After a particularly tiring vibe coding session with Claude, I shared some of the resulting grumpiness in a few posts to the Write the Docs slack. I’ll confess. I’m probably not AI’s (as the term is currently bandied about) biggest fan. But I’m not a hater. I’m just, well, disappointed with it. It’s just not living up to its purported potential (a.k.a. hype, these days).
I’d been writing code (i.e. prompting Claude to write code for me, a.k.a. vibe coding) and Claude’s code was getting buggier and buggier. I’ve seen that happen before after it’s written a lot of code. It acts like it’s tired, but I think it’s due to having too many things to keep track of in the conversation, so it loses its place (I’m not an AI psychologist…yet).
In any case, I was beginning to wonder if it would have been faster to just start typing my own code (it wouldn’t), but I wanted to see how it played out. Eventually, after Claude had gotten stuck, again, I was troubleshooting in parallel and suggested a fix. Lo and behold, Claude agreed (as always). With that experience still fresh in my head, I went to the Write the Docs slack to see how others were faring in their AI journeys.
Thinking of past bubbles
In one post, I compared current AI hype to the hype I recall when PCs (as in IBM PC) came out in the early 80s. They promised the moon and in microscopically fine print, mentioned that “some assembly was required.” Sometimes some C, as well. (If you know, you know.)
In the 80s, it’s not that PCs weren’t amazing pieces of technology that could fit on your desk and still have room for your phone and desk blotter. Remember, this was a time when computer hardware had to have its own air-conditioned office. It’s that they lacked the “killer app” (the application that solves a high-value problem for a large audience), until Lotus 1-2-3 & Multiplan, two of the first spreadsheet apps), came out and ran on the PC.
Those killer apps transformed the PC from a geeky novelty to an absolute necessity. They enabled regular people to see the value that these machines could provide. Fast-forward to today, that’s how AI seems to be positioned: A novel (to most non-AI researchers and developers) technology waiting for its “killer app.” Just like the PC could do anything, but nobody cared until it did something useful. It’s hard to tell what AI’s killer app will be until we see it. If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t be here writing another blog post; I’d be working on AI’s killer app!
“95% of AI projects fail!”
YouTube’s AI must have read my mind, because it suggested a video titled, MIT Shows 95% of AI Projects Fail — Artificial Intelligence Might Be Stupid. The speaker took a rather pragmatic view of AI and expressed a lack of surprise at the 95% failure rate. Hardly flattering towards AI, but it seemed honest.
Continue reading “I’m not an AI hater. Really!”