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Notes -
How did AI annoy you this week?
I'm pretty pro-AI generally, but I've been frustrated by a huge uptick in vibecoded applications that have some use, but are pretty unimpressive and not well thought out, for what they are.
E.g. people in my socials:
And I have a mess of feelings about it. On the one hand, we live in an age of technical wonders, and I'm glad people are discovering them. On the other, because we live in an age of technical wonders, the bar for quality has gone up so much in the last year or two, and these people seem to lack any self-awareness. The default vibe coded design tropes are immediately apparent in these apps, like how you can sense AI writing with em-dashes or "it's not X, it's Y!", or just its general tone. And like, it's fine. It's okay. The apps work, but they should be so much better.
It's not like I haven't vibecoded some turds. I've made websites and android apps and tools too. It's just that these are for me alone, or to be shared in person, if someone requested it. To release one to the public, the actual utility of the thing would have to be unimpeachable. Tracker website for <thing that is already tracked> does not meet that bar. Map of <thing that is already mapped> does not meet that bar. Yet another app doing the same thing as a hundred others does not meet that bar.
LLMs have been VERY helpful to me around the house when I hit on normal homeowner problems that (usually) have surprisingly simple fixes or workarounds. Its probably saved me 1000's of dollars in theoretical professional repair bills (blunted by the time I actually have to spend to implement the solutions).
It once diagnosed a simple plumbing issue from a single photo and basic description of the problem. It helped me fix my water purification system by finding specific parts that I needed based on a couple photos.
However, certain real world issues with complex physical interactions seem to elude the thing.
I'm trying to diagnose a water leak in my washing machine, and I give it photos of the washing machine, along with model info, and photos of the water leak and general description. It has me go through some diagnostic steps but is very shaky on what the most likely failure modes are.
One of the issues, I think, is that I can't convey to it the SOUND that the machine is making very easily, or feed it video of the thing while its operating. I'm describing things to it, then it tells me to take a particular step and describe the outcome, and I think too much is lost in translation, and a washing machine is more complex than most appliances.
So its telling me workable steps to diagnose and possibly fix it, but its prognosis is all over the place depending on how exactly I describe the problem, and some of the fixes are involved and probably uneconomical.
So once I pop the washer open and figure out how bad things are, I'm almost certainly just going to buy a new washer.
Its not that I expected 'better' from the AI, but I think if I just had a handyman or repair guy come out they could figure things out within 5 minutes just by looking, listening, and poking around a little. THEN I could query ChatGPT as to whether their proposed price was fair or if they were likely yanking my chain.
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