this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 year ago (18 children)

That would explain why ChatGPT started regurgitating cookie-cutter garbage responses more often than usual a few months after launch. It really started feeling more like a chatbot lately, it almost felt talking to a human 6 months ago.

[–] glockenspiel 61 points 1 year ago (12 children)

I don't think it does. I doubt it is purely a cost issue. Microsoft is going to throw billions at OpenAI, no problem.

What has happened, based on the info we get from the company, is that they keep tweaking their algorithms in response to how people use them. ChatGPT was amazing at first. But it would also easily tell you how to murder someone and get away with it, create a plausible sounding weapon of mass destruction, coerce you into weird relationships, and basically anything else it wasn't supposed to do.

I've noticed it has become worse at rubber ducking non-trivial coding prompts. I've noticed that my juniors have a hell of a time functioning without access to it, and they'd rather ask questions of seniors rather than try to find information our solutions themselves, replacing chatbots with Sr devs essentially.

A good tool for getting people on ramped if they've never coded before, and maybe for rubber ducking in my experience. But far too volatile for consistent work. Especially with a Blackbox of a company constantly hampering its outputs.

[–] bmovement 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Copilot is pretty amazing for day to day coding, although I wonder if a junior dev might get led astray with some of its bad ideas, or too dependent on it in general.

Edit: shit, maybe I’m too dependent on it.

[–] JimmyMcGill 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m also having a good time with copilot

Considering asking my company to pay for the subscription as I can justify that it’s worth it.

Yes many times it is wrong but even if it it’s only 80% correct at least I get a suggestion on how to solve an issue. Many times it suggest a function and the code snippet has something missing but I can easily fix it or improve it. Without I would probably not know about that function at all.

I also want to start using it for documentation and unit tests. I think there it’s where it will really be useful.

Btw if you aren’t in the chat beta I really recommend it

[–] Jerkface 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just started using it for documentation, really impressed so far. Produced better docstrings for my functions than I ever do in a fraction of the time. So far all valid, thorough and on point. I'm looking forward to asking it to help write unit tests.

[–] JimmyMcGill 3 points 1 year ago

it honestly seems better suited for those tasks because it really doesn't need to know anything that you'd have to tell it otherwise.

The code is already there, so it can get literally all the info that it needs, and it is quite good at grasping what the function does, even if sometimes it lacks the context of the why. But that's not relevant for unit tests, and for documentation that's where the user comes in. It's also why it's called copilot, you still make the decisions.

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