- cross-posted to:
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
GrapheneOS is currently defending its use of AI coding tools on Mastodon against complaints by various accounts claiming to be users.
We do not understand where you’re coming from or why you’re so incredibly angry with us. It’s not justified and does not make sense.


If it was about real AI – not stochastic parrots – I would be all for it. What happened to those developments that started in the 70s where you have automatic formal proofs that a piece of code does what it is supposed to do? That is intelligent. Producing slop more voluminous and convoluted than humans could produce or understand is not intelligent software architecture just like fixing a hole in a roof by throwing what sticks at it is not intelligent building architecture. Both may do the job for some time. But what are the long-term costs and who is capable to clean up? In my opinion, what’s most desired is tools that are bug free, do what they should without annoying the user, and are radically simplified in their architecture. (For example, I would be happy with a perfectly working product that does what NFS or Samba aspire and fail to do for decades.) Apparently, AI can’t deliver that. To have the billionth app that is a browser wrapper and shows me exactly one website is much more important.
It’s called symbolic AI, or sometimes GOFAI for good old-fashioned AI. It’s no longer considered AI by the wider public, it seems. I believe those techniques are still widely used, but they have reached their limit quite some time ago. Cyc was maybe the high water mark of that approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
modern AI can be used to generate formal lean proofs:
The stochastic parrots we have today are pretty good at doing that kind of tedious, extensive, franky mind numbingly boring stuff. They’re also fast enough that you can “afford” to take the time / effort required to do those kinds of proofs where they are warranted - it makes them “a good idea” in a lot more places than they used to be when they were so much more expensive to perform.