> Since April, monthly commits have grown from 1.4 billion to 2.9 billion
Bonkers.
You can tell the entire industry is in a "productivity panic" and here's more proof. There's a velocity zealot crying tears of joy somewhere.
Bonkers.
You can tell the entire industry is in a "productivity panic" and here's more proof. There's a velocity zealot crying tears of joy somewhere.
Where in those ~12 billion commits is the software, products and "innovations" which are supposed to be making our lives better? Software and apps in particular are getting worse, normies hate AI more than ever because they're even less likely to get their desired outcome when calling their doctor or trying to get their online order refunded when chatting with a cutely named chatbot, wages for (most) knowledge work are being driven through the floor, artists are being squeezed more than ever, etc., etc. That's to say nothing of the existential threats to the economy, environment and critical thinking which are growing daily. I really think we've lost the plot, folks.
To give just a single example, ai code dev has enabled people to make tools for themselves that they didn't have before.
I've made a language learning app for myself. Its working better than Duolingo so far, for me. Its not really public
We're going to see is a lot of stuff people use LLMs for moving back to using bespoke algorithms solving the one specific issue. LLMs are just machine learning unlocked for the masses, where you can ask it "translate this for me", "what's the sentiment of this text", and it just does it. Any of these were already achievable before LLMs, they just needed a machine learning engineer to implement.
I myself started an LLM driven project to classify and sort all the photos I've got. I just ask an LLM to poop out tags for an image. Using a proper algorithm for this is possible, but I'd need to put in some effort to actually get it set up. LLMs do make it easier since they can directly, instructively help you that set up, and provide an easy stream of training data to distill out a model perfectly fit to your usecase.
I think majority of work currently going through LLMs is such inefficient tasks that can be solved quicker and better with a limited algorithm.
You don't need a chatbot.
...that sounds pretty worthless tbh. The promise of AI wasn't that you can bang out your own little half baked duolingo clone. It was that every engineer was supposed to become hundreds or thousands of percent more productive. The assumption being that things generally would therefore get noticeably better.
We're seeing hundreds of percent more commits. We're not seeing that translate to any real world improvement of anything. That's the problem.
Call me "ignorant" if you want, but back it up by showing what all this "AI productivity" has actually accomplished in real economic terms. Not vaporware.
Do you mean more earnings per share for corporations or real utility impacts on social systems (e.g., more new drugs)
When I ask Claude about the AI ROI, it seems to cite that ~95% of AI PoC's are negative ROI but the 5% that do have ROI tend to have decent return -- my guess is mostly back office clean up to reduce expenses and increase revenue/profit.
IIRC Uber claim their 1.5k/mo budget lead to no new value creation.
FWIW, I look at the situation with similar skepticism. One argument you could make was what Marc Andreesen said with the hypothesis that "all the big companies get nuked", so no new valued gets created but the large market cap companies get eaten by thousands of little pirañas. Obviously, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case.
I mean real utility impacts. More reliable and efficient software, better features, etc. So far we've seen none of that. In fact, it seems like the opposite--more volume but a much lower quality product.
On the other hand, famine is coming. Come back and read this next year. Was your dalliance worth these food shortages?
I could try to market this app, but I tried that 2 years ago, and it was already essentially a failure. So I'm probably going to keep it for myself or just try to find a few users who like it and will use it for free.
Let me tell you, it is _silly_ the amount of vibe-coded software in this area is popping up every week. Is the software duplicated? To an extremely large extent, yes. It is useful? Yes, but each piece of software seems to have a smaller and smaller audience, and quality is often severely lacking.
Iv'e done my own, too, for "RF debugging" as I called it to look into SNR issues related to interference. The software getting produced is likely useful _somewhere_, its just that youre not going to notice it.
Are we just moving towards personalised digital assistants for everyone, which in turn will produce software to function? Not unlikely.
Where is anything saying there should be? If they were all private hobby projects, you'd have no grounds for complaint.
What are the boosters ranting and raving about if not the above? Am I just confused and the end game for all of the AI hype, investment, infrastructure build out, etc. over the last N years is ... hobby projects?
Here's a quote I found after a quick web search for "dario ai benefits":
> The list of positive applications of powerful AI is extremely long (and includes robotics, manufacturing, energy, and much more), but I’m going to focus on a small number of areas that seem to me to have the greatest potential to directly improve the quality of human life. The five categories I am most excited about are:
> Biology and physical health
> Neuroscience and mental health
> Economic development and poverty
> Peace and governance
> Work and meaning
Dr David Burns offers his Teams CBT therapy with an LLM based app for people who can't afford therapist visits[5].
U. Chicago says that AI weather forecasts can be faster and cheaper than supercomputer-based physical simulations and produce results weeks ahead, which makes accurate forecasts affordable and available for farmers in middle-income countries[6].
With your smartphone camera you can get an AI-assisted bike-fit at home[7].
You can get a bike fitness training plan[8] and performance analysis with an AI that you can chat with to analyse and explain or change it, used by three professional cycling teams.
Prophix Australia analyse photos of powerlines taken by helicopter using AI to track assets and identify and verify potential faults[9]. AI systems scan images for early signs of plant disease in the vineyards of the Swiss Alps [also 9]. AI systems analyze multispectral images and satellite images of crops to detect nutrient deficiencies or pest problems in large farms[also 9].
In 2020 - 2022 a trial of a system in a hospital to identify patients at risk of sepsis helped medics treat them 2 hours earlier and reduced the death rate from sepsis by 18%.[10]
Self-driving cars now exist. Camera drones which follow you and respond to gestures now exist.
[1] https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-ai...
[2] https://www.breastcancer.org/screening-testing/artificial-in...
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-026-01276-6#Sec17
[4] https://www.cancer.gov/research/infrastructure/artificial-in...
[5] https://www.feelinggoodapp.com/
[6] https://climate.uchicago.edu/insights/ai-is-transforming-wea...
[7] https://www.myvelofit.com/
[9] https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/what-has-ai-ever-done-for...
[10] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/algorithm-that-de...
Crazy how anyone would think it would.
Is this all wasted if commits drop in a few months because folks are just pushing a lot now to figure out what works and what doesn't and we eventually settle into something between where we are now and where we were a year ago?