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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Yeah, I choose that comparison intentionally. Social media was seen as good early on, but got enshittified beyond recognition. Shitty as it is, it’s still very much a necessity in modern life (see: institutions using it to broadcast information, non-tech people using it to communicate and organize events, etc).

    AI will be similar, it’s already changed how I work: developing software now is much more about managing the process than writing code. I don’t mind that much; writing code was never the fun part for me. I also wanted to go into management at some point, but not like this… I’m also worried about the future of the profession; how are we going to create new senior devs if there are no juniors today?


  • AI is a tool. Learning to wield it effectively is a skill. What they’re saying is that if you don’t learn it now, you’ll have to learn it later when everyone is an expert and you’ll still be a beginner.

    IMO it’s a bit like computers. I imagine at some point AI-resistant people will be like the “not computer people” that still do everything using paper and faxes.

    I know every 2-3 years there’s a new hype in tech that eventually fizzes out: Web 2.0, social media, virtual reality, cryptocurrency, etc. All of them were supposed to revolutionize the world, but not all of them actually did. I think AI is a lot more like social media than crypto; it’s here to stay. I think the best possible outcome at this point is that the open-source models eventually get good enough and small enough to run on our local hardware, but things sadly don’t seem headed that way…


  • ebc@lemmy.catoFuck AI@lemmy.worldthis
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    3 months ago

    I’ve been a programmer for the last 15+ years, and the only constant over that time has been change. Every few years, there’s a new technology that “radically simplifies” programming, such that"business people will finally be able to write the code themselves". Without fail, what ends up happening is that we build more complex systems on top of it and we still need programmers to deal with it. AI is a radical shift, yes, but it still doesn’t liberate “business people” from the burden of clarifying their ideas. That is what I do, and the technology I’m using to achieve that doesn’t fundamentally change that fact.

    That, and leaky abstractions. They always end up leaking, and you need someone who can understand what’s going on.


  • ebc@lemmy.catoFuck AI@lemmy.worldthis
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    3 months ago

    18 months is an eternity in terms of AI performance. Local models now are better than the frontiers models were at that moment.

    In my experience, AI automates the boring part of programming (which is actually writing the code). It leaves me able to focus on user experience, architecture, the fun stuff. Am I more productive? Maybe a little, yeah. Is it magically going to replace my whole team? Only a fool would think so.


  • These figures are also heavily dependent on where and how the car was manufactured, too. If the factory is powered by clean energy, doesn’t that reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emitted during manufacturing? If EV tech advances enough that the mining rigs are electric-powered, does that not also reduce the amount of GHG emitted mining lithium? Eventually we’ll also have enough batteries to recycle that too (batteries are basically a very rich lithium ore), can’t we do that in clean-powered factories?

    Basically, I think the conversation on “how much manufacturing a given product pollutes” is entirely focused on the wrong thing…

    Also, a lot of these studies compare an EV’s complete lifecycle with just the tailpipe emissions of an ICEV. Mining, refining and transporting gasoline has a huge carbon impact before you even put it in the car.





  • You vastly overestimate that. It’s not a fixed number of cycles, it’s a number before significant degradation. In other words, after you’ve spent ~8000 hours driving, you’ll have to recharge about 40 minutes earlier.

    If you think your ICE car is still top shape after that long, go ahead man… But in all likelihood, it’s burning a little oil, it’s not as quick as it used to be, the transmission has a weird clunk in third, etc… nothing mechanical works forever, and yes that includes hydrogen.

    Hydrogen, by the way, is the worst of both worlds… It solves a very minor issue (charging on road trips) while introducing a whole lot of new ones. The infrastructure for it is non-existent, it’s still a lot of mechanical parts (if you’re talking about the ICE version) or pretty niche technology (if you’re talking about fuel cells), it’s a nightmare to store, and it’s probably still produced from fossil fuels.

    There’s a reason BEVs have caught on, and hydrogen hasn’t.