as well.
The other user is right, you are being a pedant. Why do you think planet fitness makes money hand over fist? Because 99% of its users sign up, never go, and then also never cancel because it’s cheap enough to leave running. Gyms absolutely bank on low amounts of power users, meaning the rest of the subscribers are subsidizing those that go frequently.
Members will switch gyms if it's too busy at times they want to visit. "Too busy" includes too much contention for a single piece of equipment.
US gyms might be vast warehouses but in the UK, most only have a couple of benches, couple of cages, one set of db per denomination above 20kg etc. They require working-in and consideration for others.
A couple of unapproachable "heavy users" doing 3 hour sessions across peak hours can ruin the workout for dozens of paying members needing a few min per station for ~5 sets.
It might also be a euphemism for "dickhead" who also tend to be "heavy users". Those that damage, hoard and don't share equipment and repel other customers on many levels besides - threatening, lecherous, loud and smelly.
Doesn't even need malicious intent - can be weirdo bores, forever talking at victims while doing a routine that makes absolutely no sense besides camping on equipment for half a day... 100 sets of incline press 7 days a week... what are you even doing to yourself fella?
Physical industries are very different than software. Leather shoes are made many times, 1x per customer. Code is created once, using the same product for all customers. This gives a lot more leverage on investing in a quality product.
I also don't agree that software is disposable for the same problem. If it's a temporary problem sure, the code is thrown away and we create something new when another, different problem comes up that can be solves with software.
But if it's an enduring problem? The code sticks around.
People are willing to work for less because they enjoy the work more. Also wouldn't be surprised if the gaming industry trends younger, so less experience negotiating.
"low effort and convenient" seems to consistently win over "best quality" and this is going to be a downgrade in everything, for everyone
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