Let me put it in tech bro speak: most of my AI usage has been suitability evaluation.
In layman terms: does this shit even do what it’s supposed to be doing.
It doesn’t. There are few limited tasks where LLMs can be genuinely used as a tool (my favourite example is image captioning) but it still needs hand holding and can’t work fully automatically. It’ll fuck up, and I’ll need my expertise to unfuck it.
They marketed AIs as “don’t worry, you can just use it as a tool”. It’s a tool that is sometimes useful. This is not a high endorsement.
Now: it’s my humble opinion one of the greatest tragedies of this AI boom is that it never should have been pushed to the mainstream. If LLMs had been left to the stage where they blatantly are now, they’d been left as marginal nerd toys. And all would have been well. But no, the Bros had to ruin it all and let us all discover myriad societal ills unfathomed by scifi authors. Thanks guys.
I could even get through a workday without my smartphone, even tho those things have become a requirement in today’s society.
I find these tech-bro dickheads hilarious
They look down on everyone else, genuinely believing themselves to be innately superior
I work with my hands.
I have an education, including a science degree, but I choose to do something that I enjoy and that I think contributes to this world
When the chips are down, guys like this are lost, useless, and little more than a hindrance
And of course, they’re utterly unable to see that they aren’t people of value
I’m an IT guy, I have worked in IT support since 2007. I have never ever ever needed AI for a single second in my job and seeing people use AI just annoys me.
Yes yes science and medicine people I know AI helps you.
You mean…go back to how things were six months ago? I’m sure we would manage.
You’re not wrong but it’s been iver a year since genAI been stomping all over the mainstream.
In a modern company an AI workday is a one hour day @maximum. The rest is writing purpose based purchase requisitions for AI tokens.
You know how some people have imposter syndrome? More people should have it.
As an ADHDer, I have way too much of that stuff. ToT
someone please take some of mine, i can share, really
Where do they get the confidence?
Ignorance
Corey Doctorow has a good article about this.
If Donald Trump ordered Big Tech to turn off all of your country’s chatbots tomorrow, nothing would change. Every one of your country’s ministries and corporations would chug on with nary a hitch. Households, too, though perhaps a few of the younger members of those families would have to do their own homework again.
Contrast this with what would transpire if Trump directed his tech giants to switch off your country’s Office 365 access, or to brick your Android and iOS phones, or to killswitch your John Deere tractors. Your country would effectively cease to exist.
Sure, tons of people are using AI, but that isn’t because they need AI to get their jobs done or even that AI makes their jobs easier. It’s because their bosses are convinced that they need to be using AI because it will change everything.
their bosses are convinced that they need to be using AI because it will change everything.
What the bosses mean by this:
we’re really hoping to save a ton of money in the long run by firing humans.
I got local-running AI for images and text (but the text one is slow and not as good). And I can actually code just fine myself. I would probably be slower without Claude Code. But I would still be fully able to do my job.
This will change for the next generation which is growing up with AI. But right now, an AI outage isn’t really that big of a deal.
So we definitely need open weight models and the hardware to run them to become available and affordable to everyone. Then a global AI outage becomes as unlikely as a global power outage.I love this implication that they really can’t comprehend that those of us who oppose it largely don’t use it.
We hired this senior dev … when we asked what this PR (code change request) was, he didn’t know. He stammered and then regurgitated what AI told him. I had to tell him, he’s on thin ice if he thinks he can vibe his way through this job.
All his work is AI comments everywhere. I’m like, you didn’t read what you wrote. What fucking relevance is putting down all of this info? I said, if you don’t have the courtesy to read it, then why the fuck am I? There’s little respect for my time in dealing with those that use it so much.
So, yes, I can very much deal in a world without AI. It may be slower in some areas but yes I can. Especially if it means exposing all my shitty coworkers work habits.
Like, who tf uses AI but is anti-ai?
I’m pretty anti AI. I don’t have a coding background but I would like to transition from sys admin. So I am learning but job has pushing to use AI to make faster results then I were to do it by hand :/ Still trying to learn out of work.
Don’t learn out of work, learn in work. But… I’m retired now, got out just in time.
I’m pretty anti-AI but my work is pushing it so hard on us that there are situations I have been forced to use it to show how incorrectly it is doing the work. Could def live without that.
That makes sense.
Me. It’s so much slop but at the same time if I grab a bunch of text from a spec book or web, I can tell it to reformat the columns and strip out stuff in a single line.
I could do the same with grep, sed, sort, trim etc but it would take longer
I work in tech and I’ve never used AI for any reason ever. Never a question. Never code. My coworkers don’t understand. I’m even required to use it in new and unique ways, and I’m not going to use something I’m going to learn to rely on, especially when my critical thinking is precious to me.
I’ve not intentionally used it. I shall continue on happily.
I just started a job as a manufacturing engineer. One of my main tasks thus far has been to make work instructions describing how to assemble product in assembly areas.
Recently one of my coworkers found a new job and left behind some paper copies of work instructions when he left. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the digital copies of these work instructions on his computer. So I had to take the paper copies and make editible Visio documents that looked the same as the physical ones.
I hadn’t used AI for work stuff before so I decided to try it.
So I scanned the paper copies and gave the resulting PDF’s to copilot to see if it could just automatically make a Visio copy for me.
Suffice to say I ended up wasting an hour watching it create documents that were just a jumbled mess. After that I just gave up and did it on my own.
It took me 20 minutes to make copies of the 2 documents because all I needed to do was open a PDF viewer, highlight text, then ctrl-c ctrl-v.
So we are wasting all of our RAM on this shit?
I look at my ai use the same way I look at streaming services: cheap entertainment of middling quality and if it stops existing then nothing of value will be lost. Worst case scenario I have to actually write coherent notes, but I’m trying to drink less so that’s already part of the plan anyway.
Why is it so hard for these idiots to grasp that the process of actually making something yourself IS THE FULFILLING PART.
It’s not the end result that is where the fulfillment comes in when I’m programming something or writing something; it’s the knowledge that I MADE IT and as a result I have now accomplished something. If you tell an LLM what to do and they do it, you haven’t accomplished anything. You haven’t earned it and you have no right to be proud of it.
Hell, if an LLM came about that could mow my damn lawn so that I could spend more time writing and programming and 3D modelling and video editing, etc… than hot damn…THAT would be something I would pay for.
At what point did the adage “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” cease being meaningful to these morons?
They’re morally bankrupt and always seek shortcuts.
They’ve never struggled or worked for anything in their lives, and don’t intend to start now.
I’m not sure it’s so black and white, LLMs (even frontier ones) are total spaghetti merchants if you let them anywhere near the architecture but I get zero fulfillment from manually solving merge conflicts, setting up someone’s fragile idea of a config, or other tedious stuff like that.
I do dislike how many people seem to want the profession to change into being the meatshield between Claude and prod though.
I get zero fulfillment from manually solving merge conflicts, setting up someone’s fragile idea of a config, or other tedious stuff like that
For sure. And it’s tedious crap like that where A.I can have a limited scope of usefullness. I WANT A.I. to handle all the boring shit so that I can get on with doing the creative side of programming. But CEO’s want it exactly the other way around. Rather than A.I. being your assistant, you become its assistant, it’s proof reader.
I will happily plug a snippet of code into an AI if it’s not working and I need a second set of eyes on it to see where I missed a goddamned colon. But that’s as far as it ever should go. I don’t want it writing code for me, but it can make a pretty good proof-reader so that I can solve an issue and get on with writing faster.
Hey, some sane “anti-AI” stuff on the internet!
I use the example of a carpenter
I go to work and I build chairs. It takes me all day to build one chair. I carry shit, I cut shit, I sand shit, I paint shit, I hammer and nail shit, etc… at the end of the day I’m hot, I’m dirty, I’m tired, and somewhere along the way I hurt myself a little bit so I got some minor scrapes and bruises
But I sit back, look at my chair, and I’m proud. That’s what I do. I make chairs.
It’s not glamourous, but that is what I do. I am a carpenter. Not just by profession, but by choice. This is what I wanted to do. It’s what I became. I’m a father, and I’m a soccer fan, but also, I’m a carpenter
Then along comes a robot that can build a chair all by itself. This is great! Just because the robot can build a chair all by itself doesn’t mean it has to. What it does mean is that it can help me build a chair. If I need help carrying the wood, it can carry the wood. If I don’t want to sand, I can tell it to sand. It’s not a “wood carrying robot” or a “sanding robot”, it’s a “Chair building robot” and now I can ask it to help me with any step along the way
But then my boss finds out about this chair building robot. Suddenly he doesn’t want me to build the chair at all anymore, he just wants me to tell the robot to do it
This is sad. I’m no longer a carpenter. I’ve lost the meaning in my job.
I go to work, I tell a robot to build a chair, I just sit back and correct any mistakes it makes.
But hey, if the robot can build a chair in 30 minutes, and I’m only responsible for one chair a day, I guess the good news is that I get to keep my job, I make the same amount of money, but now I only have to work for about an hour a day. Clock in, tell the robot to build a chair, watch it for 30 minutes, fix it’s mistakes, clock out. Same money for an hours worth of work
Nope
I’m now responsible for 9 chairs a day
9 chairs! We’ll I’ll get 9 times the pay right?
Nope
So I keep my job, I make the same amount of money, I work the same amount of hours, but also my job gives me zero satisfaction in life and now I’m responsible for 9 times the amount of work. Also, I’m no longer a carpenter
Again, that’s what I wanted to be. I went to school for it. When I was younger and they asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up”, I said, “a carpenter”. I was a carpenter. I was happy. My boss took that from me. He didn’t fire me, he just took away the position of “carpenter”.
How is this a good thing?
OK, well, I’m an optimist. Times change I guess, you can’t be a guy that makes cannon balls forever. Lets see what the future hold. I go to work, I tell the robot to build the chair and now I got nothing to do for 30 minutes. Neither do my coworkers. So we bring in some TVs, we set up some chairs, we play Mario Kart and watch soccer matches while the robot builds the chair. Every 30 minutes I have to get up, inspect a chair, and tell the robot to build it again, and then it’s back to Mario Kart
At least my job is much more enjoyable in that sense I guess. I laugh at a lot more at work
Then my boss comes in and sees us all standing around laughing, playing video games, and watching TV. He’s sees us happy
He’s big mad
But why? We’re each producing 9 times the amount of chairs in the same amount of time for the same amount of money using the robot he wanted us to use. How is he not happy about that? He’s getting more chairs in the same amount of time without having to pay anyone any extra money.
He’s big mad
The next day I come to work and there’s a big console with 200 buttons on it. Each button tells one of 200 robots to build a chair. It takes me 30 minutes to push all 200 buttons. By the time I’ve pushed the last button, it’s time to push the first button again
Now I go to work, I work the same hours, I make the same pay, I make 3,200 chairs a day, I have zero job satisfaction, I have zero fun, I’m not a carpenter
Then my boss has the nerve to get on Social Media and post: “Chair building robots are great. Imagine life without them, how awful!”
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AI is a great tool for doing all the boring shit you don’t want to do. It’s great for automated process, basic code reviews, pipeline management, etc… I’m glad it can help me write a complex query or figure out what the hell this error message means and what in my code might be causing it.
I’m glad it can help me do new things… I don’t want to be a game developer but making a game sounds fun. It’s a different kind of challenge and it’s nice Claude Code can step in and basically hand-hold me through my controllers and such. It’s a great teacher
What I don’t want is to be forced to use it to do my entire job… I don’t want to product code by only prompting claude
I like writing code. I like knowing the code I pushed is beautiful. Clean, well organized, good folder structures, etc… I like people opening up my projects and going, “damn, this is nice”.
I do not like that people assume Claude did it
I don’t hate AI, but we need to get past this initial phase of upper management not knowing how to properly use it and thinking it’s a magic tool that can do everything for us, instead of a fantastic assistant that we should use at our own descension
That being said, AI is not going away. It’s not just a dumb toy for making bad music and shitty TikTok reels. It’s incredibly helpful and it’s here to stay. In that sense, Anti-AI shit is as embarrassing as this over-the-top pro AI shit.
Yeah it’s like that recent adage isn’t it: I want AI to automate all my drudgery so I can spend more time being creative, but Silicon Valley is automating all my creativity so I can spend more time doing drudgery.
AI should do tedious tasks for creative people, not creative tasks for tedious people.
I’ve been saying for a while that having AI make art for you is basically the same as a commission. When you commission a painting, you describe what you want, someone else paints it for you and gives it to you for money. Same sort of thing here, except shittier because no artist gets paid. But the same end result - you might own the end result, but you didn’t create it.
100% I believe the exact same thing. If a person commisions a painting, but the painter is a computer, it doesn’t transfer the title of “artist” onto the person who commisioned the painting.
They want credit for their “creative work” when really all they are is a middle manager with no actual employees.
How long do those middle-management chucklefucks think it’ll be before CEO’s realize that they can just ask the computer themselves?
Philosophy doesn’t help meet deadlines.
Than it’s the deadlines that need to change. I’ll happily die on that hill.
Quality over Quantity will always win the race in the long run. Ever tightening deadlines is responsible for the enshittification of everything.
Good luck convincing clients
And that’s precisely the over-arching problem in the modern world.
On one hand I agree, on the other hand try making that argument to management at the majority of software firms and see where it gets you. There’s little commercial incentive for ‘artisinal code’ outside of niche sectors in my view, and commercial incentives overrule all else at the end of the day. I don’t think this is morally right but this is the wider problem of which overreliance on AI is merely one expression I think
I don’t think this is morally right but this is the wider problem of which overreliance on AI is merely one expression I think
Oh absolutely. Corporations shoving AI down our throats is a symptom of a much wider problem for sure. It’s just the latest tool in the age old mantra that states that “In order to increase profit, you can either make more or spend less.”
Somewhere in around the 80’s, corporations realized that labour was their largest expense, and from that point on, employees became just another line item on a spreadsheet. Something to be managed and minimized as much as possible. They try to squeeze that labour metric down as much as possible to achieve more profit without having to increase revenue at the same time, thereby making the stock price rise.
Humans stopped being an equation in business a long long time ago.
I worked for 30 years before it existed, and the first 10 of those there were barely an internet. Never had a problem. We had these things called books and libraries.
I’ve been testing the chat bots for about a year. What kind of idiot would trust any of their answers for their work?
One of the first questions i asked them for was the IRMAA Medicare Income Brackets. They got them wrong.
Just asked again. This time they got them right. I’d never trust them with anything important.
The trust thing is it for me. People are like, you could use them for your job, it’ll save you time. Like, it saves me exactly zero time if I have to go back and check its work, because that’s what I would’ve been doing anyway! And now, instead of my mistakes, which I’m very familiar with, I have the hallucinations of some machine to contend with.
It takes more time to use AI when you check the work because you are interacting with AI on top of checking the answers yourself.
It only saves time for people who don’t ever check anything.
I always think it’s weird when they say nobody could write 10 pages or whatever without AI. I write for a living and grew up before all of this (I didn’t have the internet until I was a teenager) and under the right conditions (IE a good amount of caffeine and people leave me alone) I can write 10,000 words in a single sitting lol.
I use to work for the army and flew a desk. By the time I retired my word smithing skills were great. Just put a pc in front of me and I will fill your document with all the relevant buzz words, needed to get managements and procurements buy in.
They are somewhat degraded now, I’m almost 70.
