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by dude250711·9mo ago·view on hn ↗
> Consider the restaurant owner from earlier who uses AI to create custom inventory software that is useful only for them.

That is the real dial-up thinking.

Couldn't AI like be their custom inventory software?

Codex and Claud Code should not even exist.

2 comments
> Couldn't AI like be their custom inventory software?

Absolutely not. It's inherently a software with a non-zero amount of probability in every operation. You'd have a similar experience asking an intern to remember your inventory.

Like I enjoy Copilot as a research tool right but at the same time, ANYTHING that involves delving into our chat history is often wrong. I own three vehicles, for example, and it cannot for it's very life remember the year, make and model of them. Like they're there, but they're constantly getting switched around in the buffer. And once I started positing questions about friend's vehicles that only got worse.

But you should be able to say "remember this well" and AI would know it needs a reliable database instead of relying on its LLM cache or whatever. Could it not just spin up Postgres in some Codex Cloud like a human developer would? Not today but in a few years?
Why do I need to tell an AI to remember things?! How does AI consistently feel less intelligent than regular old boring software?!
Because you're using it wrong.

Really. Tool use is a big deal for humans, and it's just as big a deal for machines.

Wouldn't an intelligent computer know to use tools? The core of the point being discussed seems to be why do you need to ask it to make it you inventory software when an intelligent system would know that when asked to build an inventory system setting up a database and logging all the information is need and ask agents to do that.
It's the same question that you might have asked in 1920. "This radio hardly works at all. Can't they do something about all the static? I don't see the big deal. This is just a scam to sell batteries and tubes."
A radio isn't intelligent and isn't marketed as such. If you're going to sell software you call intelligent, I don't think I'm out of pocket for saying "this feels even dumber than regular software I use."
I don't find this comparison fitting.
It can do that today. I am doing that today.
"That side of prime rib is totally in the walk-in, just keep looking. Trust me, bro"