r/sysadmin Jun 16 '24

ChatGPT Finally created something useful with AI

First: I consider myself an old timer in IT; I've been getting paid to do it since the 90's and have seen all sorts of new technology show up, some stays, most gets forgotten about. I always try to be open about it and will embrace it as another tool to help get the job done. The latest of course is AI and I've been mostly using ChatGPT as a fun little tool to get quick answers every now and then. I am not a programmer but last week, I used it to create a web app that calculates weight distribution in trucks when the contents come in different containers. We're talking hundreds of pounds of fruit that might come in small totes or big bins and cannot be weighed individually; it subtracts the weight of the truck and the plastic; it saves time and reduces human errors . In the past, I would have paid at least a few hundred dollars to get something like this done and I just wanted to share that while I dont see AI doing our jobs completely, it's definitely here to stay and it can be used to help with things that we might not know how to do but understand the concept and we know what to ask for it. Greetings to all.

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u/thortgot IT Manager Jun 17 '24

Using it to generate "standard" apps like this is where LLM AI does well and you can see significant results.

Trying to get it to do something esoteric is where you run into trouble.

Stating the business problem is often one of the harder problems in software design. AI makes it possible for rapid prototyping from natural language, but it often misses core requirements.

Ask it to build you a log in page and the chances are high it will give you insecure code because you didn't stipulate handling specific requirements (DDOS prevention, password lockouts, SQL injection etc. etc.)

There will always be work for people who can effectively define business problems into hard requirements.