jreicherdreamreal: very late response, but Ekrem didn't use the word "tacit"; Polanyi did.
Swayzeoh we discussing that lol heres my conclusion: You can read and memorize 100 books on how to play the piano but that does not make one a master piano player
Swayzethe end
ParaTurns out playing an instrument is hard if you're tone deaf.
jreicherPara: I assumed that made it very easy
SwayzeWhen doing interviews for junior software devs I found much more value in having people "read code" back to you and explain what it does (in an interview situation this has quite a few benefits and I recommend it as an approach, see https://freakingrectangle.wordpress.com/2022/04/15/how-to-freaking-hire-great-developers/). This is the exact skill that's at risk when considering the cognitive offloading vs OFF
javabotSwayze's title: "How to Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code | Freaking Rectangle"
Swayzesurrender discussion. The danger of AI we all feel instinctively is that surrender is too easy, and the only checks and balance we have in place is trusting that people are being responsible and not surrendering to AI. Perhaps one avenue is that since writing the code is potentially quicker, we should spend a lot more time in PR reviews and discussing the code we push measuring its fit for purpose, qualityOFF
Swayze and if its a concern, to discourage surrender.
jreicherFWIW my feeling these days is that the desire to "surrender", as you put it, is not new, because the problem is not new. AI slop might be new, but slop isn't. Losing expertise to AI might be new, but losing expertise isn't. The problem is the same as it's always been: where are the quality controls?
jreicherThe desire to surrender is, I think, just the fatigue from having to maintain quality in an environment where your colleagues might not feel the same, or might not even understand what quality is.
javabotZapek's title: "OpenJDK Interim Policy on Generative AI"
nevetOpenJDK Interim Policy on Generative AI
jreicherI find that quite interesting
dreamrealjreicher: true BUT I'd say that Ekrem's use of polanyi sort of transitively migrates the "use of the word"
dreamrealZapek: yeah, but it's nothing new
dreamrealI mean, the desire to surrender is .. complicated
dreamrealChange is scary... and who owns the code generated by a compiler? We run through tools *all the time*. Provenance is complicated; assembly is "your code" assuming you wrote it by hand, machine code certainly is by the same token (it's not even an assembler that manages it), but...
dreamrealAI is just another tool, another layer, with admittedly unclear provance and guard rails that are far more illusory than one would hope still
Zapekand our previous tools didn't require a "temperature" variable somewhere and didn't give a different output each time they were run with the same input
jreicherdreamreal: I don't think it's about provenance; I think it's about accountability/responsibility. Rightly or wrongly there's a perception that the way people use AI is not the same as the way they use other tools, and that there is a kind of abdication of responsibility that they don't engage in with non-AI tooling. (Note I am emphasising it's about the people and the use, and not about the tool)
dreamrealI don't think that perception is wrong at all.
Inlinehmmmm
InlineIP and AI on active litigation
dreamrealIt's defintely a thing; I'm expecting a check from it myself.
Inlinedon't use AI for coding
Inlineso you have a reserve of coders who can code without AI and you use that, when you run out of it you run out of it, means code that is working right now will work forever that way, but there won't be any progress outside that scarce resource left, and once it's over there'll be only a new era left with AI-code only and no IP
dreamrealI think that's a stupid conclusion, but defensible.
Inlinehmmm, why stupid ?
dreamrealBecause it's saying "there's a class of tools and I will not use it." It's the Ludd position.
Inlinewell that's what the above interim policy tells you
dreamrealSure. And I think that's ... difficult to defend.
dreamrealThere are situations where the logic works: like, using java for flight control is prohibited, right?
dreamrealDo you know why?
Inlinebecause of exceptions and interrupts ?
dreamrealno. Because what runs isn't what's delivered.
Inlinewhat do you mean ?
Inlineoh, you mean the whole jvm has to be there too ?
dreamrealBytecode rarely runs in a JVM. What *runs* is morphing JIT code, based on the happy path. That's difficult to test in an absolute sense.
Inlinehmm, ok
dreamrealnon-JIT code might be permissible, but it's slow enough that you wouldn't bother.
dreamrealSo: JIT is bad, right? I mean, it's a tool that is difficult to verify!
dreamrealIt's too hard to understand what the JIT *will* do for mere mortals; Josh Bloch and a few others can do it, but *I* can't, and apart from those few guys, I know nobody who can. I'm sure others exist, but they're rare.
Inlineso you say, we have other similar problems long before AI
dreamrealYes, AI is just another tool. It's a dangerous one - it amplifies errors like this and requires a lot of care - but that's... the scope of the problem. It's a tool. A big one with a lot of power. C'est la vie. Use with caution, just like every other tool, and use with the caution it deserves, which is *greater* than the caution for a compiler, for example.
Inlinehmmm, ok maybe it resolves as: AI is no IP, but any IP code which is augmented by non IP code is counted as IP still....
Inlineno idea
Inlinethat would be one way i think
Inlineor it's the other way around as they frame it....
dreamrealThe legal issues are unresolved right now. I'm not sure #java is going to be able to resolve them, even if it was the right community to do it, and it's not.
dreamrealI just don't think it's a candidate for "oh no, it's hard, throw it out"
dreamrealThat's the Luddite position, and while I understand Ludd, I think the Luddites were wrong. Progress is change, and change is scary, and sometimes change is wrong - there're a lot of horrifying cases where "let's fix this" had a death toll in the millions - but change in itself is something to EVALUATE.
dreamrealThe Luddites ended up losing an entire generation of expertise, sure... but we no longer can detect ship artisans by counting how many toes they've lost to adzes, and yes, I knowl the Luddites were textiles, not shipbuilding, but shipbuilding had the same mechanic, and the Luddites had their own environmental victims, they're just less dramatic. :D
Inlinebut this kills the other side, when non IP AI code is worthless, everyone should be supposed to start from IP and that means again that you have done something yourself upfront which counts as IP
Parafwiw AI cannot produce copyrighted works within EU legislation. There's upcoming more targeted legislation coming, but it'll still take a few years + probably isn't doing anything to this particular issue, as that is not consumer friendly.
Inlineeheh
Inlineso a small part IP + huge part non IP would still count as IP
Inlineyah, mixed code can be interpreted anyway, and it's up to the legislator of the country to decide on that, so it's not something which is to expected to be handled uniformly around the world
Inlineespeciall: who cares if IP dies, and i still can make money with non-IP
Inlinetrends trends..... we don't know how it will evolve....
dreamrealI don't think non-IP AI code is worthless. IP is IP. An AI can be used to work on code, and the IP aspects are not the AI's domain.
Inlineand since it would be non-IP AI code, you wouldn't be able to sell it directly, only as a service, i.e. if you service it right, nobody will ask what the code is/was
Inlineit's an internal bookkeeping thing of yourself so to say
Inlineit's worthy only as it brings the service otherwise on it's own has no value
Inlinewelp, the prospects of the future are a little different it seems
Inlineif nobody is willing to pay for services or can't afford it....
Inlinebah, i get headaches
dreamrealThe path to the future is a maze of twisty passages, all alike... and we, as humans and as humanity, have a tendency to seek out tribal alliances as bets against solutions, and we overcommit to those tribes.