Why isn't using AI in production considered stupid?
Just as the title says, isn't it stupid to run AI in a production environment before we have addressed some pretty major fucking problems with it?
Why do we find the unreliabilty and resulting hallicinations as acceptable for AI in production? Can you imagine if Postgres, Apache, Nginx, hell even the Linux kernel were allowed to be use in production if they occassionally went insane?
it is considered stupid by tons of people. And their problems are intrinsic and can't really be solved
US corporate culture is overly focused on short term effects.
Short term --- AI can generate code so let's fire those expensive developers.
Long term --- AI is terrible at maintaning the code it has generated. We need more human developers who can understand and fix this mess.
a hammer requires an operator, so it's rarely used wrong, and if something goes wrong the operator can intervene. sometimes a thumb will be struck, but usually that will result in a painful lesson that prevents future strikes.
the timed/automated hammer forging machine continues working regardless of whether or not an operator is at the helm. it will chop as many hands as you feed it.
we are at the point where a lot of value can be leveraged from AI by using it like a hand tool (a hammer), and in doing so one will avoid most of the chopped hands that a fully automatic factory has to offer.
It is stupid. Where I work, management has been pushing the idea of AI pretty hard, but they have repeatedly said it should not be used in production and a human needs to be in the loop.
I think the overall push, even when it doesn’t make sense is also stupid, but at least it’s tempered with a little logic to keep production a bit safer.
I get great joy from reading stories of AI in prod gone wrong.
Depends on the problem-space doesn't it? If you're making CRUD apps, then go wild IMO. If you're making rocket launch systems, maybe don't?
what do you mean by "run AI"?
as in, providing self hosted models? or running Claude code/Codex? or using it for support? or what?
This question is too vague to answer.
Where are all the production issues that have been created because of AI? Are there more incidences than before now? What’s the rate of production failures pre and post AI?
Only reason humans need to be in the loop is so there is someone to blame or hold accountable in a legal sense.
What does "ai in production" even mean?
Writing production code ? Depending on how it gets reviewed and the qa mechanisms in place, could be stupid or not.
Read only access to production systems and data? Again it depends on safeguards, but probably not stupid, it can be very useful for debugging.
Unsupervised write access to production data or infrastructure? Incredibly stupid, but I dont think anyone serious does this.