Comment Re:Who wants their useless AI? (Score 4, Insightful) 81
I have a use for AI, specifically OpenAI's. I have a ton of legacy code written in (of all languages) Forth. This is for embedded devices and it's complicated by control loops that are written in machine language in order to keep the performance up on these controllers with low cost industrial grade CPU's. The code is pretty slick all things considered, but it's a really hard to maintain mess mostly because I'm not a Forth programmer, and especially with the machine language stuff in there it's complicated.
About a month ago I embarked on a journey to re-code all our software in C. ChatGPT (paid) has been incredibly useful in both helping me understand what's going on in the Forth code, and helping to translate it into C. The new code usually isn't compile-ready but it's close enough that it just takes a few changes and I can compile and burn to the controller. Yes, I actually can have it translate the code directly into a compile-ready version but learning the process and learning how the code translates has been incredibly useful in helping me with the old Forth code and has also helped me find fixes and optimizations that mean the new C code runs better on the same hardware than the Forth stuff did.
So yeah... one good use for AI. There ARE good uses for it but it's a tool like any other. It's also great for help with writing, especially formal writing.