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makerofthings

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Imagine a program that generates the digits of pi, one after the other and stops when it is finished. A general purpose program analysing this program to decide if it stops or not would have to know about pi. And about every other possible algorithm.

Illegal Numbers 2 months ago

The recent post on ripping DVDs reminded me of the DeCSS prime number. Fascinating topic to think about.

I wish these posts that talk about non-human mistakes that agents make would post some examples. They would be interesting to see.

ChatGPT Images 2.0 3 months ago

I respectfully disagree, I think code has always been more of an art than a science. It's an odd one, I'll grant you, as you need to do a lot of work to really appreciate it.

ChatGPT Images 2.0 3 months ago

I don’t think that’s completely true, there is an art to code beyond it just being correct. There are a great many correct implementations of a program, but only some of them are really beautiful as well. Most people don’t see the code or appreciate this, but the difference between correct and art is clear to me when I see it.

ChatGPT Images 2.0 3 months ago

It’s making a tiny number of people richer and a very large number of people poorer. It isn’t going to end well.

I totally see what you're saying, but to me this feels different. Compilation is a fairly mechanical and well understood process. The large language models aren't just compiling English to assembler via your chosen language, they try and guess what you want, they add extra bits you didn't ask for, they're doing some of your solution thinking for you. That feels like more than just abstraction to me.

Apple Just Lost Me 4 months ago

I read about the new age check nonsense just before 26.4 downloaded, fortunately. I turned off automatic updates and so I guess I have a little time to get out of the apple ecosystem. I'm thinking GrapheneOS on Pixel 10. This is absolutely not required by UK law, apple just seems to enjoy the taste of government boot.

I am required to maximise my use of AI at work and so I do. It's good enough at simple, common stuff. Throw up a web page, write some python, munge some data in C++, all great as long as the scale is small. If I'm working on anything cutting edge or niche (which I usually am) then it makes a huge mess and wastes my time. If you have a really big code base in the ~50million loc range then it makes a huge mess.

I really liked writing code, so this is all a big negative for me. I genuinely think we have built a really bad thing, that will take away jobs that people love and leave nothing but mediocrity. This thing is going to make the human race dumber and it's going to hold us back.

If an AI can license-wash open source software like this then the licenses become meaningless. Which is fascinating. Commercial software cloning that is simple enough for an average person to drive is next and the ultimate form of piracy, see an app for $10? Don’t fancy paying? Just ask ChatGPT for a clone. Future is going to be wild.

Similar. I want to see games made by humans who have put in the effort and taken the time to build something good. I don’t want to see the market flooded with low effort AI slop.