Or both, not a singularity, but a duality

Thanks! I appreciate you noticing.

You drive a tractor up and down a field, is that really any more work than the rest of us?

A year ago AI answers were only successfully compiling for me about 60% of the time. Now they're up over 80%, and I'm no longer in the loop when they screw up, they get it right on the first try 80% of the time, then 96% of the time by the 2nd try, 99% by the third try, 99.84% of the time by the 4th try, and the beauty is: they retry for themselves until they get something that actually compiles.

Now we can talk about successful implementation of larger feature sets....

I had similar experiences a few months back, like 6-8. Since Anthropic Sonnet 4.0 things have changed significantly. 4.5 is even a bit better. Competing models have been similarly improving.

Exactly. No need to add the executive toxicity filter

Ever work in an enterprise environment? Sometimes a single talented developer cannot overcome the calcification of hundreds of people over several decades who care more about the optics of work than actual work. Documentation cannot help if its non-existent/20 years old. Documentation cannot make teams that don't believe in automation, adopt Docker.

Not that I expect Sam Altman to understand what it's like working in a dumpster fire company, the only job he's ever held is to pour gasoline.

You guys are getting documentation?

Sometimes documentation is inconsistent.

I think you are a step further down in the a/b problem tree.

The purpose of society is that everyone can have a safe, stable and good life. In our current setup this requires that most people are employed. But that's not a given.

Think of a hypothetical society where AI/robots do all the work. There would be no need to employ everyone to do work to support unemployed people.

We are slowly getting to that direction, but the problem here is that our capitalist society isn't fit for that setup. In our capitalist setup, removing the need for work means making people unemployed, who then "need to be supported" while the rich who own/employ robots/AI benefit without putting in any work at all.

You'd think so, but unfortunately not. Venture captial is completely illogical, designed around boom or bust "moonshot" ideas that are supposed to completely change everything. So this money isn't driven by actual consumption, rather speculation. I can't really speak to other forms of investment but I suspect it doesn't get a whole lot better. The economy has become far too financialised with a fiat currency that is completely separate from actual intrinsic value. That's why a watch can cost more than a family home, which isn't true consumption - just this weird concept of "wealth"

They invest in things they think they will be able to sell later for a higher price. Expected consumption is sometimes part of their calculations. But, they are increasingly not in touch with reality (see blockchain, metaverse, Tesla, etc). Sometimes they knowingly take a loss to gain power over the masses (Twitter, Washington Post). They are also powerful enough to induce consumption (bribe governments for contracts, laws, bailouts, and regulations that ensure their investments will be fruitful). They are powerful enough to heavily influence which politicians will get elected, choosing who they want to bribe. They are powerful enough to force the businesses they are invested in to buy/sell to each other. The largest, most profitable companies, produce nearly nothing, they use their positions of being near-monopolies to extract rent (i.e. enshittification/technofeudalism).

Yeah... But rich people don't want to eat food prepared cheaply and efficiently by robots. They want 10k a plate bullshit, not peasant food. They will, however, gladly use robots for manual labor like construction and soldiering

Mopping a floor has a determined metric. I'm not kidding. It's a metric. Clean bathrooms are worth a determined dollar amount. It's not simply sales or production, every task has a dollar amount. The amount of time it takes to do the task has a dollar value determined and on paper. Corporations know what every task is worth in dollar amounts. Processing Hazmats? Prevents the fine. Removing trash or pallets? Prevents lawsuits and workplace injury. Level of light reflected from the floor? Has a multiplier effect on sales. Determined. Defined. Training sales people on language choices, massive sales effect. They know how much money every single tasks generates, fines or lawsuits prevented, multiplier effects on average ticket sales, training to say ' highest consumer rated repair services ' instead of 'extended warentee' these are on paper defined dollar amounts. There is NO JOB in which you are paid to do something of no financial value. There are no unprofitable positions or tasks.

Granting them AI status, we should recognize that they "gained their abilities" by training on the rando junk that people post on the internet.

I have been working with AI for computer programming, semi-seriously for 3 months, pretty intensively for the last two weeks. I have also been working with humans for computer programming for 35 years. AI's "failings" are people's failings. They don't follow directions reliably, and if you don't manage them they'll go down rabbit holes of little to no value. With management, working with AI is like an accelerated experience with an average person, so the need for management becomes even more intense - where you might let a person work independently for a week then see what needs correcting, you really need to stay on top of AI's "thought process" on more of a 15-30 minute basis. It comes down to the "hallucination rate" which is a very fuzzy metric, but it works pretty well - at a hallucination rate of 5% (95% successful responses) AI is just about on par with human workers - but faster for complex tasks, and slower for simple answers.

Interestingly, for the past two weeks, I have been having some success with applying human management systems to AI: controlled documents, tiered requirements-specification-details documents, etc.

You missed the psychology part?