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[–] 56 points 7 months ago (1 child)

I like that depiction they used of artistic tools attached to a gear.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago

    Countering AI with human creativity nonetheless! I love it!

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  • [+] -31 points 7 months ago (15 children)

    So I am so ewhat pro AI. But hear me out. I sometimes refer to myself as an automation engineer. I spend a lot of my time automating the set up and use of various software tools. For those who know the term Infrastructure As Code is a part of my job too. And soo many tools have shitty UIs and even shittier apis. The rise of AI is going to add pressure to have better apis because that is what the AI uses. So even if AI falls flat on it's face in a few years, any improvements in apis is a vig win for me. And since the automation I write is for my coworkers, not external customers, anyone in tech benefits from this.

    Now for me personally, I work ina lot of different languages and DSLs. I rarely spend enough time in any one of them to really memorize the syntax. I pretty much can't write a working program without some sort of reference. So, I can tell AI exactly what I want it to do, and it can code and test until it runs. Then I can use that as my syntax reference and make it do what it is supposed to do. That ends up being much faster than me having to google various syntaxes to see where I need a semicolon vs a comma, or where I need to use [] instead of {}. So it helps me.

    And I do love using AI to file my jira tickets. Works great for those of us who's work is interrupt driven. We often file the ticket after we've solved the problem.

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  • [–] 23 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Or they'll make apis shittier because they don't want AI using it.

    However, Copilot has made it a lot easier to navigate through Azure's incomprehensible menu structure.

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  • Well, grafana is an example. They want their own AI agent that you can pay for. So they still need the apis to be good. But they don't make it easy to get your AI it own api token. Each user would essentially have to have two accounts. Which they probably charge for too. It's not impossible to work around, but it's a barrier. I would expect more of that kind of thing. Any tool that doesn't have a way for AI to work with it is going to be selected against for a while. So there is pressure for them to be accessible.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The closest facsimile I have in my work is occasionally running an Excel formula I've written through Copilot in order to find a formatting error or to help fix an Access query, but If fundamentally understand what I'm doing, can validate that the produced result is correct, and can fix it if I have to somewhere down the line.

    It's good you've found some simple ways to use it, but in the vast majority of work I do, it would take longer if I used AI because everything produced using an LLM has to be human-validated regardless, so I might as well not skip the important step of learning and understanding it.

    I never use it to ideate and never use it for anything that isn't eminently simple, like creating a sheet with x number of columns and rows or something like that. I hate the idea of the environmental impact and that helps me avoid it.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    And outside coding its like modest productivity improvments is the best we’ve done in the 4 years we’ve had these models.

    I just can’t see it not being a bubble

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    Yeah, it's nothing particularly special IMHO. The best feature I've found in using it is that, for Microsoft products in particular, it can tell me capabilities of certain things I didn't know previously when I present it with a problem.

    Search engines used to do that before they got enshittified.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Problem with the theory is that people believe in LLM strongly enough that whatever pressure there is within a market to be vaguely similar evaporates. SQL certainly has dialects, but at least the basics are vaguely similar, as an example.

    Working with a vendor that is oddly different from every other vendor in the space and we applied pressure to implement more typical interfaces. Their answer was "just have an LLM translate for you and use our different and frankly much weirder interface". When we did cave and use it and demonstrated the biggest LLMs failed, they said at least they give you the idea. Zero interest in consistent API with LLM as an excuse.

    On the write your code for you, it has to be kept on a short leash and can be a nightmare if not overseen, though it can accelerate some chore work. But I just spent a lot of time last week trying to fix up someone's vibe coded migration, because it looked right and it passed the test cases, but it was actually a gigantic failure. Another vibe coded thing took 3 minutes to run and it was supposed to be an interactive process. The vibe coded said that's just how long it takes, if it could be faster, the AI would have done it and none of the AI suggestions are viable in the use case. So I spent a day reworking their code to do exactly the same thing, but do it in under a second.

    For the jira ticket scenario, I had already written a command line utility to take care of that for me. Same ease of use instead of using jira GUI and my works torturous workflows, but with a very predictable result.

    So LLM codegen a few lines at a time with competent human oversight, ok and useful, depending on context. But we have the similar downside as AI video/image/text creative content: People without something substantial to contribute flood the field with low quality slop, bugs and slow performance and the most painful stuff to try to fix since not even the person that had it generated understood it.

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  • There certainly is a group of people who believe in AI strongly. One part of them is just listening to the hype and jumpping on the wagon. Another part however is investing real time to understand it. They work to give it structure and guardrails so that it does what they want it to. And they help others do the same. But currently it still takes a lot of time investment to get good at using. And most people aren't expecting that.
    But as the second group grows, and the methods for them to share the structure they have set up for AI mature, more people will be anle to use it without all the upfront time investment. That is when the pressure on tool vendors to improve their api interfaces will really heat up. AI compliant or whatever buzz word shows up will be a near requirment for a tool to get investor dollars. MCPs were an attempt to put a layer between the apis and the AI. But if the underlieing api sucks, MCP can't do much. I am not sure what will come next, but something more about the apis themselves is bound to spring up. Maybe even several standards. Thats ok, there can be several because AI can handle the context switching better than humans can.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Fuck me if I want to have sessions with my psychiatrist that aren't recorded and transcribed by AI. Tech companies lie all the time about what they promise, like encrypting their data, and then just pay the fines after the fact, because scraping our data to train models made more profit than the fine. Yes, my doctor rolled out a system for telehealth that prompted me to sign documents agreeing to the use of AI. A procedure code and diagnosis code is the only thing that's required for medical billing in instances where prior approval for services isn't required, there's no need for a transcription of our entire fucking session word for word for my DR to bill and get paid; especially when there is plenty of transcription software he could purchase to operate in house, WITHOUT AI.

    AI is being forced down our throats in so many industries that have NOTHING to do with writing code, for the purposes of reducing headcount because the line must go up.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    I totally agree with you on it being forced where it doesn't belong. I am just not for abolishing it or whatever was proposed here. I think there is middle ground. It can be useful for somethings. In many cases it is being forced on the workforce so that some senior vp can say they made AI happen and get a nice big raise. In others it's so they can say it in the earnings call to boost the stock price. But forcing the workforce to do stupid things for these reasons is nothing new.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I am in the same boat, long time infrastructure automation engineer as well. Sometimes it’s faster to explain how terraform or whatever needs to act and then fix the issues rather than having to sift through the docs for every provider.

    I also do a similar thing to you with code, I also have to read a lot of other people’s code in languages I don’t know to help troubleshoot things and while I can usually follow the logic it is such a time saver to have AI to read the docs for the libraries and languages for me to at least find the part of the docs I need to read faster than searching myself.

    Overall, I also agree with the sentiment on AI most of the time and all of its criticisms are definitely valid but I think too many people try to use AI to do their work for them instead of using it more like a rubber duck you can program with normal language.

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  • My new (to me) "revelation" is that AI needs a ton of structure. It's like a child who when presented with too many options stops thinking and just randomly chooses one to do so they can be done with whatever it is. From what I can tell, the people who make the most use of AI have it tightly controlled. Rules, hooks, and various other tricks to essentially herd AI into doing what it should do. Kinda like herding cats.
    Right now the tools and such for setting up that structure are immature, and best practices are hard to define when the base AI is still changing a lot. For people who are just trying to use AI casually, they have heard the hype, and they think they should expect it to work like a person. When it doesn't, they just say it sucks. And as a person, it does suck. It's a tool. And a complex one at that. Seems it requires significant investment to get the most out of it.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    It will end up as an assistant rather than take over the world at least while it is affordable

    I truly believe an AI winter is coming

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    There are absolutely some economic factors that can have serious impact on it. And they are impossible to predict. If you really could, you would be rich. But, I don't see it likely to be an assistant. It's actually pretty terrible at that. My thinking is that it is a tool like any other. It will take a person significant investment to get proficient with it. Down the line, hopefully it will be more streamlined to distribute learnings and such that make it more accessible to those who haven't invested the time. There is lots of work happening in that area now, but much more needs doing.

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  • [+] -175 points 7 months ago (55 children)
  • [–] 80 points 7 months ago (37 children)

    And eat the dick billionaire shoving at your face willingly? Because that's what AI are, people are forced to used it because their boss demand it.

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  • [+] -68 points 7 months ago (36 children)
  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    What "usefulness" do you get out of them?

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  • [+] -22 points 7 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 31 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Are you not familiar with "ctrl+f"?

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago* (6 children)
  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

    Better question is, when did you lose basic keyword-based searching skills? I know you may want your answers on a platter but realize that there's value in manual searches. Searching for something with LLMs on the page that you're on is questionable on so many levels.

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  • [+] -2 points 7 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    It's not harder, though, it's actually quite instant if you know what you're doing. A lot of documentation is literally one single web page, and the majority that is not can be navigated with the regular search and ctrl+F just fine.

    There's no substitute to taking 40 minutes to get acquainted with the documentation to know what you need rather than trial & error your way through a problem blindly.

    you could get an LLM to return you the correct page in some documentation

    It's unreliable and prone to errors, and I say that after using LLM-based searches for months at work. Too many times it confuses areas, makes stuff up, or cites some irrelevant page just to give any answer at all.

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  • [+] 0 points 7 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    How can I possibly be doing it wrong when the page it's citing mentions nothing of what it's taking about, or when it tells me to do something that we as a company do not do?

    I’ve been doing this shit for 20 years now.

    Welcome to the club.

    it’s an extremely useful tool

    Sure, for writing letters but not for searching which is what I'm taking about.

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  • [+] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    I don’t rely on the LLM to give me the answer.

    So why are you assuming that I do, again? Aren't I the one telling you that I do manual searches precisely because the search function is so hit or miss?

    it’s not good for creative works.

    What creative work? This is basic communication that we carefully outline first and then feed it to the LLM to spit out the same thing in formal language. Lol

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    You do not have access to a secret LLM that doesn’t introduce errors. You either don’t notice them or dismiss them.

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  • [–] 55 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    If they’re so useful, why are they being forced on everyone, including by making them part of performance reviews?

    If they’re useful people will naturally use them.

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  • [+] -64 points 7 months ago (6 children)
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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    How about allowing AI to be rolled out and adopted organically instead of trying to gavage it down everyone's throats?

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    I'd that tool didn't come at the destructive costs involved, AI would be a lot more palatable.

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  • [+] -27 points 7 months ago (10 children)
  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    If that's what it takes to stop the excessive destruction caused by unregulated data center construction and operation, yes.

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  • [+] -13 points 7 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Do you need to reread my comment instead of reacting to a single word of it?

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  • [+] -9 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I answered you. But you still seem confused. What don't you understand about my reply?

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago

    You're screaming into the echo chamber, mate. Unless you're so rabidly anti-AI you believe and spread one of a few comforting, imaginary narratives, you'll be dog piled.

    I'm staunchly critical of AI, but won't pretend that it only consists of generative AI, that it still operates as poorly as it did years ago, nor that a disturbing percentage of the population either doesn't care about or actually supports that shit, so I get my share of insults. Being pro-AI won't get you much civility so set your expectations low. Unless you're trolling. Then you've nailed it.

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  • [–] -5 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    I think is people don’t like it they don’t need to use it. I’m ok with rules stating ai generated content must be labeled though. I wouldn’t even mind a toggle so it could just be turned off.

    But it is tech that is here to stay. It is useful to many people.

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  • [–] 48 points 7 months ago

    It'd be fine if that was the case. Right now if you don't like it you're still forced to read (and often review) AI generated rumblings, communicate with LLMs instead of humans when contacting support, accept AI-specific terms even you won't use the AI part of a product, have data centers pollute your city and pay ridiculous amount of money for a stick of ram.

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  • [–] 23 points 7 months ago

    I think is people don’t like it they don’t need to use it.

    Tell that to the people living near new data centers who can't get clean water and are being charged exorbitant rates for electricity. They have no say in the matter.

    This is occuring all over the US, these issues are far from isolated incidents.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago

    Useful to who? If you need an LLM to write just a basic e-mail/comment/caption you're maybe ... how do I say this nicely? Not that smart ...

    If you use an LLM as a search engine, same thing.

    If you use an LLM as a psychologist, same damn thing.

    And the majority of people are using it for those things. It's just plain stupidity. I'm not saying there's no use to AI, but right now it's being used in a terrible way by people that have no use for it at all.

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  • [+] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    It is allowing me to do things that I could not do on my own due to time constraints. It also allows me to do stuff that I could not afford to do (generate my company logo and variations of the mascot for social media posts.)

    I know a lot of people think I am rich, but I live in a third world country and hardly have any extra to save, so I truly can't afford to pay a graphic designer to do that work. I actually did once, on upwork, but the vector work she did was terrible and she couldn't figure out how to remove these thick black lines. ChatGPT was able to fix it though.

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  • [+] -54 points 7 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 44 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    1000026004

    Imagine letting an entertainment product write your code for you. Why the fuck are you doing this if you don't even like the act of programming?

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  • [+] -37 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    I get writing boilerplate and unit tests can probably be done by software well enough, at least when supervised.

    Ill be honest, that's not even my real issue.

    My real issue is that programming, devops, systems administration. All of these things are art forms, every bit of them. From high-level application architecture down to the tiniest details of implementation.

    Like how much of a library you choose to include, what you name your variables, what type of loops you use to iterate through data. How you choose to format and comment your code.

    Giving these choices to the machine is like the painter giving their brush to it.

    Just like images generated by stable diffusion will never be worth their fully-human painted equivalent. So too will LLM-developed programs fail to hold that value.

    For what its worth, this isnt new. I've held contempt for VC-worshipping developers who see programming as a means to an end far longer than LLMs have been used for serious work.

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  • [+] -13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

    Exactly, it's weird the anti movement, AI is exceptional in so many ways. Maybe the ruling class don't want the general population to have access to and like something so fundamentally useful and have created a smear campaign

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Guys trying to shove AI into everything: oh nooo, pleeeaaase don’t use our product, we would haaaate it if you did that!

    Worst conspiracy ever.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    It's not the product makers that are creating the smear campaign, it's the people who don't want the general populous to access power AI.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    So they have the power to run a smear campaign that would alter society’s opinion on AI—which is so very useful and everyone would love it otherwise—but they don’t have the power to influence the building of billions of dollars of infrastructure to power these data centers?

    The people pushing this are the people that benefit from the general populace being dumb as shit. That’s why they’re pushing it. AI doesn’t make anyone more informed or intelligent, it’s an echo chamber.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Yes, they have the power to smear, it's not that hard.

    They can't stop then building why would them being able to smear mean they can't build data centers? That doesn't make any sense.

    The anti AI groups can smear, I don't see what that has to do with AI companies building data centers.

    AI gives informed and data resourced answers. It's better than just reading Facebook comments.

    It increases intelligence because it shows the best way to do something, and everyone can learn from that.

    It's not an echo chamber, it provides answers for almost everything.

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  • 5 comments in c/technology@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 27 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Fully agreed ✨

    This is a very important and, frankly, very healthy development.

    Why this matters:

    • Boundaries are good ✅ Not every space, workflow, or community needs AI integration.

    • Discernment is good 🧠 Saying “no” to a tool is not irrational. It is often a sign of standards, judgment, and maturity.

    • Human value still matters 👥 Efficiency is not the same thing as meaning, quality, trust, or legitimacy.

    In short:

    I think this kind of pushback is not anti-technology. It is pro-boundary, pro-quality, and pro-human agency. Very good to see this being articulated so clearly. 👏🤖📌

    If you want, I can generate a second version of this comment with even more obvious AI-style phrasing and formatting.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    That's the thing. It's easy to make something that obviously looks like AI. Slop is slop because it's lazy and takes five minutes to make. Corpos love slop because they always want to take the minimum time possible to make anything.

    However, with a bit more effort, you can make something that doesn't look like AI at all, and still took less time to make than doing it manually.

    With all of this boundary setting, people are just going to hide it better. More hostility just means less transparency. It's already happening.

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  • 3 comments in c/technology@beehaw.org view that post
    [–] 34 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I keep seeing job posts that have requirements like "must be excited about AI tools". If the shit was good people would be excited on their own.

    It's all slop from the worst, soulless, people.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    Funny you say that.

    I have listed on my resume & cover letter that I have experience with multiple ai systems, however the creation of my documents are accurate and self-created, not ai-generated.

    I want to ensure anyone reading they're seeing my own work, not some ai BS thrown together to pretend to be impressive. AI was a good recruiting tool for a few months until ai itself ruined it!

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    I’m still trying to figure out what the dollar value of tokens actually mean. OpenAI touts “$1800 worth of tokens for a $20 account” and that ultimately people should be spending half their salary in tokens.

    But what does $1800 actually mean? Is it perceived work value saying “you can replace $1800 you spend on people hours in tokens”? Or is it how much the infrastructure costs them to run those tokens? If so, they’re running at a major loss.

    People throw around those values, but I have yet to see it tied to something with a real world equivalent. It’s 1800 Schrute Bucks for all I can tell.

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