I wrote some (decently repetitive) code today. Copilot autofilled 80% of it. Even if it doesn't impact bottom line, will save my wrists for sure.

To be fair there are plenty of people who made an incredible sum of money and we’re convinced crypto was going to change the world. Generative fill is cool but I’m unconvinced but figma probably also saved a ton of time for a great number professionals, but I’d be wary if everyone executive was talking about figma the same way.

I’m not dismissive of AI, but people talk about LLMs as if they are AGI, and I think that is hype

Figma is a nice-to-have thing. Collaborative, more focused and vastly simpler version of Illustrator/Photoshop. Think of it as what Google Docs was to MS Word.

AI is in a different league altogether. I don’t know if we’ll reach AGI in my lifetime, I think we will, but even if we don’t, what we already have and what’s on the horizon is ground breaking.

I've seen chat GPT write terrible code. For simple problem domains where you're coding stuff that's effectively interview questions or basic data handling (like what millions of tutorials describe on the net today) it's fine. But for actually solving novel problems it completely fails. The best way to understand this is the fact that the open AI/chat GPT developers themselves don't use the tech to code itself.

Generative fill is a neat feature for a limited domain. It is not some grand realignment of labor, the truth is there are orders of magnitude more construction workers, dog walkers, baristas, etc. than graphic designers. Generative fill or other related AI tech is useless to most people's work.

This is where you're getting it wrong. You're expecting a prefect AI writing perfect code and be able to solve any problem you give it. No, AI cannot do that. Instead, if you use it as a tool to quickly get you up to speed with boilerplate code or research, it can at least double your productivity when you learn how to use it effectively. Dude, unless you're a god-like programmer, you will get behind if you ignore any tool that can improve your productivity, even if it is just a tiny bit per day.

Right, so we automate away mediocre intelectual jobs and keep only the very top and bottom of the pyramid.

And that’s not a grand realignment of labor and comparable to NFTs?

> Right, so we automate away mediocre intelectual jobs and keep only the very top and bottom of the pyramid.

This is not going to happen no matter how much you think it will.

Care to substantiate that?

Substantiate a negative? No.

Let me make it easier for you:

“This is not going to happen no matter how much you think it will.”

Really? Why do you think so?

Do you pay for ChatGPT 4? If so I am puzzled why you say "But for actually solving novel problems it completely fails" as I find it has no problem solving novel problems, better than I would. Could you give an example of a novel problem it completely fails at?

How much coding do you think is "solving novel problems"?

I'm a senior developer and integrated ChatGPT and Github Copilot into my workflow. No more StackOverflow for me, ChatGPT handles that part. And Copilot auto writes a lot of my code, amazingly well for a lesser known language Haxe.

My son recently came to me with a school assignment for his Arduino. As an extra he wanted to play a song through a buzzer, instead of just a beep like the assignment said. Just asked chatGPT to write this for the song Ghost Busters. I know C and C++ but never programmed an Arduino. You know how long it took ChatGPT to write it? About half a minute. You know how much time it would cost me or you?

1. Quickly figure out how Arduino works with the loop, outputs, etc. Does it have a C precompiler? etc.

2. Find the notes of Ghost Busters.

3. Figure out what kind of output is sent to the buzzer. (Solution: it's the frequency)

4. Translate notes to frequencies

5. Put the notes of Ghost Busters into an array, or something like that. How to handle timings and pauses?

6. Write the code to play it.

Well, I can tell you it saved me tons of time. It was faster than typing this comment.

Just dismissing it with "I've seen chat GPT write terrible code" is not so smart in my opinion. But hey, the more programmers think they are too good for ChatGPT and Copilot, the better for developers like me who are already great, and just add some more productivity on top of that.

the art generation I'd kind of agree with, at least from what I've seen around the internet, although impressive examples usually also involve hours of work. Image generation plays to the strengths of these systems because it doesn't heavily rely on context or requires correctness.

Code and natural language generation I've been much less impressed by the longer I've used them. Errors in code are way too common and unlike art being 1% off in code is as bad, maybe worse than being 100% off. The entire benefit of code is precision. It's like self=driving, 99% accuracy is useless, and likely dangerous.

With natural language the lack of understanding becomes apparent and it hits a weird uncanny valley, generic, repetitive tone that gets tiresome.

> Have you seen what generative fill can do? > Have you seen the code ChatGPT writes?

I'm both a professional artist and a very veteran programmer and both of these statements are laughable.

> Can you imagine how many hours it could have saved me? Now multiply that by the number of professionals in the field. And that's just two areas I’m familiar with.

Negative hours, in my experience.

I can tell you, you’re doing it wrong. I just erased a person and generative fill recreated accurate tire rims intertwined with foliage and side walk gutter appearing behind. It is aware of light, geometry and perspective in remarkable ways. It did in seconds what would have taken a trained human 15-20 minutes at the very least. Not only that, it gave me 3 options to choose from, two of which were great, one was good.

Last week, ChatGPT wrote me a WordPress plugin and we debugged it together and added a few features after my first description. Easily saved me an afternoon. Not only that, the experience of conversing with the machine, understanding what you requested and explaining why it did X, is transformative.

> I can tell you, you’re doing it wrong.

Yeah, I'm sure.