Do we need right to repair anymore with AI? Could you get Claude to code an entire tractor software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in the tractor? In other words just use the tractor for it's hardware?

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superice 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Aside from the legal question whether the manufacturer allows you to do so, I’m pretty excited about somebody vibe coding firmwire to a 35 ton machine with a bunch of big attachments at the back and plenty of ways to mangle the bodies of careless operators without the rpm so much as audibly rising from strain. Should give us plenty of videos to traumatize the next generation of children with a little bit too much internet access at an early age. I feel nostalgic for those days.

(This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)

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slopinthebag 4 hours ago | parent [-]

As long as you have a sufficient test suite you could probably run a Ralph Wiggum loop and have it brute force it. Creating the test suite would be harder though.

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skinwill 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The phrase "sufficient test suite" is doing a LOT of work here. You would need to know what the data from every sensor is supposed to be along with how every piece of the machine is supposed to perform. AI isn't going to be able to iterate into those parameters over night.

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superice 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I've never been fond of the argument that there should be a professional software engineer certification, but hearing people like you being presented with the potential dangers and just going 'oh yeah just go with a better test suite and you can just wing it' makes me seriously reconsider.

Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.

	▲	slopinthebag 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But don't humans make mistakes too? Like are we sure the failure rate of AI with the right checks and bounds is lower than humans, who are flawed machines themselves? If you need assurances, have a different LLM write the test suite.

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b00ty4breakfast 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What a great idea! what could possibly go wrong allowing farmers with no expertise in writing firmware for gigantic farm equipment, overseeing code output from an LLM and then uploading it to the aforementioned gigantic farm equipment?

Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!

	▲	defrost an hour ago \| parent [-]
		.. and the farmers with firmware experience? "Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth. The Ukranian farming community birthed the cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc. #NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.

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samrus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The critical part of software engineering, verifiability and correctness, is still something AI cant do properly at all. And by that i dont mean testing software against a test suite, i mean making a good and extensive test suite to build software against

Given that, the farmer or vibe coder is still going to have to take responsibility for making sure the software is verifiable and correct. Thats a heavy responsibility with a huge peice of machinery like this, its naive to equate that with making sure your todo list app or even c compiler works.

The economic calculus still means its better for an corporation to take on that responsibility, and be compensated for it. Now we just need that corporation to not be rent seeking dicks, and we could have a good thing going

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gnatman 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s not what this is about, it’s about access to dealership level diagnostic software.

But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!

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slopinthebag 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Code is basically free now, I don't see why you can't just write the diagnostic software yourself. In 6-12 months you won't even need diagnostic software, Claude will be able to just generate custom introspection and diagnostic code tailored to the exact issue.

	▲	samrus an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You sound naive and people are mocking you, but honestly who knows. Maybe theres nothing holding this back other than AI skepticism. The proper way to find out is to get some peice of heavy machinery and try it out. Maybe not a tractor neccesarily, but something that presents a similar quality of risks, even if at a smaller scale. Maybe a forklift? I think its a bad idea so i wont do it, but why dont you?
	▲	gnatman 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Give it a shot, I guess. Sounds like you’ll have a big market in Iowa.
	▲	electroglyph 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		because all the shit is locked down and the corpos can use state violence to stop you from doing so if you manage to succeed

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doodlebugging 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1. Yes 2. Maybe, probably not though. It's complicated 3. No

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kmeisthax 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Half the process of jailbreaking electronics involves reverse-engineering. There's some promising work in that direction, but reverse-engineering is still not AI's strong suit.

Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break.

Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201.

Law is code.