Kinda buggy, but impressively nonetheless. How long did it take?

It took 50 minutes, would be ~$20 in API costs (I'm on a Pro sub).

(Correction: I'm on a Max ($100/mo) sub. Realized the mistake too late, so can't edit my comment.)

But it was trained on ad spam wasn't it?

And consistently quotes information from them, yes. They quite like showing reddit and news icons while searching, but expand the references and it paints a rather different picture, especially for common searches which are flooded with junk. Niche stuff seems more likely to reference decent sites, but have massively worse hallucinations.

People are afraid for their livelihood. What do you expect?

Well yes, but there is a choice being made here and I would love to believe we can do better. The rational response to being afraid about your livelihood isn’t to spend time filling every HN thread on LLMs with embittered negativity. Not to mention all the flat denials that LLMs can do mathematics and write decent code, which is almost a self-contradictory position if you are worried they are going to replace you.

There are a lot of big issues at stake here and just because a person is interested in what AI can do and curious to discuss it does not make them uncritically positive about it’s effects on society, the economy, and the world. Yet that is often the assumption and it leads to battle lines being drawn, on every AI discussion, over and over again. It means the serious discussion gets swamped and that makes me sad.

Exactly. And when one's life is threatened, what are we to do if not fight?

Fight! Fight! Fight!

I mean a lot depends on your life circumstances. Do you have a family to support? Do you have any money saved up? How old you are? It's tempting for me to quit and work on something I've wanted to work on for years but... The risk feels too high cause I feel like if I fail, it will be impossible to find a new job where either I made as much as I had before, or a job at all.

I have been conservative forever from a financial perspective. I feel comfortable enough to be out of W2 for a year or two.

but there is a real opportunity cost to leaving a w2 and jumping into an idea like this. Plus the fears that you stated as well are things I think about also.

I had to buy the copyrighted material before reading it... Meta apparently operates in a different legal system than me. That's my issue with it.

Yes, I have no objection to that part. It's the arguments that training itself is the problem.

Sarah Silverman as the most prominent example.

I mean the act of reproducing the copyrighted material is what is illegal. LLMs I've used for coding has outputted exact copyrights for code verbatim into my code before. When that happens it feels kind of fishy to be honest.

Yes. I agree. But many people argue that training itself is a copyright violation. That's the position I'm countering here.

> I went all in on AI coding tools and became incredibly productive. Then I lost my job and could not write a for loop.

After I read that, I couldn't even bring myself to read the article.

I'm assuming it's hyperbole, and software developers aren't a good audience for that sort of literary device:)

Nevertheless, I too stopped reading. I had to wonder if you forgot how to code so quickly whether he knew how to code to begin with

It's really good!

AI output is non-deterministic right? Can both of you be right? Maybe it gets it right sometimes, and doesn't other times.

When people say they don't write the code, they mean they don't type it, but if there are not vibe coding garbage they are still watching what the agent outputs, and redirects it when it goes wrong. Instead of fixing the code manually they prompt the LLM.

Have you seen openspec, or any of the others in this space?

Yes. They are trying to make AI-assisted development more structured. I am focusing with Primer more on learning-path oriented side. It means breaking things into small, verifiable milestones that one completes step by step, rather than defining a full spec upfront.

That said I think there is definitely overlap and I am interested in borrowing ideas where it makes sense.