The note to make on this post is the domain. Fly is an hosting company so if “AI lets us go faster” and “AI makes bad code but we’re slowing down to make it usable” (paraphrased) is their self-contradictory policy, that puts a question mark on hosting with them
Also, going “many of you will lose your jobs but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make” is almost admirable as a douchebag move, but it’s also the norm in tech. There is no class solidarity to speak of in tech.
Hypolite Petovan mag das.
teilten dies erneut
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •Underlining the point here: the fundamental argument of the pro-AI crowd in coding is that it makes you go faster and, after you’ve gone faster, you can go slower a little bit to catch the errors caused by going faster.
This has two problems
Because it’s harder to catch defects in code you didn’t write, the only realistic way of ensuring that you really do “go faster” is to let more defects through, unintentionally or no.
teilten dies erneut
Cory Doctorow, gavcloud und choan haben dies geteilt.
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •So, effectively “LLMs for coding” are largely a cover story for improving throughput by relaxing quality standards
The other issue is that “go faster” on coding without a corresponding increase in attention to other parts of software development and design seems to be just shifting the performance cost onto other parts of the org, at least in the cases and studies I’ve seen
teilten dies erneut
Esther Payne hat dies geteilt.
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •You end up increasing throughput without increasing performance while letting more defects through. Also leaves design (the ones you haven’t fired already) with less time and space to manoeuvre, forcing them to adopt “AI” which has another set of negative consequences for the product
It’s not great
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •A very useful question to ask yourself when reading anything (fiction, non-fiction, blogs, books, whatever) is “what does the author want to believe is true?”
Because a lot of writing is just as much about the author convincing themselves as it is about them addressing the reader
dasgrueneblatt hat dies geteilt.
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •Again, most who say we need “better AI critique” are either not paying attention to the actual critics or simply do not like being told something they like is flawed.
They inherently don’t accept any critique as valid, otherwise they’d engage with existing critique to find points they can act on
There is no winning in a debate with somebody who is deliberately not paying attention.
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •The dividing line between critics of "AI" for software dev and fans largely lies in their different worldviews about what the state of software dev was before the "AI" bubble
Before LLMs arrived, the critics believed that existing software dev was flawed, largely inadequate, and a recipe for future crises, whereas the fans thought things were great but needed to be faster
teilten dies erneut
bookandswordblog, bewitchedmind und Aki Dockhard haben dies geteilt.
Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •These two groups never agreed before chatbots and copilots became a thing and they are not going to agree today
Those are two fundamentally different worldviews that will never be compatible.
alcinnz
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •To be fair, while this blogpost is very dismissive... It does engage with the critique more than most! Low bar I know!
Funny, both me & Fly suspects this nonsense will be over next year. Though I would've suspected it'd be over already!
Btw I appreciate your Shrek reference!
alcinnz
Als Antwort auf alcinnz • • •The thing which gets to me though... I do want to move the field of software development forward!
But when I disagree on what that means with those holding the pursestrings... Yeah, I end up treading water.
Jonathan Schofield
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •as @pluralistic says, the *lack of care* economy is intrinsic to:
“operating at scale without humans in the loop, to do tasks that historically we wouldn’t have tried to automate because they require human judgment”.
And the lack of care economy has already placed us in a very deep hole.
Quote below is from Indy Johar
mastodon.social/@urlyman/11461…
Jonathan Schofield (@urlyman@mastodon.social)
MastodonMx. Luna Corbden
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •tobi is writing bugs
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •bang on the mark here; if anything there's a pervasive "fuck you, got mine" attitude whereby any time anyone catches a whiff of potential upward mobility to the millionaire techy class for themselves, they'll step on absolutely anyone to get there; it's the opposite of class solidarity, and it's horrible to witness
silverwizard
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf silverwizard • • •mkj
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •I'm *quite* sure I've had someone actually tell me that generative AI (ergo LLMs) will find a way to fix the problems with LLMs.
Maybe not specifically the financing; but certainly a lot of their other issues.
Like, you bring up the massive power use compared to existing alternatives, and the person you're talking to responds with something like "but what if/when AI comes up with a way to do net-positive-energy cold fusion?".
@silverwizard
alcinnz
Als Antwort auf mkj • • •Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Als Antwort auf Baldur Bjarnason • • •Baldur Bjarnason
Als Antwort auf Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 • • •