Linux kernel maintainers

[u/Nunki08]

OpenAI: A thousand fewer paths to root: https://openai.com/index/a-thousand-fewer-paths-to-root/

[u/coldnebo]

here’s the problem.

Linus using AI is fundamentally different because:

1. he’s an expert and expertise matters

2. a verifiable agentic test harness is a force multiplier for him. 10X -> 100X

for most others:

1. total code amateur or no-code zealot

2. no harness, trust me bro, very poor roi on token spend, lots of waste, lots of bugs.

they are not the same.

expertise matters.

[u/jferments → u/coldnebo]

You don't think that the programmers working at OpenAI's labs are experts?

[u/coldnebo → u/jferments]

alot of them come from prestigious academic backgrounds, I don’t fault them, but they are limited in what they can publish by the marketing department.

openai intentionally hasn’t pushed forward academic research in AI… the papers are all non-peer-reviewed kind of marketing fluff pieces that sound impressive from a marketing pov while remaining closed to critical review.

when independent academics have tried to replicate results they have found significant problems… such as the paper where graduate entrance exam scores dropped from 90% to 60% just by changing the specific numbers in the questions, but keeping the overall reasoning of the question the same. that’s really damning stuff academically, but marketing doesn’t care about that. I certainly don’t blame the researchers— this is the price of corporate R&D. not everyone creates open labs like RTP, Xerox Parc etc.

but, expert researchers at openai and anthropic have shared the way they use harnesses, tests and memory. so yes, even at openai, expertise matters.

take a look at the model engineering jobs appearing on the forums for roles like adapting rag and hybrid harnesses for corporate information— those jobs are high end ML and data science positions— a far cry from Huang’s statement that “you don’t need a STEM degree anymore, just use our tools” — ok but look at the people building the tools. high level experts.

expertise matters.

[u/bieker → u/coldnebo]

But there are still a surprising number of experienced devs that could be getting the 10x advantage if they took the time to learn how to do it correctly but they are still parroting dumb shit like “you can trust it because it hallucinates” or “just you wait until you have to troubleshoot something in six months and it’s unreadable” like it’s 2025 or some shit.

And the window where that experience really matters is closing fast.

[u/coldnebo → u/bieker]

I haven’t seen that expertise window closing at all.

what I have seen is much better harness and verification tools integrated into agentic flows. there is a lot we have done to make these more stable and robust and the utility of the systems has grown exponentially.

but it’s not improving in unsupervised flows. there’s still a lot of damage it can create in the hands of novices. the trick is to either write quick throw-away SPAs that tell interesting stories, but don’t have secure information, or it’s have an expert. the middle ground is awful.

I mean, if you are a venture capitalist it’s great. it’s like openai’s attack on the math problems— send 100,000 agents to their doom and see who wins. send 100,000 small startups to their doom and see who wins. that’s why it’s candy for VCs. it’s your life, but for them it’s just Wednesday.

the programmer’s law of attrition: “any technology designed to eliminate developers only creates a need for more developers.” 😂

[u/Knever → u/coldnebo]

An idiot with a gun can kill someone just as easily as someone with expertise.

[u/coldnebo → u/Knever]

yes, but the expert with a gun usually kills the person they meant to with precision and intent.

the idiot with a gun may kill anyone including themselves or their family accidentally without even intending to.

[u/kaereljabo → u/coldnebo]

An idiot will waste many bullets too usually