I've heard Palantir is essentially the only federal cloud vendor with this administration for secure services. By "partnered up with Palantir", do you mean they provided their models to the government? Or something more?
> "oh but programming is the boring part, now I can focus on the problem solving" or something like that, even though that's precisely what they delegate to the AI.
Take game programming: it takes an immense amount of work to produce a game, problems at multiple levels of abstraction. Programming is only one aspect of it.
Even web apps are much, much more than the code backing them. UIUX runs deep.
I'm having trouble understanding why you think programming is the entirety of the problem space when it comes to software. I largely agree with your colleagues; the fun part for me, at this point in my career, is the architecture, the interface, the thing that is getting solved for. It's nice for once to have line of sight on designs and be able to delegate that work instead of writing variations on functions I've written thousands if not tens of thousands of times. Often for projects that are fundamentally flawed or low impact in the grand scheme of things.
I don't know why people build houses with nail guns, I like my hammer... Whats the point of building a house if you're not going to pound the nails in yourself.
AI tooling is great at getting all the boiler plate and bootstrapping out of the way... One still has to have a thoughtful design for a solution, to leave those gaps where you see things evolving rather than writing something so concrete that you're scrapping it to add new features.
You can pick apart a nail gun and see how it exactly works pretty easily. You cant do that with LLMs. Also a nail gun doesn't get less accurate the more nails you shoot one after another, a LLM does get less accurate the more steps it goes through. Also a nail gun shoots straight and not in random directions as that would be considered dangerous. A LLM does shoot into random directions. The same prompt will often yield different results. With a nail gun you can easily pull the plug and you wont have to verify if the nail got placed correctly for an unreasonable amount of time, with LLM output you have to verify everything which takes a lot of time. If an LLM really is such a great tool for you I fear you are not verifying everything it does.
If the boilerplate is that obvious why not just have a blueprint for that and copy and paste it over using a parrot?
Also I dont have a nail gun subscription and the nail gun vendor doesnt get to see what I am doing with it.
You mention a thousand ways the analogy breaks when you take it too far, but you didn't address the actual (correct) point the analogy was making: Some people don't enjoy certain parts of the creative process, and let an LLM handle them. That's all.
> Some people don't enjoy certain parts of the creative process,
Sure
> and let an LLM handle them.
This is probably the disputed part. It is not a different way of development, and as such it should not be presented like that. In software, we can use ready-made components, choose between different strategies, build everything in a low-level language etc. The trade-offs coming with each choice is in principle knowable; the developer is still in control.
LLMs are nothing like that. Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development. On the surface, it might look like you get ready-made components by outsourcing it to them, but there is no contract about any standard, so you have to check everything.
Now if people would present it like "I rather manage an outsourcing process than doing the creative thing" we would have no discussion. But hammers and nails aren't the right analogies.
>LLMs are nothing like that. Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development.
You're going to have to tell us your definition of 'Using a LLM' because it is not akin to outsourcing (As I use it).
When I use clause, I tell it the architecture, the libraries, the data flows, everything. It just puts the code down which is the boring part and happens fast.
The time is spent mostly on testing, finding edge cases. The exact same thing if I wrote it all myself.
> 'Using a LLM' because it is not akin to outsourcing (As I use it).
The things you do with an LLM are precisely what many other IT-firms do when outsourcing to India. Now you might say that this would be bonkers, but that is also why you hear so often that LLM's are the biggest threat to outsourcing instead of software development in general. The feedback cycle with an LLM is much faster.
> I don't see how this is hard for people to grasp?
I think I understand you, and I think you have/had something else in mind when hearing the term outsourcing.
I don't think people use an LLM and say "I wrote some code", but they do say "I made a thing", which is true. Even if I use an LLM to make a library, and I decide the interfaces, abstractions, and algorithms, it was still me who did all that.
> Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development.
This is a straw man argument. You have described one potential way to use an LLM and presented it as the only possible way. Even people who use LLMs will agree with you that your weak argument is easy to cut down.
You can't stretch it until it breaks and then say "see? It broke, it wasn't perfect". It works for the purpose it was made, and that's all it needed to work for.
This appears to misunderstand both construction and software development, nail guns and LLMs are not remotely parallel.
You’re comparing a deterministic method of quickly installing a fastener with something that nondeterministically designs and builds the whole building.
Nail guns are great. For nails that fit into them and spaces they fit into. But if you can't hit a nail with a hammer, you're limited to the sort of tasks that can be accomplished with the nail guns and gun-nails you have with you.
That's the problem with solving a casually made metaphor instead of sticking to the original question. Since when is AI assisted coding only when you do 100% AI and not a single line yourself? That is only the extreme end! Same with the nails actually. I doubt the builders don't also have and use hammers.
> This is the way with many labor-saving devices.
I think that's more the problem of people using only the extremes to build an argument.
Sure, but I prefer to work on projects that are fundamentally sound and high impact. Indeed, I have certainly noticed a pattern that very often ai enthusiasts exalt its capabilities to automate work that appears to be of questionable value in the first place, apart from the important second order property of keeping the developer sheltered and fed.
I have this in my CLAUDE.md and it works better than 50/50. Still not 100% though:
### Development Process
All work must be done via TODO.md. If the file is empty, then we need to write our next todo list.
When TODO.md is populated:
1. Read the entire TODO.md file first
2. Work through tasks in the exact order listed
3. Reference specific TODO.md sections when reporting progress
4. Mark progress by checking off todos in the file
5. Never abbreviate, summarize, or reinterpret TODO.md tasks
A TODO file is done when every box has been checked off due to completion of the associated task.
What makes you think ".. had everyone loving it" and "the majority of people who watched it loved it"? Was there a study done? I don't know either way, and am genuinely curious what that distribution looks like. I suspect nobody knows the answer but you seem confident in your assertion.
As an aside, I imagine the commenter you're replying to will find "That you don't [love these things] is fine. Not everything needs to be for you." to be patronizing.
> What makes you think ".. had everyone loving it" and "the majority of people who watched it loved it"?
"the majority of people who watched it loved it"
Because why someone who doesn't like something watch it all the way through. The majority of people who watched Wheel of Time loved it. Sure, some people who disliked it or weren't interested would have watched it all the way through, but most people don't. Did the majority of people who watched only an episode or two love it? I don't know. But that was never my claim.
Maybe you can share why you think people, outside of being reviewers, will watch things they don't like? Am I the odd one out? Seriously, if I don't like a book I stop reading it. If I don't like a show I stop watching.
"JordanCon/WoTCon had everyone loving it." (completely different from saying "everyone loving it")
Because I attended them, and everyone there was loving it. Judging by the cheers and the interest at the associated panels, and well everyone I spoke with.
> I imagine the commenter you're replying to will find "That you don't [love these things] is fine. Not everything needs to be for you." to be patronizing
I would hazard most shows that people watch, they don't love. Indeed, when it comes to movies, books, and shows there are only a few that I love. Nevertheless I continue to watch and read various content because it's fun, doesn't mean I love it, and sometimes in the end I'll decide I didn't like it.
One can enjoy the show as a kind of trashy fanfiction while still finding it terribly unfaithful to the original story and characters. We're only two seasons in and massive changes have been made that invalidate character arcs in the original, so I expect we'll continue to see greater and greater divergence in plot points.
Having said that, what do you think of people like GRRM (wrt House of the Dragon) and Brandon Sanderson critiquing these adaptations? Your last paragraph seems to imply there's no value to someone dislike something.
> now it has settled into the narrowest field ever seen.
That's a hot take. It's never been a better time to be a gamer. In addition to most of the gaming backlog being available via emulation, it's never been easier for a small number of people to build a great game. So long as you're not extremely picky there's more good games to play than time to play them.
Eh, I'd put an asterisk on the "never been easier for a small number of people to build a great game" comment. On one hand, what can be achieved by an individual with today's engines is indisputably incredible relative to what was possible in the past. On the other hand, expectations from players have also had a pretty huge runaway explosion as well, meaning the ability for a small team to achieve commercial success is more of a mixed bag.
It obviously still happens. Lethal Company is a great example of that (1 developer, currently the top seller on Steam), but compared to the DOOM/Myst/etc era where ALL games were developed by small teams it's harder to establish a niche.
No, the problem is not expectations. There's a viable market for pretty much anything. The problem small developers face is not so much finding a market, but rather being able to be seen. Since it's so easy to make games nowadays, the indy market is flooded with titles. If you go browsing through Steam it's not too hard to find games that will appeal to you, but that you just never heard of. If the AAA studios are analogous to Hollywood, then the indy studios are analogous to YouTubers.
of course it is, but the industrialisation of games seems inevitable. You had craft workshops then, with 10-30 people, now you have factories like Ubisoft making yearly releases of whatever game they can (Assassins Creed, Far Cry, etc)
The fact that Steam exists and dominates the industry however, was not inevitable, and its incredible that we have things like Early Access and other tools to enable smaller developers to carve out their niche!
One cannot predict what a smarter-than-themself agent will do ahead of time, if they could then they’re just as smart. Just as a dolphin cannot predict how a human will come up with novel and utterly overwhelming ways to farm them, you and this other poster cannot predict how an AGI will achieve dominance of its environment to achieve its goals, so your request is impossible to fulfill. Lee Sedol couldn’t “take us through it step by step” how AlphaGo would beat him in Go.
That aside, afaik most safety concerns arent around a bad human actor using AGI to dominate the planet, it’s around an AGI being misaligned to begin with, it cannot be controlled, we promptly lose everything after it manifests.
How ridiculous. This is just sci-fi bullshit without a shred of logic or scientific evidence. You would have just as much credibility claiming that we are at risk of an alien invasion. I mean I can prove that it's impossible.
No evidence? There are two examples of evidence in my post: the history of homo sapiens vs other intelligent mammals and AlphaGo vs humans in Go.
Alien invasion? What in the non sequitur are you going on about? And apparently you have a proof against the possibility of AI misalignment? Pack it up everyone, nradov has the entire field of AGI alignment nailed. And a proof of the non-existence of aliens, never-mind very smart people have put out a mathematical model which seems to fit the evidence quite well.*
Apologies for the snark, but your reply was rather abrasive.
It doesn’t. I was discussing the inability of a weaker intelligence to predict ahead of time what a stronger intelligence will do to achieve its goals. AlphaGo is an example of that in the specific domain of Go gameplay. A general intelligence is generalized, which is why humans can outcompete other agents in so many different domains, just as an AGI could outcompete us in any domain given the opportunity to grow in power.
Here's an example: our dear Czar uses the AGI to discover a 16 shell company chain in order to get resources and tech that are under sanctions. Or, he has it use real-world conditions from large batches or real-time uncurated battlefield data and intelligence reports to run simulation after simulation to inform his generals where it is likeliest that the next counterattack would be concentrated.
Fwiw, FF7 Remake is something different, to both acclaim and great upset. It occurs after the original timeline but in the original timeline—Aeris and Sephiroth both know what happened in the OG timeline and S is trying to remake it better according to his aims. Also there’s a bit of a Kingdom Hearts-ification to some of the main story beats, which is my main complaint.
Many people are so upset because they didnt get what youre saying would be so bad, an actual remake or remaster.
As another poster linked, you may be a slow caffeine metabolizer. I am and avoiding caffeine entirely makes a big difference.
Another thing that might be making a difference is what you do in the hour to two hours before sleep. If I do anything exciting, like sports, suspenseful media & games, or anything analytical, then that will delay how quickly my body relaxes into later in the night, which messes up the beginning of the night when deep sleep mostly occurs.
Lastly, if you're measuring your deep sleep based off of a device that isn't on your head, then take that data with a huge grain of salt. I compared sleep data from an Oura ring with the Dreem 2 headband and the ring was consistently so wrong as to be useless for driving better sleep behavior.
My ring - thus far - has been extremely correct about my sleep, as far as my wife and I can tell.
However, its activity recording is extremely inaccurate. I get moderate/low activity scores every day despite engaging in intensive weightlifting sessions, riding bicycles, and going to jujutsu class. I lift till I cannot lift; I roll until I gas out... yet my ring tells me, day after day, I need to be more active.
This is a great recommendation -- I dont really need caffeine but its a ritual I adore. I can definitely give it up so I think its where I can start. Thank you!
See my comment above about using chocolate as a bridge to deal with caffeine withdrawal. For me the brain fog and headaches always made it hard to transition to getting off caffeine, but chocolate is a good methadone for a week.
Coming from a city where bike theft is severe, the biggest culture shock for me in Japan was seeing how they "lock" their bicycles: loop a flimsy metal ring through the back wheel, and walk away. You could easily still wheel the bike away on its front wheel or toss it into the back of a truck. And yet, it will always still be there when you come back. Amazing.
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