The Linux creator is interested in AI, but the hype means he “basically ignores” it.
Linus Torvalds out here describing capitalism.
Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’
Submitted 3 weeks ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.zip
Comments
Zorque@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Damn he is old
swab148@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
He’s 54. Middle-aged, sure, but old?
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
That photo makes him look like he is in his 70s.
Anyway 54 is still kind of old assuming 65 is the goal retirement age.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I disagree. But I see why he believes so. If you’ve been into similar topics for a while, like machine learning, AI doesn’t objectively does much more. Then you have countless examples of AI providing wrong informations. However this understates how often real people give wrong informations and how often we have to work with them and fix the issued, be it in our head of by trial and error.
AI like LLMs are so new, we neither have peaked in quality nor used them long enough to understand the quirks. For a lot of people it will be like learning to drive a bike, learn swimming or learn inner peace and patient with the annoying coworker. Some won’t make it.
Also understanding AI takes time which I suspect most busy people don’t have. And I don’t even mean understanding the technical side, I mean learning on using them correctly. AI is a tool and to believe it solves all our problems now, is a bit utopic, yet it will become better and better by the day.
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
10% is being generous. The parts of “AI” that aren’t just an expensive way of getting exciting-looking but unreliable results are mundane things like autocorrect, image upscaling models, handwriting recognition and such: unglamorous statistical learning in narrowly constrained domains nobody would claim is on the verge of becoming sentient and spawning the Singularity.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
LLMs can be very useful if you understand how they work. The danger is when you assume that its correct.
z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
This. Sorry but I’m a web developer and one of my colleagues obviously uses it without checking if it is correct, then bugs me or others when he doesn’t understand why it doesn’t work as expected. It is frustrating as hell and I’ve explained it to him multiple times:
Over prompt the AI if you are going to use it. Long lengthy prompts that are very succinct but give as much context as possible.
It is highly preferable to check other sources first like Stack Overflow. Even Medium articles can be better than using AI sometimes.
Type out what the AI output rather than just copy and paste. As you type line by line, explain to yourself what is happening.
Question everything. Do you think this code will work. Why will it work?
Test the code. If it doesn’t work as expected, trouble shoot it.
Don’t be afraid to scrap the whole thing and start over. Even open another prompt and try again if you really think the AI can answer the question (there are many cases where your problem is just too specific and the AI can’t).
He does none of these things. I swear he is the laziest developer I’ve ever met, and I’ve met my fair share.
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I dunno, it helped me with excel formulas quite a bit. I only had to use outside AI sources multiple times to correct it all but it still set the ground work for standard forum users to fix.
Godort@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Honestly, AI is super useful if what you need doesn’t require much creativity. For example, if I want to know how to setup an eDiscovery case in Exchange Online then I can probably trust Copilot to tell me the correct answer.
If I need to write a block of code to check for XSS or CSRF, then no, AI is not going to be trustworthy.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If it’s something that’s been done and written about dozens of times before, an LLM will probably barf up something resembling it.