this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
132 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

82830 readers
3408 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/61948688

Excerpt:

"Even within the coding, it's not working well," said Smiley. "I'll give you an example. Code can look right and pass the unit tests and still be wrong. The way you measure that is typically in benchmark tests. So a lot of these companies haven't engaged in a proper feedback loop to see what the impact of AI coding is on the outcomes they care about. Lines of code, number of [pull requests], these are liabilities. These are not measures of engineering excellence."

Measures of engineering excellence, said Smiley, include metrics like deployment frequency, lead time to production, change failure rate, mean time to restore, and incident severity. And we need a new set of metrics, he insists, to measure how AI affects engineering performance.

"We don't know what those are yet," he said.

One metric that might be helpful, he said, is measuring tokens burned to get to an approved pull request – a formally accepted change in software. That's the kind of thing that needs to be assessed to determine whether AI helps an organization's engineering practice.

To underscore the consequences of not having that kind of data, Smiley pointed to a recent attempt to rewrite SQLite in Rust using AI.

"It passed all the unit tests, the shape of the code looks right," he said. It's 3.7x more lines of code that performs 2,000 times worse than the actual SQLite. Two thousand times worse for a database is a non-viable product. It's a dumpster fire. Throw it away. All that money you spent on it is worthless."

All the optimism about using AI for coding, Smiley argues, comes from measuring the wrong things.

"Coding works if you measure lines of code and pull requests," he said. "Coding does not work if you measure quality and team performance. There's no evidence to suggest that that's moving in a positive direction."

top 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 hours ago

AI works great. I work in the sphere of production defect detection in manufacturing and it's been working pretty well for a decade or more to predict machine failures and spot defective materials or products.

LLMs as business digital yes man is what doesn't work.

[–] Tamps@feddit.uk 26 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Or to put it another way, AI is making it faster and easier to do the wrong thing in the wrong way at scale.

I also wonder what the plan is when the token cost starts going upward. The bill for all this venture capital will come due eventually and someone has to pay for it.

[–] TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml 16 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Socialized losses are the norm. People's energy bills are already paying for the nearby data centers .

[–] e461h@sh.itjust.works 1 points 34 minutes ago (1 children)

Yep, they’ll weaponize it to take jobs and then hit the public with the bill when the bubble bursts. Capitalism is both chilling and demoralizing.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 1 points 2 minutes ago* (last edited 1 minute ago)

Socializing the losses isn’t real capitalism. The US has some weird “socialism for the oligarchy” thing going on.

[–] justsomeguy@lemmy.world 36 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

Being in an economic bubble during the age of (over)information is really weird. We're getting two articles per day confirming that we're in a big ass bubble but it just keeps on going. I preferred not really knowing how bad things are.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 14 points 8 hours ago

Everybody knew dot-coms in 2000 and houses in 2007 were bubbles, too. But they kept investing anyway, because they didn't know when it would pop and FOMO is a helluva drug.

Also, something to keep in mind: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 9 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

prepare for the burst so you can jump in and get the deals of a lifetime

[–] greyscale@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

With what fucking capital, bro. We've been squeezed already.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 8 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

my wife and I didn't have but a couple grand saved up, in 2011 we bought our first house at the beginning of the end of the 2008 bubble. We got a house that was extremely cheap compared to the value

when the opportunity comes, make sure to take it

[–] anyhow2503@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Let's pool together and buy shares for a hundred bucks.

[–] leoj@piefed.zip 1 points 5 hours ago

I've got a fiver to throw in!!

[–] greyscale@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 hours ago

Its this kind of thinking that keeps the market irrational for longer than it should be.

[–] WolfmanEightySix@piefed.social 1 points 5 hours ago

Yep. We’ve been waiting on a big crash for three years now.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 20 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

It’s 3.7x more lines of code that performs 2,000 times worse than the actual SQLite.

Pretty much my experience with LLM coding agents. They'll write a bunch of stuff, and come with all kinds of arguments about why what they're doing is in fact optimal and perfect. If you know what you're doing, you'll quickly find a bunch of over-complicating things and just plain pitfalls. I've never been able to understand the people that claim LLMs can build entire projects (the people that say stuff like "I never write my own code anymore"), since I've always found it to be pretty trash at anything beyond trivial tasks.

Of course, it makes sense that it'll elaborate endlessly about how perfect its solution is, because it's a glorified auto-complete, and there's plenty of training data with people explaining why "solution X is better".

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 14 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

I saw a vibe coded PR the other day. So much redundant code, lots of comments making assumptions and questions. It’s a mess.

Glad it didn’t land in my lap but the person who is now responsible for steering that up is already quite busy and wasting their time with this feels shit.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago

One of the worst things about this is that the person vibe coding just ends up shitting on the reviewers time. Like... you couldn't even bother to write a real PR, and now you want me to spend time filtering your shit? Fuck off.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I tried using an LLM for making an 3d object in openscad, an open source CAD app for making 3d printable objects

its basic and uses an open source language. The LLM should have infinate examples and access

but after 4 tries I gave up and just did it myself, sure the crap the LLM gave me helped form a general setup but I had to spend 2x as much time fixing the code then it did writing it from scratch

I haven't tried using LLM for anything else, that failure told me everything I needed to know about its ability to do basic shit

[–] grue@lemmy.world 0 points 8 hours ago

I have never heard of any generative AI system capable of doing anything useful with 3D models. If you ever find one, PM me to let me know!

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 13 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

This article says that the AI-coded Rust rewrite of SQLite ran 2,000 times slower, but the linked source article says it ran more than 20,000 times slower. Muddling up 2,000 and 20,000 seems a bit sloppy for journalism about code performance.

[–] ratsnake@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The article cited by The Register cites this more detailed analysis in return: https://blog.katanaquant.com/p/your-llm-doesnt-write-correct-code

Performance of the AI-generated version was 20,000 times slower on one specific benchmark, but "only" about 2,000 times slower when averaging over multiple different benchmarks (which is, imo, a better measurement of the code's quality).

So I suppose The Register pulled from multiple sources (as you should) and just linked to the most top-level of all of them.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for that link. It has a lot more detail.

[–] Codpiece@feddit.uk 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe they were using AI to write it.

[–] leoj@piefed.zip 1 points 5 hours ago

it was actually 200,000 times slower!

Companies and governments told us that an energy transition is "too costly" or "too disruptive to society" but when it comes to AI disrupting and even ending people's lives...

They just say, "deal with it."

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

No bro the new model from 3 months ago is infinite gooder than what they tested. In 12-18 months we get agi or some shit i dunno just 10 more billions$ bro.

[–] RedGreenBlue@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Ai is currently a glorified search engine. But expensive.

[–] Satomune@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago

Hi, I’m an AI engineer based in Japan, and I’m expanding into the U.S. market to work with more long-term clients. I’m looking for an American collaborator who can act as a communication bridge between me and U.S. clients.

I will handle the technical side myself, including project planning, AI development, and software implementation. Your role would be to join meetings, help with smooth communication, and support the client relationship side.

If this sounds like a good fit, please send me a message.