Something I don’t understand about this whole idea of AI increasing productivity, is that various tech companies say high percentages of their code is written using AI. And I see people on the internet claiming they’re 10x or 100x or even 1,000x faster at writing code now. Which, maybe yeah, AI can write code that fast obviously. The part I’m confused about, is when I think back on what the software I used every day in 2018 looked like, and I think about it looks like today:
- Gmail added autocomplete
- chrome added a Gemini button
- Google Docs added a Gemini button
Surely adding ask AI buttons didn’t take that much effort.
🍋 (OP) double-posted this 20 hours ago, 49 seconds later[^][v]#1,471,054
How come, if apparently these tech companies can write 100x more code much faster, the software isn’t 100x better, it’s like barely different than it was 8 years ago?
Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 17 hours ago, 2 hours later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,083
The studies I’ve seen say employees don’t necessarily use work optimization to multitask or do other stuff. You can go go go but there’s no reward and the frenetic pace leads to massive fuckups. I was told to use more tokens and prove a 150% gain in production time. An LLM told me how to achieve the metrics will only increasing it 100%. :)
Anonymous B double-posted this 17 hours ago, 3 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,086
Not to mention all of our workflows are ridiculously interlinked for “real time insights” (that management never acts on). We’re basically back to some common server configuration of 1998.
tteh !MemesToDNA joined in and replied with this 17 hours ago, 12 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,094
Most code pushed to major projects isn't about adding user-facing UI widgets or fancy features though. It's behind the scenes. You gave Chrome as an example, but most of the work on Chromium/Chrome isn't going to be new features. It's optimising the Javascript engine, it's improving memory, fixing security vulnerabilities, reducing CPU usage, eliminating crashes, improving compatibility with web standards, etc.; many thousands of small changes that collectively make Chromium faster, safer, more stable and more efficient. Most of that work is completely invisible to the average user, who doesn't care about reading release notes or commit messages. That work might be massively improved by AI. Rolling out actual new features still requires a lot of human overhead: you've gotta figure out what users want, create an implementation plan, gather user feedback, think about accessibility (and maybe legal/privacy considerations), hold countless meetings and internal team discussions, etc., all of which AI can *assist* with but it would be folly to let AI handle those stages entirely, unless you're on a truly sloptastic project.
tteh !MemesToDNA double-posted this 17 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,095
Also, Gmail's got a lot more AI enhancements than just a Gemini button. That kind of undersells the effort Google have put into integrating Gemini. I use Google Workspace (used to be G Suite) for work and they've added a lot of features. Not that I use many of them, although the note-taking during Google Meet and subsequent calendar insertions/updates is nice.
🍋 double-posted this 14 hours ago, 5 minutes later, 5 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,111
I think I just feel less excited about technology than I used to. There is new stuff, but it seems like everything revolves around LLMs and I never found LLMs to be particularly interesting or particularly desired to have a chatbot button inserted into every UI. It sort of feels like I’m being forced to use AI rather than using AI because I want to 90% of the time. I very rarely find myself using it because I want to use it or need to use it. I think the last time I did was a week ago I wanted to translate some text but google translate messed up the formatting.
🍋 triple-posted this 14 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 5 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,113
For instance, I like being able to actually find sources on things I’m interested in when I’m looking up something out of curiosity so I have some level of confidence that what I’m reading isn’t completely made up. But now when I google something, the AI response is the first thing that comes up, and half the time it’s citing Reddit as a source. So I end up reading the AI response and using AI even though I didn’t actually want that.
🍋 quintuple-posted this 14 hours ago, 5 minutes later, 5 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,115
That and also when I’ve taken science courses I’ve found it a little bit off putting how often the AI response would be wrong but then if I reworded the question how easily it would change from a yes response to a no response for anything that’s not super common knowledge.
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 13 hours ago, 55 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,125
@1,471,111 (🍋) > I think I just feel less excited about technology than I used to.
Same. I'm lucky that I at least made it into my 30s before all of this hit. It's already a very different world for people just starting out. Hopefully before I retire I'll have switched to hardware.
🍋 replied with this 13 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,127
@previous (tteh !MemesToDNA)
Yeah. I’m in my 20s so I’m just barely old enough to remember physical media before it died (CDs, DVDs, buying games on a disk, etc.). There was a weird period where we had iPhones but everybody still was putting disks into their Xboxes and PlayStations.
🍋 double-posted this 13 hours ago, 4 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,132
I always thought space travel would be the cool thing in the future. But software seems to have progressed much much faster than space travel. Our most advanced rocket engines aren’t actually that much better than the rocket engines that we produced in the 1970s and 1980s. The SLS rocket NASA used to send humans around the moon this year was using RS-25 shuttle main engines that were designed in the 1970s and launched for the first time in the 1980s. The advancements SpaceX has made with landing rockets is pretty much just a software problem. We still have no ability to travel to other stars.
🍋 triple-posted this 13 hours ago, 4 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,133
In the past though, before the Industrial Revolution, most people didn’t see any advancement in technology at all for hundreds of years. If AI is the end of software, maybe this is the beginning of a new equilibrium that lasts for hundreds of years.
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 13 hours ago, 1 minute later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,135
@1,471,127 (🍋) > everybody still was putting disks into their Xboxes and PlayStations.
What are your thoughts on that, out of interest? I gather that lot of people are angry at Sony for phasing out physical discs (unless Sony have backtracked since I first heard the news). I'm not that big a gamer, but the games I have played in the last ~15 years have all been via Steam (last console was an Xbox 360), so I'm a bit out of the loop. To me it feels like doing away with physical discs is the natural progression of things, and is inevitable. Nobody likes change being imposed upon them, though, so you could argue physical CDs disappearing was a response to reduced customer demand as opposed to an abrupt industry intervention (then again, maybe Sony could make the same argument).
🍋 replied with this 13 hours ago, 6 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,138
@previous (tteh !MemesToDNA)
I don’t play video games as much as I used to, but I never got rid of the games I have on disk. If I had them digitally, I would have lost them by now. External drives, hard drives and SSDs don’t actually last that long, I know for a fact I have old hard drive backups that I didn’t touch for years and then one day I find the drive plugged it in and it doesn’t work.
🍋 double-posted this 13 hours ago, 1 minute later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,139
One thing I did think was cool, Microsoft was really slow about doing it because of licensing agreements or some legal copyright issues (back before AI when tech companies still cared about those things), one feature the Xbox one had I thought was cool was you could put an Xbox 360 disk in an Xbox one and play your Xbox 360 games on your Xbox one.
🍋 triple-posted this 13 hours ago, 4 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,140
I guess having things as files is convenient you can download everything over the internet, but I’ve found I have to be really careful about making sure I save things that I want to have years in the future and continuously copying it from one device to the next and one hard drive to the next hard drive for years. I’ve been pretty good at it for stuff I care about, but it’s more effort than leaving a disk on a shelf. (Also I’d recommend downloading your cloud storage at least once a year, because even services like Google Photos / Google Drive / iCloud can change things and you can wind up losing information if you don’t check it). Google actually has a really annoying policy that they can delete your Google account for no reason with no warning, it’s really rare, but it sucks lol.
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 12 hours ago, 9 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,143
@1,471,138 (🍋)
Ugh, that reminds me I really need to check on my old HDDs and SSDs, sat in my desktop PC I haven't turned on in a year and a half. Fuck.
🍋 replied with this 12 hours ago, 3 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,144
@previous (tteh !MemesToDNA)
In my experience, they both have problems but for different reasons. HDDs have moving parts so they’re more delicate. SSDs fail less often, but they store information by storing a tiny electric charge for each bit of information, which will slowly leak out over years. So eventually if you never plug an SSD in, it will lose its data after a decade or so.
🍋 double-posted this 12 hours ago, 1 minute later, 7 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,471,145
Of course if you have a broken HDD sometimes you can get it sent to a company that does data recovery. I’ve never done that but apparently some companies are pretty good at it.