this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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There is this seeming need to discredit AI from some people that goes overboard. Some friends and family who have never really used LLMs outside of Google search feel compelled to tell me how bad it is.
But generative AIs are really good at tasks I wouldn't have imagined a computer doing just a few year ago. Even if they plateaued in place where they are right now it would lead to major shakeups in humanity's current workflow. It's not just hype.
The part that is over hyped is companies trying to jump the gun and wholesale replace workers with unproven AI substitutes. And of course the companies who try to shove AI where it doesn't really fit, like AI enabled fridges and toasters.
See now, I would prefer AI in my toaster. It should be able to learn to adjust the cook time to what I want no matter what type of bread I put in it. Though is that realky AI? It could be. Same with my fridge. Learn what gets used and what doesn't. Then give my wife the numbers on that damn clear box of salad she buys at costco everytime, which take up a ton of space and always goes bad before she eats even 5% of it. These would be practical benefits to the crap that is day to day life. And far more impactful then search results I can't trust.
There's a good point here that like about 80% of what we're calling AI right now... isn't even AI or even LLM. It's just.... algorithm, code, plain old math. I'm pretty sure someone is going to refer to a calculator as AI soon. "Wow, it knows math! Just like a person! Amazing technology!"
(That's putting aside the very question of whether LLMs should even qualify as AIs at all.)
In my professional experience, AI seems to be just a faster way to generate an algorithm that is really hard to debug. Though I am dev-ops/sre so I am not as deep in it as the devs.
As a devops person, I’m constantly jumping back and forth to whatever programming language and tools each team uses. Sometimes it takes a bit to find the context, and I’m hoping ai can help. Unfortunately, allowing the ai to see code is currently off limits by corporate policy, so it only helps in those situations where I need to generate boilerplate
In my jobs there have slways been certain stule requirements to the code. AI doesn't take those into account. So I would have to rework the code anyway. And of course there are the local libraries it know nothing about.
Fight technology with technology. I’m sure you can specify a style for it to generate, but we already run everything through a prettifier configured for what we look for …. Unless you mean a higher order like naming or architecture
Lol, the lead can't spec the style, he just reviews the code and asks for changes. Sometimes it's just that we already have a method that does a similar thing, so we should use it. Of course an AI wouldn't know about that unless you gave it access to your code. And given how speed first AI companies are, I would never trust that data with them. But other times it's just the leads personal preference.
I just had to transfer one of my guys out after frequent arguments to do that. I don’t understand - I point out a function that does exactly why he wants, yet he still wants to reinvent it.
I’m dreading when I come back after break. I got 50% a new junior guy who keeps saying he’s a great programmer. No sign of it so far but my management insists I take him on. All he needs to do is expose a new endpoint, wire up functionality that’s already there, and I walked him through it. Should be easy, right? No reinventing the wheel, right?
I do know the feel. I was young once (seems a long long time ago). Reinventing the wheel was fun and challenging. I loved creating libraries. I didn't actually know at the time that there were already existing libraries I could just use, this was the 90s. But it is hard to keep track of what library code exists in a project if you didn't write it. Maybe assign them to review the library code and document it or something. Then they will know what it is at least.