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by mbgerring 102 days ago
Yes, that’s correct, I do not want a vibe-coded freeway overpass, thanks.

We all need to get serious about the unavoidable, unsolvable fact that these tools produce output of unknowable accuracy. Some things require such accuracy, precision, and, importantly, accountability. LLMs are capable of none of these things. Refusing to be honest about this and take appropriate precautions will lead to disaster.
1 comments
tantalor 102 days ago
> I do not want a vibe-coded freeway overpass

I do. One of the reasons our infrastructure is so expensive is planning & design.

For a single freeway overpass, you could be looking at $3M (25% of the total budget) before you have even broken ground. That covers feasibility studies, traffic modeling, rough layout, environmental studies, permitting, structural engineering, blueprints, bidding, contracts, community outreach, and the list goes on.

If AI can reduce the cost of that by even 10%, that would be huge.

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mbgerring 102 days ago
Cool, we agree, and if you think the place to cut corners on that is the engineering calcs, you have lost your mind. If you do that, not only will people die, you will drastically increase costs because the infrastructure project you built will collapse.

Europe and Asia both have reliable, modern infrastructure that’s decades ahead of the United States and they did not need the million-monkeys-on-typewriters machine to accomplish that.

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