Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years.
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@einalex @robpike On the specific cases of both Tacoma bridge, and the Millenium bridge, you do a disservice to the *engineers* that built those to the understood specs. Tacoma wasn't built with unprecedented winds in mind, and the millenium bridge was fine until unexpectedly large crowds did something we didn't realise they did.
We're doing a terrible thing with LLMs which is *exactly* the opposite of what the studious, learned, and hard working engineers on both those bridge actually did.@tmcfarlane I'm not blaming them. I'm well aware they were working according to standards. I'm saying our understanding of the conditions was insufficient, so best practice engineering by lots of talented, experienced, well-intended humans still resulted in failure.
Contrast that with no-understanding low-effort llm usage. The notion that the results will "work" is comical and tragic.
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@tmcfarlane I'm not blaming them. I'm well aware they were working according to standards. I'm saying our understanding of the conditions was insufficient, so best practice engineering by lots of talented, experienced, well-intended humans still resulted in failure.
Contrast that with no-understanding low-effort llm usage. The notion that the results will "work" is comical and tragic.
@einalex @robpike well they work right up until they don't. We had engineering to deal with that before, but apparently that was dull.
Would an AI Bro want to fly a plane his chat bot built? Or walk his family across a bridge one of them sketched up? (a few took their families down in a sub that an A-level mechanics student could have told you was a bad idea, so I'm not actually sure the answer to either of those is a "no"). -
@petrillic @robpike The recent Timothy Snyder essay on "Superpower Suicide" was posted/re-posted a lot this weekend. "Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity." I hate to be susceptible to trying to make everything-look-like-everything-else but these two rots feel related if not foundationally then at least spiritually.
From this essay:
#Trump announced his main weapon would be tariffs, but then lost his trade war with China ...
It would serve the USA for Ukraine to win; but Trump switched to support Russia ...
Ukraine has performed ever better. The US failed to see its own interests ...
Trump left Iran with uranium in the hands of a more radical regime which holds new economic power ...
Instruments to influence Iranian society were willfully demolished in early 2026.
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@robpike Ergo, capitalism tends to become ever-more detached from reality, and, if let alone, will destroy itself eventually. That which better comports with reality will remain, and will serve as foundations for whatever comes after. (Hopefully this includes us as a species, let alone high technology, but I suppose nothing is guaranteed.
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@einalex @robpike well they work right up until they don't. We had engineering to deal with that before, but apparently that was dull.
Would an AI Bro want to fly a plane his chat bot built? Or walk his family across a bridge one of them sketched up? (a few took their families down in a sub that an A-level mechanics student could have told you was a bad idea, so I'm not actually sure the answer to either of those is a "no").@tmcfarlane not sure either..
To me, this is not working...that would be analog to dating a romance scammer and calling the experience "being in a relationship"
@robpike -
A forest burns but it comes back ever stronger.
Forests come back because thousands of individual seeds decide to sprout. Wounds heal because millions of cells take action.
Individuals need to reject LLMs, and the harmful companies and ideology behind them, if we're to see anything get better.
CC: @robpike@hachyderm.io
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Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike I'm hoping there may be an opportunity to rebuild from the ashes afterwards, because I cannot see how this is going to be sustainable once the industry finishes destroying its ability to build software that's not a complete incomprehensible disaster.
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If it was restricted to programming I would be merely sad. We got sufficiently good at automating artwork before programming.
CC: @robpike@hachyderm.io
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@robpike I trained as a Civ Eng and ended up in IT (only 35 years so far).
I'm having as much or way more fun nowadays than I did in the, say, noughties. Back then I worked at a SME that makes helicopters in the UK. PCs were all beige and ran Windows. We had VAXen and a mainframe for a bit of variety but that was it. My work PC did end up running Redhat and then Mandrake and then Gentoo but it was a bit complicated.
Nowadays, my wife has been rocking Arch for a good 10 years and she still calls it Facebook or the internet!
I've nearly migrated all my VMware customers to Proxmox. I run my own email systems on prem. I run DNS servers for my firm and our customers - DNSSEC (we'll be more careful than .de) and dynamic DNS and LUA courtesy of PowerDNS.
I have CAs, Ansible and all sorts of good stuff. Ooooh and IoT: Home Assistant and I have a 3D printer - sci-fi dreams for my 15 year old self
I still have my Commodore 64. It now has USB storage and a HDMI out to my telly.
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Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike Yeah.
(While we're all still here, speaking as one of the beneficiaries of your work, thank you for everything.)
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