alt Hacker NewsI did the same thing for several iterations and all of the responses were equally helpful.
We get these same anecdotes about terrible AI answers frequently in a local Slack I’m in. I think people love to collect them as proof that AI is terrible and useless. Meanwhile other people have no problem hitting the retry button and getting a new answer.
Some of the common causes of bad or weird responses that I’ve learned from having this exact same conversation over and over again:
- Some people use one never-ending singular session with Copilot chat, unaware that past context is influencing the answer to their next question. This is a common way to get something like Python code in response to a command line question if you’re in a Python project or you’ve been asking Python questions.
- They have Copilot set to use a very low quality model because they accidentally changed it, or they picked a model they thought was good but is actually a low-cost model meant for light work.
- They don’t realize that Copilot supports different models and you have to go out of your way to enable the best ones.
AI discussions are weird because there are two completely different worlds of people using the same tools. Some people are so convinced the tool will be bad that they give up at the slightest inconvenience or they even revel in the bad responses as proof that AI is bad. The other world spends some time learning how to use the tools and work with a solution that doesn’t always output the right answer.
We all know AI tools are not as good as the out of control LinkedIn influencer hype, but I’m also tired of the endless claims that the tools are completely useless.
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The thing responses like this miss I am pretty sure is that this is a nondeterministic machine, and nondeterministic machines that are hidden by a complete blackbox wrapper can produce wildly different results based on context and any number of independent unknown variables. so pasting “i did the same thing and it worked fine” is essentially this argument’s version of “it worked on my local.” Or it essentially boils down to “well sure, but you’re just not doing it right” when the “right” way is undefined and also context specific.
"I’m also tired of the endless claims that the tools are completely useless."
Who claimed that here?
I read a claim that Copilot is dumber than claude and ChatGPT and I tend to confirm this.
"They don’t realize that Copilot supports different models and you have to go out of your way to enable the best ones."
So possible that none of us who thinks that, went out of our way to find outy when there were working alternatives, but it would be still on Microsoft making it hard to make good use of their tool.
This is part of why I really like local models. I always use the same random seed with mine so unless I'm using aider the responses are 100% deterministic. I can actually hit c-r in my shell to reproduce them without having to do anything special.
"Spin the chatroulette again and see if you vibe something better" is not a foundation for a business.
Well, unless your business is selling vibes.
The memory feature also can be a problem, it injects stuff into the prompt context that you didnt explicitly write with the intent it will help because it knows you are a python programmer so lets respond with a python script instead of our usual ffmpeg cli command.
Everything is like this.
I saw an IT professional google “My PC crashed” to diagnose a server bluescreen stop error.
Reminds me of
I’m Feeling Lucky -> bad result -> Google search is useless
Some people are so convinced the tool will be bad that they give up at the slightest inconvenience or they even revel in the bad responses as proof that AI is bad
The "pick your model" thing is so stupid.
"How dumb do you want your AI to be?"
"Why do I have to select?"
"Because smart costs money"
"So... I can have dumb AI but it's cheaper?"
"Yes"
"How would the average person know which to pick?"
"Oh you can't know."
I hope they can invent an AI that knows which AI model my question should target cheaply.