Onj 🎶Mar 10

Unpopular opinion and I expect there will be a lot of pushback on it, but what's a good (polite) debate if not enlightening?

Do you know how your washing machine works? (If yes, keep quiet for those who don't.)
If the answer's no, you do know one thing though I suspect. You know that you trust it to wash your clothes because well, that's what it's designed to do.
If you're not a mechanic and yet you drive, you trust that when you do all the right things and push the right buttons, your vehicle is going to move forward and get you to places. If something breaks, do you attempt to tinker with it and fix it? Maybe, but more likely you go to someone who does know.
What's my point then?
AI coding. Humans made a thing that allows non-programmers to have an idea. They can write that idea in great detail and from there, have something returned that they should of course test thoroughly and if they like it, maybe they share it.
The washing machine is similar but not the same. If you put in your powder/detergent and the right colour of clothes and tell it to start, you let it do it's thing. It washes your clothes and hopefully when you're wearing them at an important meeting, they don't suddenly fall apart, because someone beta-tested that machine ahead of you getting it, and made sure that it didn't rip the seems of your clothes silently, deadly, badly.
AI programs need to be tested the same as your expensive machine, probably many aren't. That is a problem, but the underlying idea of AI code itself being dismissed out-of-hand seems an odd one, at least to me.
Maybe because there's more scope for badness, maybe because you only ever hear the results of all the bad things going on. Like Amazon reviews, the majority of what you see are people unhappy with the product. For every unhappy person there's probably a thousand that just get on with it.
Same for AI badness. For every bad experience, there's probably a few hundred situations where someone made a thing, it just works, nobody cares but you'll never know.
Basically I feel that we maybe need to take a step back, review our hate, our personal biases a tiny bit and stop crapping all over people for doing things a different way that isn't *your* way.
Before automatic washing machines we had manual ones that took a lot more effort, and before that, people washing by-hand. They probably felt exactly the same. The cycle (if you'll pardon the pun) repeats throughout the centuries and will continue to do so, likely forever.
New thing comes along, people hate it, old way was better.
New way becomes old way, new thing comes along, people hate it, old way was better.

Shout at me as you wish.
PS. Wasn't written with aI.

Show threadJustin MacleodMar 10
@Onj The analergy is a little flawed because you're comparing an end user to a developer. If I create a washing machine and have no idea how it works and give it to people and things break and I then have no idea how to fix them, that's on me. Any end user using any program may not know how it's going to work, but they can go to the manufacturer, outline their problems and hopefully get fixes, work-arounds or bug fixes.
Show threadOnj 🎶Mar 10
@JustinMac84 You can go back to your coding agent and outline the problems and if done right, get fixes too. Not always, and not always well, but that's what testing's for isn't it?
Show threadJustin MacleodMar 10
@Onj So you receive a support ticket, negotiate with your user, while simultaneously submitting a support ticket to your AI of choice and negotiating with that. If you can't duplicate the problem the user is having, what would you do? You wouldn't know how to advise them and would have to pass on every piece of possibly incorrect, possibly unsafe advice the model gave you and await feedback from the user. Exponentially grow that problem for every bug
Show threadOnj 🎶Mar 10
@JustinMac84 Yep, but if there were such a thing as fiver for coding instead of music, same thing would apply there. Humans could be just as devious, make something that looks good and works on the outside, steals your crypto on the inside. Not nice.
Show threadJustin MacleodMar 10
@Onj But anyway, this doesn't address your original point, my answer to which is that it's fine for an end user to have no idea how their product works and not to be able to fix it unaided, much less so for a dev or business supplying something they have no ideaabout to people.
Show threadOnj 🎶
@JustinMac84 Lol come on now, businesses supply whatever to people all the time and how hard is it to get help with whatever it is when all the people you talk to are just people working there for work experience or something? We've probably all seen it. No excuse but you know it's true.
Mar 10 at 6:05pmWeb
Show threadJustin MacleodMar 10
@Onj Yes it's hard, because paying skilled people that are actually encouraged to want to talk to people eats into profit margins and tech companies don't want to talk to people. But that's a systemic, a logistical problem. A company with good customer service and/or enough complaints/risk to brand, will have skilled people to fix the problem efficiently. I don't think the answer or argument is the bar is low so let's make it lower.