"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
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@Gargron it's a direct attack on labor, be it in forced consent or forcing tech workers out of high salary jobs
Unfortunately it will have staying power until we can wrangle in billionaire's
@Gargron It is so refreshing to see one of your favourite devs speak in this way about this sh*t. I swear, AI is really bringing my mood down as of late.
@Gargron I basically use it just as a glorified stackoverflow/google. Am I using it wrong?
@Gargron 
(just leaving this here as support and contrast to the AI bros losing their sht ^^")
@Gargron i think it's more true to say that its a failed product based on lies, theft and corruption, the mathematics of the technology is not the problem, the lawlessness, lack of regulation and profound disinformation and psychological damage are both signs of our failure to regulate the fascists and narcissistic tech bros
@Gargron I have to respectfully disagree even though I know I'll be pilloried for it. Economically yes there's a huge bubble around the tech but it's far from failed. Right now there are thousands of small businesses and individuals doing so many creative things with both local and inexpensive hosted models. We're just scratching the surface of what will come for better or worse, but failed? No. Democratized coding yes. Where that leads is up to us.
no this is just false
It is true there is a lot of hype, but if you talk to any PhD or MD doing biomedical research, you are likely to find someone very excited about the potential of AI
@Gargron EV is a failed technology, in the sense that its purpose is to get rid of gas stations bjt that have not happened even after more than a decade.
The Covid vaccine is a failed technology, in the sense that some people will get vaccinated but still will get ill with covid.
Sure, AI is over-subsidized and over-hyped, but in its base is a great tool for some tasks. I doubt we'll stop using it.
@Gargron
I totally agree. What I also dislike is renaming things with "AI" just to make it sound advanced.
I heard an advert today for British Telecom saying their "AI business tool" could help your small business. That "tool" was booking tables (that's a CMS/database, not AI) and answering calls (that's an answering machine (at a push, IVR), not AI) etc.
@Gargron 'AI' in the form currently being pushed is actively harming chances of ever reaching AGI as it's a tech dead end being pushed, like Blockchain, by current and former crypto scammers. Their focus draining money and resources away from clueless MBAs running corporate entities, harming more worthwhile research with the main focus of the companies being either supporting fascist surveillance systems that help them become part of the state, or Elon Musk style publicity stunt 'achievements' that keep the tech press hyped and the bubble inflated a little longer.
When the bubble bursts, people genuinely trying to achieve AGI won't be able to get funding and resources, and all the people pushing this rubbish will have moved on to the next thing, claiming some other tech dead end is the path to quantum computing or nuclear fusion and the same players will resume their circular funding, with the same media cheerleaders ignoring the disaster they caused the last time.
@Gargron
here's a little something to hopefully help it end sooner:
https://thoughtlost.org/nosingularity/
@Gargron counterpoint: we are well past the point of no return for agentic engineering. There will always be purists who insist on writing code by hand but we aren’t returning to that being the default even after the bubble pops. And I think quiet use of AI as glue will propagate more or less unseen through a lot of tech until it is the expected/desired thing vs a bolted-on buzzword.
Are there myriad problems with both of these? Of course. But that much is not “failure” in any meaningful sense.
@mellowfish That's... just your opinion. Agentic coding (I don't think you can call it "engineering") is heavily subsidized by big AI companies right now, and that's going away sooner or later. The software world will have a painful wake up call from all the spaghetti code being pumped out right now.
calling code that’s currently being generated by AI agents “spaghetti code” is a pretty sure sign that you either haven’t actually used it seriously or don’t know how to use it.
AI-generated code can absolutely be terrible. so can human-generated code. the interesting question is whether you know how to get the agent to produce good code and how to review, test, and evolve it.
@skavish I have never used "AI" in my professional or personal life and have no intentions of doing so.
that explains the confidence :)
if you’ve never actually used it, then you’re not really in a position to judge what agentic coding looks like when used properly.
@skavish @Gargron We live in very... Curious times at the moment.
There's a massive hype to adopt something that many don't want to adopt, nor should they have to do so, but equally there's a hype train that says 'do this thing or else...'
There's a middle ground where you can use it quietly, and not use it quietly, and it really doesn't matter.
It's the either siders I'm concerned about.
When those that hate it hear about it 24-7 it's like passive smoking. It sucks, it's bad for you and you wish you could escape it.
Equally when you use it for something meaningful and before you've had a chance to explain, you've been shut down because tolerance is 'agree with me or else' that equally sucks.
I haven't stated which side of the fence I fall on, and I won't here without being asked. I'm not here to persuade or dissuade, just to make a point.
Moderation is good.
You can see my thoughts by looking at my personal posts.
Both of you in this conversation have made your decision and that's OK, but there's nuance in everything and dismissing either side out-of-hand means you aren't thoughtful enough to know where that nuance lies.
You = general you, not you two personally.
I see a lot of love and hate recently, sadly more hate than love, more intolerance than tolerance, and that's not really the fedi I signed up for.
If we could step back about 6 years and show one another just a tad more respect, the world would genuinely be a nicer place to live in.
@FreakyFwoof @skavish @Gargron While I agree with your ethos of neutrality here, the reality is most people who present a 'neutral' opinion are just concealing a pro or anti opinion, in your case after checking your profile, you have a recent long post praising the AI agents and data centers you are using. So ostensibly that *is* a pro opinion, you are promoting AI to your followers. Using it 'quietly' would be doing exactly that: not posting about it, nor shushing those who take anti stances.
@Gargron Historically speaking, the number one profession in terms of satisfaction in the modern era has been mathematician. Open AI just demoralized the discipline. It will never recover.