Were there cheaper and humane ways to get more employees to use AI? (yes). Did many people JUST burn tokens (goodbart law)? (Yes). Would people revert back to the mean? (I think yes). Do many professionals hate AI because of this push? (Yes). Was the org net productive?
I wish there was an independent body truly assessing the impact of big tech decisions and running counterfactuals. Instead of accepting nice stories like this as a given.
> But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular?
Hmm, why would anyone add comms to a laptop if there wasn’t some benefactor in some way? The way I see it is that it’s either benefiting me or benefiting the company which ends up benefiting some individuals (and sometimes me again).
In your examples, I can still find the “for whom”, even if that is several layers deep. I’m trying to understand your position: are you saying the same will be true in the ongoing case, just that we don’t know the connections yet?
> Your own job, assuming you're in the software industry, is to automate and eliminate people's jobs. How many jobs do you think it has eliminated? Do you feel you are responsible for your products?
This is a common trope from the LLM crowd. Places I have worked for as a software engineer have created more jobs (gig economy) or improved the human condition (edtech in emerging markets) or helped people in refugee camps in Kenya stay connected.
Even in questionable companies, I focus on work that makes sure the technology is accessible to any and everyone. I became a programmer because I thought I could help make the world a better place.
> The hope is that it will be net plus for the society.
From my experience using HN, this feels made up. HN sentiment on AI seems to have only gotten better: with more overly pro-AI or nuanced voices plus more AI topics.
The hype is in what AI delivers (at least so far). I would never create a PR without an AI review. I will ask an AI to write code for me from time to time.
But it still has huge gaps in quality. And from time to time, it shows me that it doesn’t really understand things. You might point out that how is that any different from your mediocre engineer. But for most people skilled enough, you can easily know the difference when someone doesn’t really know something.
With AI, you discover this after reading several pages being dumped on you by people being “more productive” with AI.
I just had a relevant experience. I asked Claude to add “trace(‘$FunctionName’) {}” to all Composable functions in my app. Claude spent some time doing something. In between, I was like shoot, I could just do a deterministic regex match and replace.
While intuition takes a while, I think it can be learned in less than a month or two.
This has been my experience. When something gets good enough, someone will create some really good resource on it. Allowing the dust to settle, to me is a more efficient strategy than constantly trying to “keep up”. Maybe also not waiting too long to do so.
This wouldn’t work of course if a person was trying to be some AI thought leader.
> LLMs make learning new material easier than ever. I use them a lot and I am learning new things at an insane pace in different domains.
With learning, aren’t you exposed to the same risks? Such that if there was a typical blind spot for the LLM, it would show up in the learning assistance and in the development assistance, thus canceling out (i.e unknown unknowns)?
Personal opinion: I find funerals to be a waste of time and money.
Especially, coming from a culture where they are a big event. People spend enormous money on funerals —- money that they wouldn’t help you with while you are alive and struggling.
Maybe attending one in a less flamboyant culture will change my mind.
But I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.
As someone who has worked hard for years (at some point I had three con-concurrent jobs), I’m not sure working hard is the variable that causes burnout :thinking_face:
I will say tho, it gave me persistent back problems and RSI for two years :). But that again is not just “working hard”. It was bad posture, lack of stretching, breaks and exercise, I think.
Edit: Perhaps it’s the nature of the work or working hard unhealthily (physical and mental?) or the person’s characteristics.
Of course. However, the amount of time spent thinking consciously or subconsciously on a doomed project is minimized. The amount of time spent making decisions predicated on having the same job also. I can also savage any expensive holiday plans I made.
The keyword for me is the employer should let me know ASAP when something is doomed.
Again, this stress-free holiday with family is not a problem for me. I will rather be real about the situation than have my employer hide it for a month. They could give me an extra month of severance instead :).
Edit: I might be a minority on the earlier take.
I think the other argument that would affect other people is: these things always leak through gossip. When you hear of an imminent layoff and you don’t know if you will be included, it’s the worst type of stress.
I see. I guess different strokes for different folks.
For me, if my job or project is doomed, and my employer knows, I will rather they tell me immediately so I can start figuring out solutions ASAP.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the holidays. The last thing I will want is to come back from a holiday in Portugal, spirits high, year plans made, but only to be told I am fired.
I wish there was an independent body truly assessing the impact of big tech decisions and running counterfactuals. Instead of accepting nice stories like this as a given.
Using Claude, I recently tried to do something similar for the Covid hiring spree: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/21bba86a-ad5d-439c-861d-0...