"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not.
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@skavish So the PR that someone who actually knows how to use the tool made doesn't tell you anything about their ability to use the tool?
The sound that I hear when someone plays a guitar doesn't tell me anything about their ability to play the guitar?
Do you listen to yourself?
ok, look, you probably know who Linus Torvalds is, right? if not google it. then check it out: https://thenewstack.io/torvalds-linux-ai-stance/
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@skavish I find takes like this increasingly hilarious. There’s the magical mythical engineers “doing it right” while the vast majority of users - by my own observation - are pumping out absolute trash. The incentive for quality just does not exist. Some people can build quality systems in spite of that but it is not the norm.
on that I completely agree, but it does not mean the tool is bad, you just need to know how to use it
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ok, look, you probably know who Linus Torvalds is, right? if not google it. then check it out: https://thenewstack.io/torvalds-linux-ai-stance/
@skavish I read the email from Linus that led to that whole incident, actually, so I know that he was talking about stuff like Codex, the bug-finding tool. Yeah, LLMs are pretty dang useful for when you have a decent idea of the kind of code that will trigger a bug, and need loads and loads of variants with different timing and stuff. Enhanced fuzzing.
Code quality is quite irrelevant for that purpose.
Is it your opinion that code quality is irrelevant, generally?
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You sound like a cocaine user
RE: https://beige.party/@fuzzy/117417199780071912
Hint: most of the 1,266 accounts that I block are anti-AI.
Cc @skavish
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@skavish I read the email from Linus that led to that whole incident, actually, so I know that he was talking about stuff like Codex, the bug-finding tool. Yeah, LLMs are pretty dang useful for when you have a decent idea of the kind of code that will trigger a bug, and need loads and loads of variants with different timing and stuff. Enhanced fuzzing.
Code quality is quite irrelevant for that purpose.
Is it your opinion that code quality is irrelevant, generally?
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you're extrapolating from the worst possible use of AI to all uses of AI.
of course, millions of people can generate mountains of garbage with it. millions of people also write terrible code without AI.
dismissing AI without examining it is just ideology, not engineering.
correct.
worst possible use = most common use - at a massive scale = all use.
also - open source maintainers *definitely* need to inspect a lot of code - so not sure how you extrapolated that one.
anyway, blocked.
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@skavish Uh, yeah, I guess I remembered the name of the agentic review tool wrong.
Ya got me.
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@Gargron counterpoint: we are well past the point of no return for agentic engineering. There will always be purists who insist on writing code by hand but we aren’t returning to that being the default even after the bubble pops. And I think quiet use of AI as glue will propagate more or less unseen through a lot of tech until it is the expected/desired thing vs a bolted-on buzzword.
Are there myriad problems with both of these? Of course. But that much is not “failure” in any meaningful sense.
@mellowfish @Gargron “Agentic engineering” causes numerous problems, has serious quality control issues, and is extremely resource intensive. Currently, it is supported by hype, and by the widespread availability of subsidised compute. Following a market correction, those factors will evaporate; It is extremely premature and unfounded to assume the practice will continue in any form.
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you are free to conclude whatever you want. but i actually use the guitar to build shit every day, while you have decided it sounds bad without ever playing it. whose opinion do you think is more useful here?
The problem is that you are building shit.
Even if all your arguments suddenly got bopped on the head by the blue fairy and became true you are demonstrating an ABSURD degree of moral failure by using a system designed, by the creators' OWN WORDS, to de-skill and infantilize the entire populace so they can sell their own stolen work back to them on a fucking meter.
Bud, if you can wrangle ok code out of the fascist idiot machine, you are still an absolute piece of fascist shit.
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
About a week and a half, then it all collapses. I mean, /all/. This bubble is 3x the size of 2k8's housing bubble and even more fraudulent.
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
@Gargron just popping in to say thanks for this post, it's been very useful for #WhackATroll
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@clayote this is a strawman. I never said readable code doesn't matter, that prompts are the source code or that reviewing code is pointless. quite the opposite.
I use AI agents to build real software (bigger codebase than mastodon btw), and code review, tests and engineering discipline are still essential. the difference is that I don't assume the output has to be spaghetti just because an agent wrote it.
you are arguing against a caricature of how you imagine people use these tools, rather than how they can actually be used.
What's your "real software" which has a bigger codebase than mastodon?
Follow-up question, why do you think bigger is better?
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The problem is that you are building shit.
Even if all your arguments suddenly got bopped on the head by the blue fairy and became true you are demonstrating an ABSURD degree of moral failure by using a system designed, by the creators' OWN WORDS, to de-skill and infantilize the entire populace so they can sell their own stolen work back to them on a fucking meter.
Bud, if you can wrangle ok code out of the fascist idiot machine, you are still an absolute piece of fascist shit.
@TeflonTrout please go fuck yourself properly
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Sea Lion
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
@Gargron as long as it keeps improving money will go into it -
i never said bigger is better. @Gargron brought up the size of mastodon as an argument for his authority, so i was responding in the same terms. not sure where you got the idea that i was comparing codebase sizes.
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
It doesn’t seem like there’s any pathway to profitability. These guys are living in denial after epic level of Nepo baby money fire storm.
They all believe they could smother the problem in money and they would come out on top. This is how they usually operate so arguably it’s understandable why they went this way.
They are also insane
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i never said bigger is better. @Gargron brought up the size of mastodon as an argument for his authority, so i was responding in the same terms. not sure where you got the idea that i was comparing codebase sizes.
You wrote
"I use AI agents to build real software (bigger codebase than mastodon btw)"
in the post I'm replying to.
First question still outstanding.
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if you’ve never used it, then yes, you’re not in a position to judge what it looks like when used properly. being an experienced engineer and maintainer gives you plenty of expertise in software engineering, but it doesn’t magically give you first-hand experience with a tool you explicitly said you’ve never used.
you can absolutely argue that you don’t want to use it. that’s a different claim.
@skavish @Gargron I have used it "properly" and I think that's an invalid argument.
Software projects fundamentally depend on repeatable processes and human interaction.
"You're just not doing it right" is a cop-out from admitting the technology doesn't produce repeatable successes, complete ones, or even solutions that are what you asked for
If you know what you're doing, and have time to do it yourself, you don't need AI to write outstanding code.
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@Gargron It probably writes better code than you do at this point. Anyone who calls it spaghetti code TODAY has no clue what it’s capable of.
There’s a reason mathematicians are freaked out. Their heads aren’t in the sand
@j_s_j Mathematicians aren't freaked out because of how comprehensible and well-structured the LLM output is. It's the opposite. The models produce results (Lean code resulting in a "yes" or "no" to hard mathematical questions), accompanied by fever dreams of text that may or may not correspond to the Lean code. This is still apocalyptic for the field of mathematics because the "yes"es and "no"s themselves stand, regardless of the text quality and code quality. This approach to code isn't feasible if your software is to be used more than once, deal with the wildest inputs, and may end up running in a power plant.
