| ▲ | cgearhart 3 hours ago |
| I understand why “prompt kiddie” feels accurate, but I don’t think it is. Expertise is _amplified_ with LLM agents. The same $300 of tokens given to my plumber—who is an _excellent_ plumber—is unlikely to produce the same outcome. |
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| ▲ | sanex 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| A friend of mine who has at most written some SQL joins recently bought a cheap thermal printer on Amazon. The printer was meant to be used with a heavily ad and microstransaction laden app to operate over Bluetooth. He was able to use codex to hook it up to his MacBook and reverse engineer the printer then make a web service so he can print whatever he wants from anywhere. I agree with you in that I now feel like a 100x engineer, but I think it would have taken me a long time to figure that one out pre AI. |
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| ▲ | jonahx an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | My experience with non-technical people using AI is not like this at all. Perhaps your friend is an outlier? | | |
| ▲ | gurjeet an hour ago | parent [-] | | GP's friend knows SQL joins, so I wouldn't lump her into the 'non-technical' group. |
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| ▲ | aprilthird2021 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | At most written some SQL joins implies your friend is far more tech savvy than the average plumber |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is something amazing about letting the computer work at something tirelessly until it gets to a working solution. I’m also amazed at how often I can speed up the process by reviewing progress, inserting my knowledge, stopping it from pursuing dead ends, and redirecting effort. Something that the LLM might have finished in 2 hours can be done in 20 minutes with me paying close attention and intervening. |
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| ▲ | segmondy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yup, OP has domain knowledge in software/security so they knew how to steer. it's like knowing how a rudder can control an aircraft doesn't make you capable of flying one. |
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| ▲ | risyachka 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The better the models are the less this is true. If the prompt history is smth like “goal: root this tablet” and it did all on its own - then you plumber can 100% achieve same result in same amount of time. |
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| ▲ | fluidcruft an hour ago | parent [-] | | I think the intent of the question is whether the plumber would know they want the tablet rooted. | | |
| ▲ | fn-mote an hour ago | parent [-] | | Clearly not, IMO. The GP poster is someone who is familiar with the problems caused by AI writing code. For example: reimplementing major functionality because the AI isn’t aware of it (somehow). There are many tasks that domain-specific knowledge is required to successfully guide the AI. Apparently this is not one of them, though, so it’s an interesting story. |
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| ▲ | yieldcrv 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Summer 2026 models are able to fix everything I vibe coded late 2025 that got too unwieldy |
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| ▲ | jdiff 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I don't think the word "amplification" is accurate. I don't know why, but while engineering techbro circles love "multipliers," but those very very rarely exist in real life. You do need a baseline of knowledge to be able to prompt the AI in a domain successfully. But beyond that baseline there are rapidly diminishing returns. Someone with skill far beyond a certain line won't get amplified the same way someone who just clears that line will. |
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| ▲ | qeternity 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | They are talking about breadth, not depth, multipliers in almost every circumstance. A great X will be able to do far more great X stuff (breadth), and perhaps also be a greater X (depth). But it's most certainly weighted in favor of the former than the latter. | |
| ▲ | compiler-devel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is patently false, see Tao’s recent use of ChatGPT regarding the Jacobian conjecture. | | |
| ▲ | jack_pp 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Depends on the context. In this case he is right : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239999 | | |
| ▲ | fn-mote an hour ago | parent [-] | | Your quote shows someone BELOW the line being able to do something. That could not be considered amplification because multiplying a skill of 0 doesn’t get you anywhere. But if you want to see it that way, it doesn’t bother me. The Tao reference is someone far ABOVE the line getting excellent results from the LLM. So in this case the Tao example refutes the GGP claim. |
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| ▲ | beepbooptheory 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Kinda talking about pretty squishy things here, saying something is "patently false" in the context feels pretty stifling, or at least uncharitable. Like, what, we are all supposed to close the book on this abstract, very new question. Something that by any approximation is extremely nuanced and also pretty meaningful? Like, "oh OK, well I guess that's that then!" |
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| ▲ | petra 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What is the baseline, roughly? Let's say I want to be useful in a given domain(one with rich machine feedback), with the help of the AI, what should I study ? | | |
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