> Really strange how some people took a term that supposed to be a "lol watch this" and started using it for work...

don't forget about the insane amount of marketing around AI code companies and how they put "vibe coding" in front of everyone's face all the time.

You tell someone something enough times and they'll belive it

Plus, vibe coding is the surest way for these companies to insert themselves as the ultimate middleman in the entire software development process.

As an aside, I really hate how cynical I feel I've been compelled to become at the arrival of such a genuinely innovative technology. Like, with this very article I can't help but to think there are ulterior motives behind it's production.

This is key. They've found a way to sell extremely-high-brand-stickiness shovels in a gold rush.

> As an aside, I really hate how cynical I feel I've been compelled to become at the arrival of such a genuinely innovative technology

Yeah I'm feeling like this too. This should be so exciting! We're getting close to the Star Trek dream of just telling the computer to do work and it works!

I've been trying to examine why it's not exciting for me, and I'm actually pretty repulsed by it.

I think it's a combination of things

To start, I'm pretty disgusted by the blatant and unapologetic scraping of every single scrap of public data, regardless of license or copyrights.

I'm also really discouraged by how this is turning out to be another tool in the capitalist toolbox to justify layoffs, increase downward pressure on salaries, and once again extract more value per hour worked from employees

I also don't feel like the technology is actually that good or reliable yet. It has transformed my workflow but for the worse. Because my company is very bullish on AI it has resulted in me losing what little control I had to choose the tools that I feel are best for my job, in favor of what they want me to use because of the hype

Ultimately I'm cynical because I don't feel like this is making my life better. It feels like it is enriching other people at my expense and I am very bitter about it

> The world is not ready for systems that indulge people in their bullshit.

we never were. that's why the world is how it is rn.

I think that’d make for interesting experiments and fringe sites, I don’t really see like your average e-commerce site ever doing anything like that.

You’d want the A and B to be intentional, not automatically generated. Every VP thinks their idea for a feature will revolutionize the company.

> Every VP thinks their idea for a feature will revolutionize the company.

Now imagine that everyone of them is given a tool that could get them an POC quickly. I think a lot VPs are about to figure out that their ideas are shit.

This pre-supposes that said VPs have the self-awareness to realise their ideas are shit.

Probably because both anthropic and openai were on the whole AGI train where they were trying to heavily personify their products.

Google never seemed to personify theirs, IIRC. They always presented their AI tools in a utilitarian way.

really?

because of the current situation in the US...

Sorry, but have you paid attention to the legal system in the states?

Large corporations and their execs live by different laws than the rest of us.

That’s how it is.

Anything is else is, unfortunately, a fiction in this country.

And? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

There’s no “and.”

I’m just stating a fact. No discussion of wrong or right or whatever.

Just pointing out how there is no more rule of law in the US. Idk when exactly it disappeared, but it’s definitely not present anymore

Not everyone is a deontologist, some are moral naturalists and others still are utilitarians.

I long for the day when someone can give advice based on their own personal experience without someone else being like “well that won’t work for literally everyone”

Yeah obviously. It’s a personal anecdote.

What's the _point_ of the anecdote, though? You're taking up everybody's time to tell a story, do us a favor to have a relevant point.

"Have no fear" doesn't apply to the article, at all. You might as well write "what I learned was to not stick legos up my nostril". Also good advice. Also not applicable.

It's fine if it doesn't work for everyone, it's annoying if it isn't relevant to anyone.

You are reading Hacker News. You are literally here to waste time.

It's obnoxious behavior. For example, I decided when I was young to live in my car and be homeless. I saved a bunch of money, and I've been frugal most my life. I was also super focused at my work and climbed the ladder making real money.

I believe most people don't have discipline to endure less than and the discipline to really listen to what power asks of them. There is a lot of great advice for people to do well in a job, but they just... don't apply it.

These people are best to be ignored.

A bit cynical, no?

Giving generic feel-good advice is a decent strategy to farm likes from the naive. Some people have no shame.

Don't be afraid is excellent advice, sorry but you're coming off as very cynical.

I was watching a trial the other day and the prosecutor asks "And did you often see your nephews at your mothers house when you video called her?", and the defendant, a dentists, says "Yep, watching TV, brushing their teeth.[5 second silence] Don't forget to brush your teeth. Really important." The prosecutor smiles, laughs, and says "A little dull humor never hurt, eh?"

I'm not sure your average adult would find "don't be afraid" to be "advice", or some deeply meaningful advice that only a cynic would think was anything less than excellent.

It’s not just a personal anecdote. It’s telling people what they should do.

A personal anecdote would be saying this is what worked for me. Not this is how you should do it.

It comes off as telling you what your problem is and how you should fix it.

you're talking about specifically using genetic programming to create new programs as opposed to gradient decend in LLMs to minimize a loss function, right?

How would you construct a genetic algorithm to produce natural language like LLMs do?

Forgive me if i'm misunderstanding, but in programming we have "tokens" which are minimal meaningful bits of code.

For natural languages it's harder. "Words" are not super meaningful on their own, i don't think. (at least not as much as a token) so how would you break down natural language for a genetic algorithm?

> how would you break down natural language for a genetic algorithm?

The entire point is that you do not bother trying. From an information theory and computational perspective, raw UTF-8 bytes can work just as well as "tokens".

The program that is being evolved is expected to develop whatever strategy is best suited to providing the desired input/output transformation. Back to the bitter lesson on this one.

I’ll need to read up on genetic algorithms, I think.

That sounds really cool, but coming from training other statistical models, im having a hard time imagining what the training loop looks like.

I’d say this is more a tool for prototypes.

You could secure angel funding off a simple prototype.

You could also make something funny and share it with friends, if it doesn’t need to be monetized.

I wouldn’t use tools like this for long lived products though.

It’s only the bottleneck for orgs that don’t know how to keep focus and bloated orgs with too many teams/managers/engineers.

And scrappy startups made by businesses school dropouts (and grads)