[noogle]

The criticism from the second camp stems from the fact that the WHOLE job is to not drop anything.

A fence with a hole is useless even if it's 99% intact.

A lot of human jobs, especially white collar, are about providing reassurance about the correctness of the results. A system that cannot provide that may be worse than useless since it creates noise, false sense of security and information load.

[geraldhh]

adding nuance to your fence analogy, most fences are decorative and/or suggestive of a border but can be overcome somewhat easily and are hence not useless because they have a hole somewhere.

[strix_varius]

The spirit of the analogy holds, as there are plenty of clear alternatives that map verbatim:

- drinking glass that is 99% hole-free

- car that doesn't explode 99% of the time

- bag of candy where 99% of the pieces are not poisonous

In all of these cases, it's more optimal to start from scratch and build something that you know is 100% reliable than to start with whatever already exists and try to fix it after-the-fact.

Personally, I use AI to assist development, especially in unfamiliar stacks, but in the form of a discussion rather than code-vomit. It's primarily synthesizing documentation into more-specific whole answers and providing options and suggestions.

[ben_w]

I recognise the point, but also

> - drinking glass that is 99% hole-free

This describes my travel flask when the screw cap is on and the slot in the cap is open; most of my drinking glasses have (and need) a much bigger hole-to-surface ratio to get the fluid in and for me to drink from.

More relevantly for the output of an AI: in cases where testing is easy, a system which has a 99% chance of a producing a saleable drinking glass and just discards the other 1% to recycling isn't unreasonable… provided you can be sufficiently confident about the test.

For AI, the quality of the automated tests of the output is a very solid "it depends on what you're doing".

[CodeMonkey82]

I beg to differ. True, many fences are easily overcome by adult humans, but most fences are not designed with adult humans in mind. Most fences are intended to keep animals in or out of an area. In more urban areas that may extend to small children. In high security areas, fencing may be just one layer of security, but it is certainly more than just "suggestive". In any of these cases, the fence is useless if it has a gap that can be exploited.