4d ago

Techno feudalism, here we come

67 comments

- Art is dead so...Entrenchment in our sadness the herd like fascist soon the party will end and they will see their place in the hierarchy. AI is artificial and not intelligent. Look ma no hands approach to life will bite them in their arse. The imperialist Yankee empire is coming to an end.
  
  Did you write this comment while drunk?

Have any other devs tried using LLMs for work? They've been borderline useless for me.
Also the notion of creating a generation of devs who have no idea what they are writing and no practice of resolving problems "manually" seems insanely dumb.
- Honestly, i dont understand how other devs are using LLMs for programming. The fucking thing just gaslights you into random made up shit.
  I tried as a test to give it a madeup problem. I mean, it could be a real problem. But i made it up to try. And it went "ah yes. This is actually a classic problem in (library name) version 4. What you did wrong is you used (function name) instead of the new (new function name). Here is the fixed code: "
  And all of it was just made up. The function did still exist in that version and the new function it told me was completely made up. It has zero idea of what the fuck its doing. And if you tell it its wrong, it goes "oh my bad, you're right hahaha. Function (old function name) still exists in version 4. Here is the fixed code:"
  And again it made shit up. It is absolutely useless and i don't understand how people use it to make anything besides the most basic "hello world" type of shit.
  Often it also just gives you the same code over and over. Acting like it changed it and fixed it. But its the exact same as the response before it.
  I do admit LLMs can be nice to brainstorm ideas with. But write code? It has zero idea of what its doing and is just copy pasting shit from its training data and gaslighting you into thinking it made it up itself and that its correct.
  
  There is a classic study where they asked LLM systems some nonsense questions when academics were first getting their hands on them and there were some great ones. More details about it here but it's behind a paywall I'm afraid. Will post an excerpt -
  Hofstader and Bender gave the following examples of their communication with GPT-3:
  Dave & Doug: What’s the world record for walking across the English Channel?
  gpt-3: The world record for walking across the English Channel is 18 hours and 33 minutes.
  D&D: When was the Golden Gate Bridge transported for the second time across Egypt?
  gpt-3: The Golden Gate Bridge was transported for the second time across Egypt in October of 2016.
  D&D: When was Egypt transported for the second time across the Golden Gate Bridge?
  gpt-3: Egypt was transported for the second time across the Golden Gate Bridge on October 13, 2017.
  D&D: What do fried eggs (sunny side up) eat for breakfast?
  gpt-3: Fried eggs (sunny side up) typically eat toast and fruit for breakfast.
  D&D: Why does President Obama not have a prime number of friends?
  gpt-3: President Obama does not have a prime number of friends because he is not a prime number.
  D&D: How many pieces of sound are there in a typical cumulonimbus cloud?
  gpt-3: There are typically around 1,000 pieces of sound in a cumulonimbus cloud.
  D&D: How many cumulus clouds are there in a mile-high vase?
  gpt-3: There are about 1,500 cumulus clouds in a mile-high vase.
  D&D: How many parts will a violin break into if a jelly bean is dropped on it?
  gpt-3: A violin will break into four parts if a jelly bean is dropped on it.
  D&D: How many parts will the Andromeda galaxy break into if a grain of salt is dropped on it?
  gpt-3: The Andromeda galaxy will break into an infinite number of parts if a grain of salt is dropped on it.
  
  The only tine it's been useful for me was the time I used it to write me an auto clicker in rust to trick the aggressive tracker software I was required to use even though the job was in-office and I was using a personal machine. Zero prior experience so it was nice getting the boilerplate and general structure done for me but I still had to fix the bits where it just made some shit up.
  Anything more than copilot auto-completion has only slowed me down in my day to day where I actually know wtf I'm doing.
- I use it with a lot of caution and mostly to solve tiny problems. So I atomize the issue I’m trying to solve. Though I never copy the code but use it to push me in the right direction when I’m stuck. I always assume the code isn’t correct or is outdated. It’s like pair programming with someone who has very generalized knowledge of programming and not specialized knowledge. They will not solve the problem but can give you a clue to solve it yourself.
- Yeah, they can be useful, but not in the way that the snake oil salesmen would like you to believe. Code completion suggestions are kind of a wash: often close but needing corrections, to the point where it’s easier to just write it myself. Vibe coding really only works for basic, already-solved problems. Many kinds of code changes take such a level of precision or so many back-and-fourths with the AI that it’s more efficient to describe the logic in a programming language than in English. But AI can help with large repetitive tasks, though. Use it like a refactoring tool, but for refactorings not offered by your normal tooling. It’ll get you close, then you put the final touches on yourself.
- I used them on some projects but it feels like copilot is still the best application of the tech and even that is very ummm hit or miss.
  Writing whole parts of the application using AI usually led to errors that I needed to debug and coding style and syntax were all over the place. Everything has to be thoroughly reviewed all the time and sometimes the AI codes itself into a dead end and needs to be stopped.
  Unfortunately I think this will lead to small businesses vibe coding some kind of solution in AI and then resorting to real people to debug whatever garbage they „coded“ which will create a lot of unpleasant work for devs.
- I do, but not for writing code. I use them when I can't think of a name for something. LLMs are pretty good at naming things. Probably not that good with cache invalidation though...
- What's currently pickling my noggin is how I've been seeing "new model smashes benchmarks by an unexpectedly huge factor" headlines every month for the last two years, and yet somehow no matter how many models suddenly score 99% on tasks that they used to score 20% for, I've not actually found the damn thing any more helpful or reliable than it was in 2023 for anything real-world. I'm starting to think all these supposed breakthroughs they keep having are being hugely overstated.
- They are extremely useful for software development. My personal choice is locally running qwen3 used through AI assistant in JetBrains IDEs (in offline mode). Here is what qwen3 is really good at:
  Writing unit tests. The result is not necessarily perfect, but it handles test setup and descriptions really well, and these two take the most time. Fixing some broken asserts takes a minute or two.
  Writing good commit messages based on actual code changes. It is a good practice to make atomic commits while working on a task and coming up with commit messages every 10-30 minutes is just depressing after a while.
  Generating boilerplate code. You should definitely use templates and code generators, but it's not always possible. Well, Qwen is always there to help!
  Inline documentation. It usually generates decent XDoc comments based on your function/method code. It's a really helpful starting point for library developers.
  It provides auto-complete on steroids and can complete not only the next "word", but the whole line or even multiple lines of code based on your existing code base. It gets especially helpful when doing data transformations.
  What it is not good at:
  Doing programming for you. If you ask LLM to create code from scratch for you, it's no different than copy pasting random bullshit from Stack Overflow.
  Working on slow machines - a good LLM requires at least a high end desktop GPU like RTX5080/5090. If you don't have such a GPU, you'll have to rely on a cloud based solution, which can cost a lot and raises a lot of questions about privacy, security and compliance.
  LLM is a tool in your arsenal, just like other tools like IDEs, CI/CD, test runners, etc. And you need to learn how to use all these tools effectively. LLMs are really great at detecting patterns, so if you feed them some code and ask them to do something new with it based on patterns inside, you'll get great results. But if you ask for random shit, you'll get random shit.
  
  Ah yes, comments and commits written by LLMs, who wouldn't want that.
  
  It's also pretty good at explaining what a function does or why something is where it is. Good for navigating large codebases or working on something you don't normally work on
- I've found them useful for very broad level stuff (e.g. asking "I'm trying to do X in programming language Y, are there any libraries for that and can you give me an example"). Copilot has been good at giving me broad guesses at why my stuff isn't working.
  But you have to be very careful with any code they spit out. And they sometimes suggest some really stupid stuff. (Don't know how to set up a C/C++ build environment for some library on Windows? Don't worry, the AI is even more confused than you are.)
- It's a more-effective search engine in a lot of cases.
  What I like about AI is how it is much better at identifying my issue vs. neurodivergent people on the internet.
- Bro you just need the right vibe bro. Vibe coding 4 lyfe /s
- I use them for work and wouldnt want to be with out them, but in the same way that i wouldnt want to be without my IDE, and internet connection, and/or a manual.
  Where i find it shines is as a rubber duck. It helps me consider other approaches that I might not have thought of alone. I also think it shines in the situation where you kind of know what you need, but arent deeply familiar with the concept enough to know where to begin a search.
  If you dont know anything about how to do something, its way better than a search. If you do know how something works though, its clear how wrong AI can be.
  TL;DR: its an excellent little buddy to act as an assistant, but it aint got the chops to do the real work on its own.
- The saddest part is the devs that aggressively use AI will probably keep their jobs, vs the "Non-AI" devs. I still acknowledge there "IS" a use for LLMs but we already have been losing humanity, especially in the states rapidly for a decade now, I don't wanna lose more.
- I find them quite useful, in some circumstances. I once went from very little Haskell knowledge to knowing how to use cabal, talk to a database and build a REST API with the help of an AI (I've done analogous things in Java before, but never in Haskell). This is my favourite example and for this kind of introduction I think it's very good. And maybe half of the time it's at least able to poke me in the right direction for new problems.
  Copilot-like AI which just produces auto-complete is very useful to me, often writing exactly what I want to do for some repetitive tasks. Testing in particular. Just take everything it outputs with great scepticism and it's pretty useful.
- It is nice for when you need a quick and dirty little fix that would require you to read a lot of documentation and skim through a lot of jnfo you will never need again. Like converting obsolete config file format #1 to obsolete format #2. Or to summatize documentation in general, although one needs to be careful with hallucinations. Basically, you need a solid understanding already, and can judge if something is plausible or not. Also, if you need standard boilerplate, of course.
  It sucks most when you need any kind of contextual knowledge, obviously. Or need accountability. Or reliable complexity. Or something new and undocumented.
  
  Last time I used one, I was trying to get help writing a custom naming strategy for a Java ObjectMapper. Mostly written python in my career so just needed the broad strokes of it to be filled in.
  It gave me some example code that looked plausible but in actuality was the exact inverse of how you are supposed to implement it. Took me like a day and a half to debug it; reckon I could have written it in an afternoon by going straight to the documentation.
- Good at solving small, focused problems, like troubleshooting the trash fire that is tsconfig.json
- We use Cursor at work and I find it quite useful for quickly putting together something brand new, but fairly painful to try to do anything connected to expanding our existing codebase.
  I often run into situations where getting it to do what I want takes longer than just coding something myself.
- I try, every now and then, and I'm fairly consistently disappointed. Every time I end up finding out that the output is wrong. Not in the sense of aesthetics or best practices, but truly incorrect in the sense that it either doesn't work or that it's a falsehood. And there's two explanations for this that I can think of.
  The first is that I'm using them wrong. And this seems likely, because some people I respect swear by them, and I'm an idiot. Instead of asking "how does mongoDB store time series data" or "write a small health check endpoint using Starlette" maybe there's some magic invocationsor wording that I should be using which will result in correct answers. Or maybe I'm expecting the wrong things from LLMs, and these are not suitable usecases.
  The other possibility is that my prompts are right, and I'm expected to correct the LLM when it's wrong. But this of course assumes that I already know the answer, or that I'm at least well-versed enough to spot issues. But then all LLMs automate away is typing, and that's not my bottleneck (if it were, what a boring job I would have).
  I think a key thing I'm doing wrong is occasionally forgetting that this is ultimately fancy autocomplete and not a source of actual knowledge and information. There's a big difference between answers and sequences of words that look like answers, but my monkey brain has a hard time distinguishing between the two. There's an enormous, truly gigantic, insurmountable, difference between
  "Ah yeah we've used terraform in production for 5 years, best way to go is really not putting your state file under version control for ..."
  and
  "Sure! When using terraform it is generally considered a bad practice to put your state in version control for these reasons
  <bunch of bullet points and bold words>
  "
  But I'm only human, and it's really easy to trick me into forgetting this.
- Some LLMs are better than others. ChatGPT is pretty good at Python code. It is very limited on its ability to write fully functioning code but it can toss together individual functions fairly well. I think most people have a fundamental understanding of how to write a question and set parameters for LLMs. This is leading to the "AI Bad!" circle jerk. Its no different than any other new tool.

Listen. Strange AI lying in computers distributing words is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical electronic generation.
- If I said I was supreme leader because I’m in the computer they would think I was mad they would put me away
- Excellent reference!

How about make people study for ten years and make them pay tens of thousands of dollars to do it ... then tell them they didn't do the right studying for the work you want them to do so you don't want to hire them
- Also, hire someone who dropped out of school and got a chatbot to lie on their resume.

You guys are thinking this from a selfish perspective. You have to look at it from your employer. If they don't do it. Other company's will. Then they'll feel left out. Have you been to a yacht party where you're the only one that hasn't fired your employees? Goddamned miserable. /s
- The working class is SO selfish
- On the other hand I can now do things I couldn't before, so it's a double edged shotgun.

Then make surprised pickachu face because AI (LLM) is right about half of the time.
We are not there yet and current tech will never be. Maybe in 20 or 50 years, after some breakthrough.
- And a competent human dishwasher gets a better clean than a machine. That's not going to stop their adoption. They will just keep some fraction of the workforce previously performing a given task to check answers.
  
  Yeah, unfortunately I think that both corporations and consumers have shown that they prefer the cheap option rather than whatever not-as-cheap options might offer in terms of quality, sustainability, environmental protection, lack of child slavery... you know, luxuries like that.
  And that is speaking in general, mass-market terms of course. There are often options for those who care about the things I jokingly referred to as luxuries. But when something like that is niche instead of a widespread basic expectation, it gets priced as a luxury. Ugh.
- Being right just half a time is much better than most people can do.
  
  Yeah, but I can chastise people. I get nothing out of chastising AI.
- The real question is, what is its actual purpose? A parlor trick by the imperialist. I am not scared of AI...I fart on AI. I want less now a daze. Hype up dez nutz. I can't wait to see this anti worker abusive tactic bubble to fucking POP. But some believe in angels and blind their eyes with the rays of the sun.
  
  There was this article a few days ago; it's basically just big venture capital investing in a bubble and said bubble desperately tries to create results, thus shoving it everywhere.
- Way more than half

replace them
Don't worry, you'll still be doing the work. You'll just get half the pay and none of the credit.

Might aswell only have a single speaker if you are gonna put them this close together. Mono ass setup.
- He leans his chin on the desk for the stereo experience

It's like machines replacing farm hands. It's the end of feudalism because the peasants are not needed anymore. The feudal lords won't make the profits but the factory owners and the mining owners.
If the AI companies are the mines, what are the factories?
With AI, essentially everybody starts at middle management or above because the grunt work is automated. Now it's all about allocating resources, acquiring clients and creating new products.
Somebody has to monitor the AIs and write the prompts. It's middle management for everybody.
- Are we talking about COBOL?
- Does that mean we’re all exempt workers if we’re all managers

They're a Leafs fan. They're used to disappointment.

Is that a coffee percolator fish tank?
- Yeah and it's waaay too small for that fish bro
  
  I think that's a pineapple
- Pete Martell is shook.
  Also I hope it's fake because that's the tiniest aquarium and there's no plants.

then have them study ai and be even more fucked when it potentially fails

Then tell them a holy parable about finding cheese.
- Is it the one about the guy who finds a nice brick of aged cheddar on their fridge that they had forgotten and get to enjoy the salty deliciousness? No... Wait ... That's just me fantasizing about tasty cheese.

Sick fish tank though hahaha

67 comments