Category Archives: Java/Java EE

[2024 dev2next] gen ai panel

Posted on by
Reply

Intro and one of the mic runners: Ixchel Ruiz

Panel:  Frank Greco,  Brian Sletten, Neal Ford, Micah Silverman

For more see the table of contents

Opening remarks

  • The people who made money in the gold rush made the tools
  • We’re supposed to be the experts; start using
  • AI is not going to take your job, but the person who knows how to use AI well will take your job
  • Snyk has a mandate should be using AI at some point every day
  • If you think this isn’t going to change your job, you aren’t paying attention.
  • Tech journalism is dead; don’t be a credulous idiot and believe PR
  • 28% task competition in tasks for junior devs and none for senior
  • 41% increase in rewrites
  • Radical decrease in moving code around. Keeps adding code, not looking reuse.
  • Don’t want junior devs adding garbage code nobody needs

Q&A

  • Language model selection? hard question. Need to build something quick and iterate. A lot of moving parts in a RAG system. Consider cost (latest and greatest more expensive, more work inference stage costs more). Excel is an abstraction and we know how it works. LLMs are nondeterministic and black boxes.
  • Tech debt? need guardrails to protect against blasting code. Need whether came from junior dev, senior dev, or AI. Dev are more trusting of code from LLMs and falsely believe it is more secure. In past devs, were more pessimistic and verified more. Don’t yet have best practices for probabilistic systems.
  • Have to be careful with prompts with natural language vs turning complete language. Is it a new programming language that looks like natural? In near future, will have a LLM whisperer on each time.
  • News article where tried to get ChatGPT to admin sentiment? we anthropomorphize., Turning test not enough. Arc test (https://lab42.global/arc/) working on better approach. (Abstract and Reasoning Corpus). Solving problems by recognizing new patterns. In field, people saying LLM not the future. In 70s, Eliza “showed” computers could talk, but really parlor trick. Currently in AI hype cycle. Need people who understand limits of mind/limits of what possible. Not on verge of generalized AI/sentience. May not be in our lifetime if even possible. Plenty of natural stupidity.
  • LLMs trained on internet text and generate vast amounts of text which put on internet. When pollute internet to point can’t be trained? on the cusp. “Dead internet” theory where generated content exceeds humans. What happens when people don’t create new poems and creativity. “AI has taught me to believe in a soul because I’ve seen art created without it”
  • Definition of AGI? ARC competition. Referenced books for why not on cusp [didn’t really answer]
  • Reused joke from yesterday about the real changes are in AV, not in AI (when the mic didn’t work)
  • AI fundamentally lies to us; we call hallucinations. Companies say LLMs wouldn’t exist if couldn’t break copyright laws and 2/3 of ChatGPT users present results as own work. Integrity of crypto bros? Industry has ignored ethics for so long. Physists brought into fiction as evil once could destroy world. We are next as bad guy. Youtube on apology tour for dumbing down culture. Project Nightshade lets artists poison art to confuse LLMs. [it adds a pixel layer to categorize incorrectly]
  • AI tooks that help with daily work cycle? Assembly AI API to create transcript from audio, Copilot, Codium (suggests tests). Warp terminal – creates regex from standard English.
  • Prove work made by human vs AI: False positive rate too high. Need ethics. Ex: should have musicians for making music. Teacher added white on white text in test question so could tell if cheating. Unfortunately not sustainable or scalable
  • Open source LLMs: different than what used to with open source. The key is the data. Not open source if don’t say where data coming from legally. Chain of thought makes beefing up model less important due to post processing. Asymmetric power between big tech companies and others. How compete? Microsoft doesn’t have a Windows dept; it is spread out over different departments.
  • Hiring changing narrative especially for recent grads? AI or other job market trends? Yes. Bias if train on resumes with western names or traditional education. Will be fallout. Recent story: manager submitted resume and it got rejected; fired HR. AI is the new electricity where just expect it. Difference is we understood electricity before started using. Hype cycle were AI needs to be on resume to get attention. In NY, big companies hiring junior people expecting AI to help them out. Market for senior folks is dead.

Closing thoughts

  • Learn things. Mediocre people trying to use AI for competitive advantage. Use as tool to be better.
  • Education. AI is not a search engine. Don’t use it as one.

My take

The format was audience Q&A. I enjoyed reading about the ARC project and Nightshade. Great audience questions and great end to the day.

using switch expressions with sax

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a lot of years since I used SAX so I wrote my handler method the way I remember it looking:

if (qualifiedName.equals("edition") || qualifiedName.equals("author")) {
   inTagWithText = true;
}
if (qualifiedName.equals("book")) {
   System.out.println(attributes.getValue("title"));
} else if (qualifiedName.equals("paperback")) {
   paperback = true;
} else if (qualifiedName.equals("authors")) {
   System.out.println("Paperback? " + paperback);
}

IntelliJ suggested that this would be better with a switch. It was right. The new code is:

switch (qualifiedName) {
   case "edition", "author" -> inTagWithText = true;
   case "paperback" -> paperback = true;
   case "authors" -> System.out.println("Paperback? " + paperback);
   case "book" -> System.out.println(attributes.getValue("title"));
   }
}

Thank you IntelliJ. That looks much better.

OMNY and the mysterious AutoLoad

Posted on by
Reply

NYC is in the (slow) process of switching from Metrocards to OMNY cards. I switched a good while ago (maybe a year ago?) I had my OMNY card set to automatically add $40 every time the balance drops below $10. This worked great for a long time. Until it suddenly didn’t.

How I found out

On July 25th, I tapped my OMNY card to get into the subway like I usually do. I then tried to change using a “free out of system transfer.” (Technically they charge you and reverse the charge on your balance, but it looks like a free transfer. I didn’t know this at the time although it explains the behavior).

My OMNY card was denied when tapping for the transfer. I tried at two entrances and several turnstiles. I went to the attendant booth but nobody was nearby. I then walked 8 blocks to another station. That station doesn’t have a free transfer, but I figured I’d pay another fare and complain for a refund later or see a person. The OMNY card was also declined there, but there was a station attendant. Who said “this happens sometimes” and call OMNY on the number on the back of the card. I said I would, but also I needed to get to work. She opened the door for me.

The problem?

The “problem” was that my balance on the OMNY card was negative 10 cents. So the “free” transfer didn’t work since I didn’t have the balance of a fare for them to borrow against and refund. From my point of ivew, the cards was denied in the middle of a trip.

The “problem” and difficulty of adding money as a workaround

It tried calling OMNY. They tell you how many people are ahead of you (I was 39th). I didn’t have a ton of time as I was only working half a day and needed to use the card again soon. After waiting 11 minutes, I was down to 23rd in line.

At the same time, i was trying to log into the website on a computer and my phone. It was super flakey. (Maybe this is why so many people were waiting on the phone.)

I got far enough to see I had a negative balance pretty quickly. The payment system failed a lot though. I couldn’t use the card I had registered because I didn’t have it on me so couldn’t type in the credit card verification number. So I tried adding the card I had on me. This took a bunch of tries because the system kept giving errors.

I finally got it in the system and tried to pay. A bunch of times I got error message. Then I got “payment denied; contact card provider.” I gave up on my position of 23rd on line to call the credit card company. Who said my card was not locked. I tried again and got “payment denied.” I then checked my email and saw that both “denied” payments went through. Ok. That is more money than I wanted to add. But at least my balance wasn’t negative. And I use transit a lot so it’ll get used up.

Someone on Reddit said the problem was caused by the Crowdstrike issues. Someone else on Reddit said the problem was that OMNY disabled autoload on commuter card accounts without saying anything.

Starting over?

Given the theory that this was a forever problem, I switched OMNY to add money on the 1st of each month. I don’t like that solution as I don’t pay the same amount each month so I’m going to wind up with too much. But temporary solution.

Then one of my friends said that autopay by amount with commuter card is working again. so I switched back. Someone in the Reddit thread said the same; that it’s working again.

How to switch autopay

It’s not obvious how to configure autopay. I managed to figure it out when I first setup autopay. But it’s been long enough that I didn’t remember. Writing it here so that if this happens again, I don’t have to figure it out for a third time.

While you can see that autopay is enabled using the UI, you can only configure it using the chatbot. Also you can’t change the type of autoload. It let me try but then kept it at the original balance based one. Also it was finicky about what words it let me use. You have to cancel and restart. The gist of what worked was:

  • OMNY greats me with my balance
  • I wrote “Remove Autoload from this card”
  • OMNY confirms
  • I wrote “configure autoload”
  • I then provided the info to configure the way I wanted it.