[kwlug-disc] is AI profitable?

[John Van Ostrand]

On Wed, May 27, 2026 at 1:43 PM Chris Frey <cdfrey at foursquare.net> wrote:

>
> Yep, certainly no thinking going on, in my experience with it.
>
> I'm worried by the number of comments I hear on youtube where heavy model
> users say roughly "it was around version X of model Y that I stopped
> verifying all the agents' decisions super closely... the results were
> just so good."
>
> Perhaps they are seeing such wonderful results, but I haven't yet.
> I was recently playing with a model and asked for a simple program.
> I reviewed it carefully, and then asked for some changes.  To make it
> easy on me to see what changed, I asked for the results in unified diff
> format.  Immediately at a glance I could see it was making random
> changes to places that I didn't ask for or need.  Nothing I said
> could fix it either.. it either added too much useless churn or
> failed to change what I asked for.
>

I've only ever used the free versions. A friend has embraced AI a lot more
than I have and has results that look at ot better than the free version.
He pays $25/month for Gemini.

So far his projects were:

1. Using Suno to create a personalized song for his wedding. He has musical
talend, knows the terminology, plays instruments himself, and has a good
knowledge of '80s music down to the instruments used. He used Gemini to
create Suno prompts to create lyrics and a 1980's style melody. I
understand it took dozens of revisions to create something satisfactory. I
heard the song and it was good.

2. He used Gemini to design a motor controller for an underwater dive
scooter, both hardware and software. He has rudimentary knowledge of
electronics and no programming experience. He talks with Gemini while
driving to formulate options and Gemini remembers the conversations. Gemini
didn't offer Arduino as an option, but he was aware of it and asked Gemini
to use it in the solution.  I had designed a controller using Arduino 10
years ago and he knew about it. Again, he had to go back and forth with
Gemini to get satisfactory results. He is almost finished. He had
compromised on some things, for example he wanted two trigger pulls to
indicate an initial start, and, while started, two pulls would increase
speed one level. Gemini couldn't make that work. The hardware side of it
was simple.  He also created at least one 3D model for this project using
AI.

3. Using Gemini to create a 3D model in OpenSCAD. OpenSCAD uses text as the
input, so it's a rudimentary programming language. He has no engineering
background and his geometry skill probably doesn't include trigonometry.
HIs process was to manually draw diagrams with dimensions and give Gemini a
photo as input along with a prompt. He likely took as long crafting prompts
as it would have taken me to create it in OpenSCAD by hand. The results are
rudimentary.- I created similar objects that are more elegant and useful.

I agree that AI is not intelligent. But it has allowed this person to
achieve mediocre results quickly without spending a lot of time learning
programming or geometry and still only producing mediocre results.  His
results were best when he already understood the area of expertise and
could alter prompts using proper terminology. His general knowledge was
necessary for success in this scooter project. And he was smart enough to
fill in all the missing pieces, like how to compile and flash arduino code
and solder wires.

I used AI to create a Python program. This meant I didn't have to remember
the syntax of For loops, or how to write an "else if" or the library names
I needed, or even the objects and methods I needed to do the work and how
to include, or import or use them. The program didn't do the end job, but
it was close enough that I could use my programming knowledge to complete
the task. It probably saved me three hours.

It's a flaw to think it's intelligent or even accurate, but it seems a lot
of people make that mistake.
-- 
John Van Ostrand
At large on sabbatical
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