I can see the future. In a few years, HN will consist entirely of:
1) Bots posting “Show HN” of things they’ve vibecoded
2) Bots replying to those posts,
3) Bots asking whether the bots in #2 even read TFA, and finally
4) Bots posting the HN guideline where it says you shouldn’t ask people whether they have read TFA.
…And amid the smouldering ruins of civilization, the last human, dang, will be there, posting links to all the times this particular thing has been posted to HN before.
But seriously, this is my main answer to people telling me AI is not reliable: "guess what, most humans are not either, but at least I can tell AI to correct course and it's ego won't get in the way of fixing the problem".
In fact, while AI is not nearly as a good as a senior dev for non trivial tasks yet, it is definitely more reliable than most junior devs at following instructions.
Humans are reliably unreliable. Some are lazy, some sloppy, some obtuse, some all at once. As a tech lead you can learn their strengths and weaknesses. LLMs vacillate wildly while maintaining sycophancy and arrogance.
Human egos make them unlikely to admit error, sometimes, but that fragile ego also gives them shame and a vision of glory. An egotistical programmer won’t deliver flat garbage for fear of being exposed as inferior, and can be cajoled towards reasonable output with reward structures and clear political rails. LLMs fail hilariously and shamelessly in indiscriminate fashion. They don’t care, and will happily argue both sides of anything.
Also that thing that LLMs don’t actually learn. You can threaten to chop their fingers off if they do something again… they don’t have fingers, they don’t recall, and can’t actually tell if they did the thing. “I’m not lying, oops I am, no I’m not, oops I am… lemme delete the home directory and see if that helps…”
If we’re going to make an analogy to a human, LLMs reliably act like absolute psychopaths with constant disassociation. They lie, lie about lying, and lie about following instructions.
I agree LLMs better than your average junior first time following first directives. I’m far less convinced about that story over time, as the dialog develops more effective juniors over time.
cainxinth|1 month ago
seanhunter|1 month ago
2) Bots replying to those posts,
3) Bots asking whether the bots in #2 even read TFA, and finally
4) Bots posting the HN guideline where it says you shouldn’t ask people whether they have read TFA.
…And amid the smouldering ruins of civilization, the last human, dang, will be there, posting links to all the times this particular thing has been posted to HN before.
pylotlight|1 month ago
BiteCode_dev|1 month ago
But seriously, this is my main answer to people telling me AI is not reliable: "guess what, most humans are not either, but at least I can tell AI to correct course and it's ego won't get in the way of fixing the problem".
In fact, while AI is not nearly as a good as a senior dev for non trivial tasks yet, it is definitely more reliable than most junior devs at following instructions.
gjadi|1 month ago
Whereas a junior might be reluctant at first, but if they are smart they will learn and get better.
So maybe LLM are better than not-so-smart people, but you usually try to avoid hiring those people in the first place.
bonesss|1 month ago
Humans are reliably unreliable. Some are lazy, some sloppy, some obtuse, some all at once. As a tech lead you can learn their strengths and weaknesses. LLMs vacillate wildly while maintaining sycophancy and arrogance.
Human egos make them unlikely to admit error, sometimes, but that fragile ego also gives them shame and a vision of glory. An egotistical programmer won’t deliver flat garbage for fear of being exposed as inferior, and can be cajoled towards reasonable output with reward structures and clear political rails. LLMs fail hilariously and shamelessly in indiscriminate fashion. They don’t care, and will happily argue both sides of anything.
Also that thing that LLMs don’t actually learn. You can threaten to chop their fingers off if they do something again… they don’t have fingers, they don’t recall, and can’t actually tell if they did the thing. “I’m not lying, oops I am, no I’m not, oops I am… lemme delete the home directory and see if that helps…”
If we’re going to make an analogy to a human, LLMs reliably act like absolute psychopaths with constant disassociation. They lie, lie about lying, and lie about following instructions.
I agree LLMs better than your average junior first time following first directives. I’m far less convinced about that story over time, as the dialog develops more effective juniors over time.