> Rampant use of AI for cheating is not at all incompatible with negative opinions of AI.
Possibly. Either way it (for me at least) neatly highlights why AI will succeed.
The students you talk about don't abstain from AI use entirely - they utilise AI for things they consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort.
That is precisely the market AI will capture first - the tasks and processes that people (in general) have to do but don't really have any passion/interest in doing and for which perfection isn't critical.
And what may surprise many people in this thread (given its flow so far)...there are a whole heap of things that you and I care about, that 10s if not 100s of millions of other people consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort and for which they will happily make do with a 'sub par' AI experience if it's cheaper, easier, more convenient.
> But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code.
Genuine question...why would that need to be hand-written?
It makes absolute sense as a general statement and is kinda crazy that this wasn't a built-in limitation, but I'm not quite sure why the code for that bit must be hand-written (provided the code functionally does what you describe).
I think he likely means "code that is hand-reviewed" and not directly controlled by the agent. He's probably meaning to differentiate it against the in-process agent writing the code. It doesn't matter too much if that fixed code was written by an LLM under guidance and review of the SWE, outside the agent.
Ahh ok - that's fair enough - hand-reviewed/not controlled by the agent seems a sensible approach (wasn't sure if it was instructive of a complete distrust of AI generated code)
Right, as in, does not accept an email as a parameter. If its anything like my company they are turning out "agents" super fast and just hooking them up to internal APIs usually via a light MCP wrapper. Since MCP doesn't have any security or auth built in, and internal APIs usually are light on security you have issues like this.
> But most people sat there watching, clearly wanting to take part but scared. People have learned that creativity and participation are not welcome.
In my experience, a decent proportion of people have always been nervous about joining in. I'd wager that for many of the onlookers it isn't driven by a creativity/participation thing, it's just a (pretty normal) fear of embarrassing themselves. Scroll back 30 years and I would undoubtedly be one of those awkward teenagers wanting to join in but scared to do so out of fear of embarrassing myself.
That said...There probably is a reasonable argument to be made that in the modern world the potential for everything you do to be filmed and shared with others amplifies those fear more than ever.
30 years ago you weren't recorded and if you were your recording didn't share across social media networks. This and awareness of it I suspect drives a greater fear of embarrassment. Although you did mention this, I wanted to emphasize it
>In my experience, a decent proportion of people have always been nervous about joining in. I'd wager that for many of the onlookers it isn't driven by a creativity/participation thing, it's just a (pretty normal) fear of embarrassing themselves. Scroll back 30 years and I would undoubtedly be one of those awkward teenagers wanting to join in but scared to do so out of fear of embarrassing myself.
Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.
Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.
Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.
Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.
I don't know whether it's a sign of it being AI or not but I did find it a bit weird that within the first 3 sentences there were 2 different "less like X and more like Y" statements:
> the reason is that this is less like painting a wooden fence, which is easy, and more like changing the colour of a carbon-fibre Formula 1 part, which requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics.
and
> this is less like making ice cubes and more like baking a complex soufflé where every degree of temperature and milligram of ingredients matters.
Not a problem, but it felt odd enough that I noticed it, so maybe that's what got them thinking it was AI written/assisted?
> seems to imply they have to pick and choose what they pursue. They really don't, especially if it's hard- vs software.
Money can often just be one part of the equation.
To do things well you also need - available & capable technical resource, suitable facilities, available & capable leadership and management (with engaging at the right level in the business) and a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve/working towards.
Given how Apple appears to operate, I wonder if a strong desire for senior management control/oversight over major developments means they (artificially) limit how many concurrent large-scale things they can work on at any given time?
Possibly. Either way it (for me at least) neatly highlights why AI will succeed.
The students you talk about don't abstain from AI use entirely - they utilise AI for things they consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort.
That is precisely the market AI will capture first - the tasks and processes that people (in general) have to do but don't really have any passion/interest in doing and for which perfection isn't critical.
And what may surprise many people in this thread (given its flow so far)...there are a whole heap of things that you and I care about, that 10s if not 100s of millions of other people consider 'unworthy' of their attention/effort and for which they will happily make do with a 'sub par' AI experience if it's cheaper, easier, more convenient.
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