AI is still in its infancy. For all the progress that the industry has made in the past 5 years, the entire technology is still in the development stage. There are many things it can do. There are many more things it can’t do… yet. The real limits of AI are not yet known, as the realities of its potential is still unknown.
More needs to be of quality than the person writing the program. That includes the person who tells the person writing the program what the goals and context of the program are.
Amazon’s software failures are usually not a result of bad programming. They are results of ignorant people telling the programmer what the program must do.
Unfortunately, these people will continue to be the people who ask AI to solve a problem, and their poor skills level will yield results which are flawed at least as often as Amazon’s human generated programs.
Most programmers and AI can generate as many If then … else statements as they are told to. The people who can generate the Ifs are in short supply. It will take a further technology leap for AI to generate the ifs and might create the doomsday situations which some people fear.
Was referring to the time before there were people instructing some one what to build/program.
Way back when personal computers were just coming onto the market, there were many people writing programs in hopes their program would become the next hot thing and make themselves some money. This was before the corporate structure of development took over and the individual programmer was only as good as the quality of his/her work and ability to create something new.
Most of them did not make it because they did not understand that a big PC hit required a program be simple and general or as well defined as the software developed in major corporations.
When corporate structure took over, the quality of PC software increased dramatically. And it lasted until the day that the internet became the focus of would be billionaires. The internet has been a mixed blessing, access, accessibility. anarchy, and low quality.
Visicalc did more than any other piece of software to create the PC business. It was the product of the mind of my next door neighbor. Who had the understanding and discipline which came from working in the computer industry, and insight on how to use a PC to implement a business practice.
It was coded by another of my neighbors, who was one of the most skilled programmers I have known. Another product of the corporate structure in the computer industry.
The idea that someone lacking in skills discipline and experience was going to write a hot application was wishful thinking. Word Perfect, Wordstar, Lotus and most of the money making applications were made by pros who know the process and had discipline. Larry Ellison was not some homegrown coder either.
Microsoft bought its way into the PC software business, but it went to he corporate world for its key hires which implemented the products which replaced MS-DOS. Knowledge and structure.
I was acquainted with many of the people who built the PC software industry, and I cannot remember any who did not have the big picture of what their software had to do. Some of these people had been my co-workers, some friends, and some casual acquaintances and they had the vision to solve problems they understood.
I’m no Luddite (hard to be that in my chosen profession), nor am I particularly given to embracing absolutes (too much chance of missing the nuances, to my way of thinking) - but I do believe this, in regard to the discussion @ hand here:
Handbaskets abound, baby.
Leave us endeavour to keep WELL-clear of them, lest they lead us to wreck, wrack, and ruin.
Up-thread, mentioned our series of ghost listings. We returned home yesterday after a family death. Opened our seller account; sold three titles. Won’t be a surprise to anyone that one of the titles was a ghost listing-a HB which I couldn’t locate in our inventory in the last couple of years.
Surprisingly, we did have a paperback edition. Contacted the customer via AMAZON messaging, offered EXPEDITED SHIPPING to sweeten the deal. Buyer didn’t want the PB, cancelled. At least he did it rather than being forced into a pre-fulfillment cancellation. That makes three ghost listings since 5-8-25, a little less that 2 months, all after a vacation hold. .
Since, based on our present rate of orders, we probably won’t sell more volumes until Friday or Sat, al is well in AMAZON La-La Land.
Us, too, but due to family circumstance and our usual hired-help absent until August, forced to put seller account on vacation 3 times within 2 months.
It’s as if their d–IT system is programmed to hunt for a past sale, reflect as ACTIVE(usually w/ a much lower price because the title hasn’t been subject to re-pricing since it’s inactive/deleted) and wait till some deluded buyer is suckered in.
To be fair, that isn’t strictly true - e.g., it was an oft-bandied term in the Global Press’ reaction to FDR’s first Inaugural Address of 030433, & has been before & since (including my own usage of that bell-ringing term in a few ASF posts, back in both the Age of Jive & the Age of Discourse, that are now buried deeply in the bowels of the NSFE) - but I thought it was already established that there are few who would consider me a “person,” per se.
Seems to me`{though I may have imagined it] you’re a Gilbert & Sullivan fan: So here’s an entertainment by W.S. Gilbert:
A Merry Madrigal
Brightly dawns our wedding day;
Joyous hour, we give thee greeting!
Whither, whither art thou fleeting?
Fickle moment, prithee stay!
What though mortal joys be hollow?
Pleasures come, if sorrows follow.
Though the TOCSIN sound, ere long,
Ding dong! Ding dong!
Yet until the shadows fall
Over one and over all,
Sing a merry madrigal -
Fal la!
You didn’t imagine it, Tejas - `twould appear to me that you probably envisioned it as a likely-appositive take on my taste(s) for the English Language, in a wide variety of forms, as demonstrated for a number of years now passed.
If that it so, I’d invariably testify that YOU were right.
Easier to just get a dictionary and yellow highlight each word as it happens. In a few years, you could sell it as “A @Dogtamer’s Yellow Guide to Words Unknown” …
it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s always a good vocabulary word.