| If you are not required to rigorously test the claims made about AI capabilities, then those claims about how they can do X or Y are more or less barroom bragging. If you want to be a responsible engineer, instead of a nihilist, then you don’t just make a space shuttle and declare it to be safe until it blows up a couple of times and you shrug and move on to other things. AI tools have serious problems, today. These problems aren’t secret. They are widely discussed. The fanboys laugh or shrug. I can’t bring myself to do that, because I am a responsible adult. I do make use of Claude Code to create throwaway tools. It’s great for that. In my circle of friends we have a shorthand for discussing our AI-aided work: level 0: Slop. Untested, barely tried, unreviewed output. “I slop-coded a tool to track RAM usage” level 1: Plausible. Sanity checked. But not deeply reviewed. “I created a plausible tool with Claude Code for monitoring RAM usage.” level 2: Provisional. I trust it for use in my own work, based on reasonable testing and review. “I have a provisional RAM usage monitor that I created with Claude Code.” Level 3: Validated. Tested to the point I can recommend it to others. I stake my reputation on it. |