Isn’t this actually kinda what AI is good for? I mean a simple task that just takes time and has step-by-step instructions, and you can just let it handle it and do it faster.
Like its almost as good as writing a long script that just does it for the user?
No. If you look at the instaal prompt, it is just a step by step instructionon how to check the environment, download the script, build the app, run the app, test if it is all good.
That is the whole install prompt. There is literally no need to waste a million tokens on that when a simple bash script can do it for free.
If you’re going to use AI for this, ask it to write you a bash script that does all these things. Maybe even a ps1 script to go with it.
The install process should be deterministic. When you run sudo make install it should do the same thing every time you run it. If this process fails, it’s because of a missing dependency or permission issue or something like that. The failure should never be because of a statistically probability during installation that causes the installer to go off and do something wildly different.
Arent computer programs already a set of instructions? Why add a really big program that inputs instructions in a different format and that is worse at following those instructions because that was not what it was mode for
Yeah, but I would never let an AI agent run commands on my machine without verifying each command. And at that point I would just rather copy and paste commands by hand, takes about the same time.
If the installation for example required creating some complicated host specific config files, then sure, I could see how that kind of a “runbook” could maybe be useful. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Yeah, but I would never let an AI agent run commands on my machine without verifying each command.
I would never let an AI agent run commands on my machine, period.
Because that’s how you get “You’re absolutely right. I did make a mistake when I deleted your entire /home and /backups directories while executing that command. Great job noticing the error!”
Regardless of where your backup folder is, your machine needs writable access to it in order to make new backups.
And if an AI agent has root-level access on your machine (needs root to install things), then it will be able to access that backup folder and potentially be able to delete its contents.
A script uses much less power/water I suppose…
And, wouldn’t you have to pay tokens for an AI to do those things?
Or are you expected to set up a local model or something for this?
An agent installing that should not use that much power or water. The issue here is that you do not want an agent running on your system being able to install stuff from the internet
As someone who had his relatively fine and deterministic scripts replaced by skill.md bullshit by coworkers – no. This is exactly the things AI is the worst fit for.
We’ve already ran into it halucinating complete result data-set, because it ran into an error but the skill mentioned that it should give the results data to the user. So it just made it up, since it couldn’t get it by following the correct process.
It has also ran wrong builds or input parameters, because it confused their order.
I’ve also seen it skip a step.
I’m pretty confident that the AI running this script will eventually, for someone, run into an issue with getting one of the dependencies, and go on a wild goose chase in trying to satisfy it, eventually running into one of the typosquatting malware repositories or clones. Not to mention that there are groups that are actively poisoning AIs that search the web to feed them their malware-ridden typosquatting libraries instead.
If you suck so much you can’t write a simple script like this (or just can’t be bothered), you should at least just ask the AI to write it for you, so you have a deterministic set of steps that you are confident will always behave the same.
Isn’t this actually kinda what AI is good for? I mean a simple task that just takes time and has step-by-step instructions, and you can just let it handle it and do it faster. Like its almost as good as writing a long script that just does it for the user?
No. If you look at the instaal prompt, it is just a step by step instructionon how to check the environment, download the script, build the app, run the app, test if it is all good.
That is the whole install prompt. There is literally no need to waste a million tokens on that when a simple bash script can do it for free.
If you’re going to use AI for this, ask it to write you a bash script that does all these things. Maybe even a ps1 script to go with it.
Why would anyone ever need that!?
To torture that llm
The install process should be deterministic. When you run
sudo make installit should do the same thing every time you run it. If this process fails, it’s because of a missing dependency or permission issue or something like that. The failure should never be because of a statistically probability during installation that causes the installer to go off and do something wildly different.Arent computer programs already a set of instructions? Why add a really big program that inputs instructions in a different format and that is worse at following those instructions because that was not what it was mode for
Yeah, but I would never let an AI agent run commands on my machine without verifying each command. And at that point I would just rather copy and paste commands by hand, takes about the same time.
If the installation for example required creating some complicated host specific config files, then sure, I could see how that kind of a “runbook” could maybe be useful. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I would never let an AI agent run commands on my machine, period.
Because that’s how you get “You’re absolutely right. I did make a mistake when I deleted your entire
/homeand/backupsdirectories while executing that command. Great job noticing the error!”honestly if your backup folder is on the same machine as your home folder you deserve everything that comes your way
Regardless of where your backup folder is, your machine needs writable access to it in order to make new backups.
And if an AI agent has root-level access on your machine (needs root to install things), then it will be able to access that backup folder and potentially be able to delete its contents.
A script uses much less power/water I suppose… And, wouldn’t you have to pay tokens for an AI to do those things? Or are you expected to set up a local model or something for this?
An agent installing that should not use that much power or water. The issue here is that you do not want an agent running on your system being able to install stuff from the internet
As someone who had his relatively fine and deterministic scripts replaced by skill.md bullshit by coworkers – no. This is exactly the things AI is the worst fit for.
We’ve already ran into it halucinating complete result data-set, because it ran into an error but the skill mentioned that it should give the results data to the user. So it just made it up, since it couldn’t get it by following the correct process.
It has also ran wrong builds or input parameters, because it confused their order.
I’ve also seen it skip a step.
I’m pretty confident that the AI running this script will eventually, for someone, run into an issue with getting one of the dependencies, and go on a wild goose chase in trying to satisfy it, eventually running into one of the typosquatting malware repositories or clones. Not to mention that there are groups that are actively poisoning AIs that search the web to feed them their malware-ridden typosquatting libraries instead.
If you suck so much you can’t write a simple script like this (or just can’t be bothered), you should at least just ask the AI to write it for you, so you have a deterministic set of steps that you are confident will always behave the same.
You can do fun things with hooks to make sure they don’t skip steps. but yes I agree with you that this is terrible.