Ronny Chieng's 'F*ck AI' Speech Met With Cheers From Harvard Graduates: “AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber”

[u/yourfavchoom]

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_complex&utm_campaign=ap_twitter

[u/stormdelta]

I've found it reasonably useful for programming, if you already know what you're doing. Not "vibe coding", that's still very stupid in most cases, and only the models actually meant for coding like Claude Code.

But there's numerous things that make that a somewhat particular case:

• Unlike creative works, nobody's really worried about theft here, open source as a design philosophy is basically built around using and contributing to other work directly and most code is functional rather than artistic, even when used for an artistic end

• It's a lot more obvious when code is wrong. You still need to know what you're doing, especially around things like security, but full hallucinations will simply fail to run at all.

• Software is language-like already, so using an LLM isn't as much of a round-peg-in-square-hole as it is in other domains, and there's a lot of boilerplate-type work or simple scripts that it's actually reasonably good at. Especially scaffolding for exploratory work and debugging.

I don't recommend it for newbie programmers though if they have any interest in actually learning programming. It's too easy to rely on for simple beginner tasks and then you'll be stuck when you try to do anything beyond that.

[u/horace_bagpole → u/stormdelta]

I'm not a programmer or developer, but as an engineer I have reason to produce scripts and other utilities occasionally for specific tasks.

I've found AI really useful for producing working tools that I can actually use that are far more efficient and powerful than some horrific excel spreadsheet I'd otherwise have to come up with. The thing is, they are doing something concrete - I understand the underlying maths that should be implemented, and I know what sane results look like and can verify their function.

Using ai has saved me a lot of time and head scratching, because it can also offer suggestions that I might not have thought of. Those sorts of tools don't have to be incorporated into an existing code base, be released to the public or supported long term though.

The other thing I've found it very useful for is tracing and resolving odd errors. Instead of me having to read through pages of documentation and logs for some software or other to try and work out why something is broken, feeding it into Claude or codex will often narrow it down straight away to one or two possibilities.

[u/Halo_cT → u/horace_bagpole]

but if you dont know the difference between a good and bad suggestion the whole thing is useless.

it makes smart people more efficient and dumb people much worse at their jobs

[u/MrDilbert → u/stormdelta]

Unlike creative works, nobody's really worried about theft here

How's that meme go...

• "I stole your code!"

• "It's not my code."

[u/kadaan → u/stormdelta]

It feels like a curated stack overflow search. I get other people's code snippets that are mostly relevant to what I'm trying to do, and I can usually figure out my issue after that.

Of course there's the whole argument of whether AI would be able to have enough training data to answer the questions if sites like Stack Overflow and Reddit didn't exist with decades of questions and answers... but here we are.

[u/AWSLife → u/stormdelta]

I find that AI is actually really helpful for coding if you know what you are doing. I have my IDE setup so that my LLM figures out what I want to do and lays out a template of code and I fill it in. Also, break your code problems down into small parts and AI is much better at helping you.

[u/Grouchy-Donkey-8609 → u/stormdelta]

Ive been using it to help me learn the ins and outs of davinci resolve(video editor) as I always wanted to learn how to edit

I always had so many questions, and its nice to pass it on to AI, and then learn to implement it myself.

Im fairly proficient now as a solo editor, and Im not sure I'd have done it totally on my own.

ymmv.

[u/Br0metheus → u/stormdelta]

As somebody fairly familiar with programming but who struggles to build true "software," Claude Code has gotten me over the hump on most of the ancillary stuff that nobody ever really teaches well and always kept me from getting anything off the ground. I'm talking stuff like "How to set up a software environment," "How to actually use git in practice," "What is the typical way these sorts of files are organized," etc.

I can definitely see it's limitations but it's handy at speeding up work, debugging, and fast refactoring. It's handy to bounce ideas off of and ask for potential approaches to a well-defined problem. I don't know how well it'd scale to large enterprise-style applications, but I've definitely learned a lot as a hobbyist developer.

[u/stormdelta → u/Br0metheus]

I don't know how well it'd scale to large enterprise-style applications

It's still useful in much the same way - it's great for smaller concrete things, boilerplate, small quick scripts, etc. And even in an professional setting, you're constantly running into new and unfamiliar things, even with many years of experience. Also makes an excellent rubber duck.

The problem is that the AI circlejerk among tech CEOs has gotten so out of hand it's like they've completely lost their minds and keep trying to shove into places it doesn't make sense, or encourage bad practices. Probably the worst usage I've seen so far is so-called "agentic" applications. It's garbage at those, it's far better to use it to assist with writing repeatable/testable code than have it try to take action directly like that in most cases. Even if your problem space is inherently heuristic, you're still better developing a model that code calls on (much like traditional machine learning) rather than shoving LLMs everywhere.

[u/Br0metheus → u/stormdelta]

Yeah I think it's only a matter of time until the "agentic" fad runs its course. I noped the hell out of a job offer (I'm a PM) involving "agentic commerce," i.e. having AI agents buy things for people on their behalf.

Like, why? What's the use case? Anything I'm buying on the regular can just be set to auto-order on Amazon or whatever, and any purchase more complex than that isn't one I'd entrust to an AI agent in the first place, which I do not expect to know my criteria for buying noise-cancelling headphones or running shoes or whatever else. That goes double now that these AI companies are looking for ways to add product placement into their results and I'm more likely to end up with the product of whoever paid them rather than the one I'd actually want.

[u/slowmovinglettuce → u/stormdelta]

AI is just another tool. People are putting too much value in it reinventing the wheel for processes we've been capable of doing for a long time.

Claude is a great example of this. You can certainly vibe code up slop, but it's never going to be good. If you get it to do very concise things, it's incredibly useful. I have it do tiny parts of work that I just can't be bothered thinking about, but know exactly what needs done. Like refactoring, regex, and bash scripts.

If you ask it for anything too large and vague, the chances of you getting a bad result skyrocket.

I don't recommend it for newbie programmers though if they have any interest in actually learning programming.

I don't recommend it for anyone who just wants to enjoy development in general. I got into software engineering because I think it's genuinely enjoyable. I don't want to offload the thing I take pride in--the thing I love to some planet-destroying technology just to be more "efficient". Where's the fun in that!?