- A rough equivalent here would be Windows shipping an update that bricks your PC or one of its basic features, which draws plenty of outrage. In both cases, the vendor shipped a critical flaw to production: factual correctness is crucial in journalism, and a quote is one of the worst things to get factually incorrect because it’s so unambiguous (inexcusable) and misrepresents who’s quoted (personal).
I’m 100% ok with journalists using AI as long as their articles are good, which at minimum requires factual correctness and not vacuous. Likewise, I’m 100% ok with developers using AI as long as their programs are good, which at minimum requires decent UX and no major bugs.
So how is the "output" checked then? Part of the assumption of the necessity of code review in the first place is that we can't actually empirically test everything we need to. If the software will programmatically delete the entire database next Wednesday, there is no way to test for that in advance. You would have to see it in the code.
If a journalist has little information and uses an llm to make "something from nothing" that's when I take issue because like, what's the point?
Same thing as when I see managers dumping giant "Let's go team!!! 11" messages splattered with AI emoji diarrhea like sprinkles on brown frosting. I ain't reading that shit; could've been a one liner.
Even an (unreliable) LLM overview can be useful, as long as you check all facts with real sources, because it can give the framing necessary to understand the subject. For example, asking an LLM to explain some terminology that a source is using.
I would expect there is literally zero overlap between the "professionals"[1] who say "don't look at the code" and the ones criticising the "journalists"[2]. The former group tend to be maximalists and would likely cheer on the usage of LLMs to replace the work of the latter group, consequences be damned.
[1] The people that say this are not professional software developers, by the way. I still have not seen a single case of any vibe coder who makes useful software suitable for deployment at scale. If they make money, it is by grifting and acting as an "AI influencer", for instance Yegge shilling his memecoin for hundreds of thousands of dollars before it was rugpulled.
[2] Somebody who prompts an LLM to produce an article and does not even so much as fact-check the quotations it produces can clearly not be described as a journalist, either.
E.g you technically don't need to look at the code if it's frontend code and part of the product is a e2e test which produces a video of the correct/full behavior via playwright or similar.
Same with backend implementations which have instrumentation which expose enough tracing information to determine if the expected modules were encountered etc
I wouldn't want to work with coworkers which actually think that's a good idea though
And that's ignoring that your statement technically isn't even true, because the engineers actually working in such fields are very few (i.e. designing bridges, airplanes etc).
The majority of them design products where safety isn't nearly as high stakes as that... And they frequently do overspec (wasting money) or underspec (increasing wastage) to boot.
This point has been severely overstated on HN, honestly.
Sorry, but had to get that off my chest.
The electrical engineers at my employer that design building electrical distribution systems have software that handles all of the calculations, it’s just math. Arc flash hazard analysis, breaker coordination studies, available fault current, etc. All manufacturers provide the data needed to perform these calculations for their products.
Other engineering disciplines have similar tools. Mechanical, civil, and structural engineers all use software that simulates their designs.
Are you sure? Simulators and prototypes abound. By the time you’re building the real, it’s more like rehearsal and solving a fe problems instead of every intricacy in the formula.
Nothing new here, in software. What is new, is that AI is allowing dependency hell to be experienced by many other vocations.