Tag Archives: genai

[2024 dev2next] gen ai panel

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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.