Vibe [Mandatory Roller Coaster]
Aram J. French | website
::: spoiler Transcript A single panel comic with a malformed, slightly damaged, yet freshly built home in the background. In the foreground, a man in a hard hat and a reflective vest is speaking to another man, presumably the buyer, saying, “It’s called vibe construction. I’m not even a contractor! Pretty soon all buildings will be made this way.” :::
69 replies
Gives too much credit.
It would in all likelihood have two exterior doors but neither of them would be at ground level
Well from the outside it looks something like a house. It’s only when you go inside you realize it’s all cardboard toothpicks and super glue holding it up. There’s no bathrooms or closets. Just a living room. A single room.
Someone actually did attempt to have an AI generate a floorplan blueprint for a house and it had like six bathrooms, labeled two of them bedrooms and another one had two bath tubs, no toilet, and was labeled ensuite even though it opened to ... the garage. ... With no garage door.
Actually I went looking for the one people were clowning on and instead I found SEVERAL MORE horrific backrooms-like fever dream layouts ._.
I thought this would be fun so I gave it a go.
::: spoiler Tap for A.I. slop I asked for just a normal Australian home. Nothing too fancy.
It gave me a mansion with 4 queen sized bedrooms lol. With an alfresco. I don't even know what an alfresco is. Also one of the bedrooms is a dungeon with no exit, and there's a hallway to nowhere. I questioned it about this, and it did that thing like "ok ok you got me, that was just a fake one for fun. Here's the REAL one.
To get to the ensuite, you now have to go through the laundry. And to get to the walk in wardrobe you have to go through the ensuite. Also it added like, a "sub hallway" corridor tunnel thing to the secondary bedrooms like it's a dwarf fortress or a hotel or something. Super funny :::
Floor plans are one of the best ways of exposing the limitations of AI.
AI knows patterns, it knows X is found next to Y. It knows that the label X tends to go with furniture that looks like Z. But, it doesn't know why for anything. It can't even ask the question Y. It's just a pattern matching and generating machine.
So, it doesn't understand the purpose of a door, or a hallway, or a bathroom. It won't tend to put the laundry machines in the living room because that's not a pattern it has seen, but it's not because it understands why that might not be ideal.
It's actually the same with software, it has just been trained on a lot more software, so it is better able to make something that blends in and looks correct at first glance.
Ooooh.
Now I finally understand where those hotels with glass doors and walls for the toilet are coming from recently!
Perverts
It has no doors, and that brown thing is just a painting of a door in an otherwise solid wall. The windows, too.
Perfect for roadrunners with defense against coyotes.
So, I went to a movie in theaters for the first time in ages…. Apparently there’s a coyote vs acme cartoon/live action cross over that looked pretty good. Anyhow, carry on. (Meep meep,)
How many buildings that you enter have an easily identifiable architect?
This is easily the stupidest thing I've read all year. Thanks for the laugh.
You forgot your /s, bro.
Congrats we’ve looped around to why construction regulations exist
And why AI companies push back hard on regulations and accountability.
I've long said (well before AI) that we must have similar kinds of regulation for software, especially software that is used as infrastructure. This includes ~all social media, operating systems obviously, productivity software, shopping websites/apps... It's all the wild west, with so many dark patterns and predatory tactics, all of which regulation would ban. Software engineers would have to be certified and personally responsible for their design, just like civil engineers.
It would have to be balanced somehow with software freedom. I don't want to add any barriers for hobbyists and bedroom programmers just wanting to play around with code and share it. But at the same time, I see that barriers are sorely needed for everyone else.
Hobbyist carpenters also don't have to deal with like 99% of the regulations around buildings.
You can just go make a chair, or a table. Frankly if code is going to be used in a serious large scale project it shouldn't be the realm of hobbyists and if it does somehow end up like that they should be held to same strict code as the professionals.
Yes, exactly, but:
I'm thinking of things like dogecoin, which by all accounts was made as a joke with zero intention of catching on, but somehow became huge. The creator of dogecoin did not mean for it to end up like that, and by the time it did, it was out of his hands. Should he be held accountable for dogecoin to the same extent? I would say clearly not. But that sort of creates a loophole where anyone can make anything and pretend they just "never intended" for it to get as big as it has.
How about only apply to non-FOSS software? Most hobby projects used not just by the author altend to be FOSS, and businesses can decide to go FOSS, making their software independently auditable by anyone, or go through certification.
I guess there's a danger of a campaign to re-brand FOSS as "uncertified" then...
I’m guessing most commentary will be about software, but there was an analysis I heard of, claiming that construction is one of very few industries across economic sectors that just hasn’t made any kind of efficiency advancements in decades. Most other systems follow some kind of workflow improvement, or inventions that significantly improve some part of the process. But home building has only gotten harder and more expensive for making the same homes as before.
Maybe we’re seeing the same in game development. You look at what games were made during PS360 on multiple odd architectures, low memory, and comparatively small teams, and see how much things are faltering since then.
Homebuilding in the US did make some serious efficiency improvements, just many decades ago rather than a couple. Sheetrock is massively more efficient than lath-and-plaster, trusses are more efficient than onsite rafter roofs, and prebuilt windows and doors are more efficient than the older casement windows and hand-hung wooden doors. Never mind that these more efficient alternatives are much shittier in so many ways than what they replaced.
More recent efficiency improvements have been confined to massively underpaying construction workers and bribing inspectors to cover up the incredibly shitty quality work this inevitably produces.
Regulations stifle innovation!
/s
Seriously, what communism bullshit is this? Free market, baby!
Now imagining how it would be if it was expected, perhaps even mandated that every building have cameras and microphones built into the walls. Grand majority of criminals live in buildings after all
Unrealistic, vibe coders never admit they aren't actual programmers.
That's shockingly accurate to how houses are built anyway.
I work in the development department for a city where the average new-build home is about 7 million dollars. They are some of the worst-built places I've ever seen with a pretty facade on top.
For my experience a decent portion of construction workers are on drugs, on and off site, so it doesn't surprise me.
So you have a whole bunch of sloppy jobs that aren't done properly, by people who need r&r, not meth, cocain or opioids.
That's why it doesn't surprise me
It's not drugs. It's trying to build as cheaply and as quickly as possible.
There are a lot of drugs, but “stupid mistakes made while hurrying, and then not taking the time to fix them” is the #1 issue. Everyone is obsessed with hurrying, and few people recognize how mucy time is wasted by hurrying. It’s bad. I plan to build a house by myself next year, because I can’t find contractors/workers who will go slowly enough to avoid making mistakes. They just want to do more fast, crappy projects so they can make more money, which I can understand, but don’t respect.
And they will be selling it at the current house prices, keeping all the reduced cost to themselves.
But the market will regulate itselt. Right? Right?
You need to install your own plumbing though because all pipes for the next two years are earmarked for data centers.
They are still missing the 5 people that will be standing around watching the work happen.
They all got laid off so one guy can not watch the work happen.
"What does 'load bearing' mean?" "Shut up! Just use this, it'll be good enough for the time being!".
Here's the ladder to the second floor (the first one is boiler plate for running water).
.......at what point am I allowed to just start burning everything to the ground? THIS is the reality I've gotta live through??? Fuck that!!! Fuck AI!!! Fuck "vibes"!!! I just want to be able to eat lettuce without feeling like I'm prepping for a colonoscopy!!!!
Burn it. Burn down society. Burn it all. I will not sit by as our country is presided by a pedophile rapist. Why is ANYONE ok with this???
Burn it down.
Nah, autistics feel emotions more strongly than neurotypicals. It's just nobody else seems to listen. :P
This is incredibly hateful and dismissive. Reported.
First day on the internet?
I wish
If Picasso was an architect.
Lol exactly what I was thinking. And if it were structurally sound, it'd probably actually look pretty cool.
It'd look cooler if it was designed by Dali.
I waiting for the Escher model home
Grover.ai
Which one did they turn into an AI?
Famously bad house.
Strangling, or Goon?
If it is cheaper heck my rent is 1k usd +
Spoiler: it won't be, and the proper buildings will cost twice as much because they'll be in demand.
Lorax house
As if people haven't been vibe-building tiny houses and camper vans with no experience for 20 years moe
I would totally live there
You can tell the artist isn't in construction because they don't think it's always been like that.
Vibe coding is dumb and this is funny but I also feel like it's quite misleading. Plenty of software was messy and full of technical debt long before vibe coding was a thing. And organisations trying to plan software projects in the same rigid way as physical construction has historically been responsible for many of those problems.
Problem is that now creation of this sort of sloppy software is automated and accessible to everyone.
The first part is new the second part isn't. Sloppy lazy poorly understood amateur code is how everyone starts after all! And to be fair also finishes.
I'd argue the extent of the accessibility is new, though. Yes, everyone can write sloppy code, but you had to RTFM or at least a basic guide to do so. With the whole agentic AI stuff this goes out the window as well.
Meh. Joe Schmoe might make a stupid website for himself. Actual software that's made by companies has the same responsibility they always had, they made bad software before - often so bad LLM output is better in comparison.
This is why real engineers (as opposed to software "engineers") are licensed.
both are real engineers (but no, a simple programmer is not a software engineer), so you can skip the quotes. but yes, CIVIL engineers are licensed, opposed to most other (mechanical, electrical....) engineers
I am someone who has worked professionally as both a civil engineer and a software "engineer." When I put scare quotes around the latter, I mean them.
The difference in rigor, sense of responsibility for the public good, and especially power to push back against harmful ideas by management, is shocking.
DRM, enshittification, dark patterns, Cambridge Analytica, sneaky "telemetry:" none of that shit would be allowed to exist because it would violate professional ethical standards, if software "engineering" were a real profession that had any!
for me that just sounds like products of civil engineers are harder regulated, otherwise the management would push you there to cut every corner possible as well. in some countries you can see exactly this.
Don't blame the dev for what the system lacks. We took millenia to get here for buildings and had rich people and politicians literally falling through floors drowning in shit before. Software is relatively new and gets extorted for maximum profit while slow-moving projects that try to do everything right get shamed (and usually extorted since doing it right entails Open-Source, which now gets laundered through probability engines). There are effectively no guardrails devs can use to protect something from bad ideas management has, and management is on an AI-induced power trip right now.
In such an environment actual buildings would also be made out of paper and have surveillance cams in the subscription-based toilet. I'd bet someone from a country with a corrupt system and lack of regulation enforcement could tell you tales about it. I think you were just lucky.
The devs are literally to blame. The very lack of professional ethics and responsibility of the devs is the very reason why calling them engineers is a fucking insult to real engineers.
I'm not blaming devs, I'm advocating for changing the system.
The real question is, why is everyone shooting the messenger? Do y'all like abuse and enshittification?
Then aim better and stop taking cheap shots at devs. Those with a backbone get systematically shamed and cut, the same way "annoying voices" from engineers in countries with a corrupt construction business / politics get dealt with. In IT however the damages are way more abstract while a collapsed airport roof is something tangible people immediately understand just by looking at it. And as mentioned, in comparison it's an extremely young profession lacking prior collective knowledge or bad examples. Do I even need to mention that the biggest software companies and ad companies are either the exact same company or part of the same structures (not to mention they're tight with one of the biggest governments who outright alienates former allies), so any alternatives can be systematically fucked over?
And there are Software Engineers who really try, sometimes in places like the EU where a real chance for change exists. But the ad industry and mega corps with an army of lobbyists are still fighting back, and you're not helping by attacking devs for supposedly not having backbones.
You're taking shots at those trying to deal with this shit show while staying financially afloat, then pretending you're actually on their side to immediately play the victim. You can't be damn serious.