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@jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io

Post #2699695

2026-05-19 05:54 UTC

Watching people try to "debug" coding agent behavior is so unbelievably painful. It's just fucking magic incantations Did you use this specific super power? Did you ask it to explain itself? Did you read it's thought process to see where it's getting overwhelmed? No because none of that is real. It does not do any of those things. It confabulates statistically probable text, and it does that over and over until a control loop stops asking for more. That is the whole entire thing.

Replies (20)

  • @oli@olifant.social 2026-05-19 05:59

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io As I'm fond of saying, you did not 'wear down' the AI until it gave you the right answer. It wore you down, because it's inexhaustible, until you were finally willing to accept its answer.

    Open ##2962812

  • @abstractcode@eigenmagic.net 2026-05-19 06:24

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io Calling something a "Skill" doesn't make it be something other than a Markdown file full of magic thinking.

    Open ##2962814

  • @draNgNon@hachyderm.io 2026-05-19 06:38

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io yes, exactly this, and exactly why it's burning down the forests. just ... a supercharged Monte Carlo routine

    Open ##2962817

  • @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io you cannot control the stochastic parrot's random number generator

    Open ##2962818

  • @pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 2026-05-19 07:10

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io But I wrote "DO NOT HALLUCINATE" at the end of the prompt

    Open ##2962823

  • @properlypurple@tech.lgbt 2026-05-19 07:12

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io It's the same thought process as using a slot machine, just a thousand times worse.

    Open ##2962825

  • @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io Society is building towards these guys https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tech-priest

    Open ##2962826

  • @dzwiedziu@mastodon.social 2026-05-19 07:52

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io Magic >>>>(…)>> AI (Even if the earlier doesn't exist.)

    Open ##2962827

  • @hopeless@mas.to 2026-05-19 08:35

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io Have you actually tried current-gen coding agents like https://antigravity.google? What you wrote sounds like you should have tried them. But what you wrote also sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.

    Open ##2962828

  • @grumpydad@infosec.exchange 2026-05-19 08:44

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io "Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic" (Sterling's corollary to Clarke's 3:rd law)

    Open ##2962833

  • @kirakira@furry.engineer 2026-05-19 09:41

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io the anthropomorphicizing is insanely good marketing. even people who have a relatively level head about them seem to lose the whole "statistical engine" thing once it's made to resemble a person

    Open ##2962834

  • @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io i'll admit I'm def in the camp of i started with a bio degree and now just so existentially curious that I'm willing to screw up and fail but also like hey maybe i can learn computers and coding in way. but yeah so bunted out and mainly i kinda have honed myself as more a complex systems thinker now that i try to just learn systems instead and see what hacks i can earn but this post def sent me down a rabbit hole to try to create better strategies around. here i am watching a 12 hour video on computers on youtube starting in teaching me binary addition and stuff to how things are stored in memory and well. well see how far i get on coffee curiosity and existential dread and the fear of being alone with my self so yeah i shall keep learning. but the "magic incantations" made me laugh and yup apparently LLMs are just stochastic probabilistic magic eight balls.

    Open ##2962837

  • @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io i've been playing around with one hosted on my own hardware for a little while and if anything this is making me less hopeful on using them for anything that does not require constant babysitting and can't accept "ok let's drop this and we'll try it tomorrow when i think of a better prompt or i get a luckier seed" as an outcome maybe it's because i'm using a relatively small (which in this context still means 25-35 Billion parameters, with 3 Billion active at any given time) model at a low quantization because that's as much as i can fit, compared to whatever hell the corporate hosts are doing, but from what i can tell all this really means is they start breaking down faster, earlier in the process (so if anything it's less of a false sense of security)

    Open ##2962838

  • @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io And yet somehow produce code that works. I know, I've tried it. Just pretending it doesn't exist or that it doesn't do what it does is not going to make it go away.

    Open ##2962840

  • @mousepotato@mastodon.social 2026-05-19 12:00

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io it makes me want to quote the "Your ancestors bestrode the universe" speech at them https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=51z0gdKA-P8

    Open ##2962841

  • @amenonsen@flipping.rocks 2026-05-19 15:29

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io I recently read some posts suggesting that it's useful to ask an LLM to review code "as if you were Linus Torvalds" or a few other people. I can't explain why this feels incredibly distasteful and disturbing to me, but I absolutely hate the thought of having to grasp at which real people to invoke an imitation of to get the results I want.

    Open ##2962842

  • @ladytel@masto.hackers.town 2026-05-19 15:48

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io besides the lack of introspection due to the transformer architecture these models are built and funded by people who think introspection is a negative trait

    Open ##2962843

  • @myrialux@chaosfem.tw 2026-05-19 21:29

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io I swear a co-op of trans people dedicated to fixing slop code could make bank.

    Open ##2962844

  • @androcat@toot.cat 2026-05-22 12:58

    @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io Trying to mainstream the term "Competitive prayer" for this sort of idolatry in general.

    Open ##2962846

  • @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io You know that, some of us know that. But explain it to ppl who've had some measure of "success" with their recently unveiled "coding skills".

    Open ##2962847