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A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

aifuture.substack.com

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Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#11

Post by AlexanderTheGr8 »

pjc50 wrote: post #4

> Once an AI gets just 1% efficient at automation, it achieves 100% efficiency quickly thereafter This is really optimistic and completely overlooks the 80/20 problems that have plagued both AI automation and traditional automation. The AI sweeps up the easy cases and humans are left to fix, or paper over with heuristics, the remainder. Example? Speech-to-text. It's pretty good and the spread of automated closed capt…

To further support your point, AI is 90% efficient/good at driving. But the last 10% is so hard that some think it's impossible to have 100% self-driving cars.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#12

Post by pluijzer »

What I see whit AI is that it is very good at closed ended questions. Take, like the article, AlphaGo as an example. The rules and goal of the game are fixed and verifiable by the computer itself.

With writing and graphic design less so. The best AI can do is to generate a text or image that it judges itself as passing as realistic according to its own model.

For jobs where passing a being realistic is good enough I certainly see those as being replaceable.

This might include mundane coding tasks like writing an API to an existing server.

Tasks where the goal is not closed ended, where the computer cannot judge itself if it got the correct result and passing as realistic is not enough, might never get replaced by machines.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#13

Post by yrgulation »

Any decent developer will use existing libraries and tools for common tasks, so 90% of the code is already written. The remaining 10% of the code is business and use case specifics that change frequently and is made by pulling the pieces provided by libraries together. The ai assisted auto complete will likely never be able to understand use cases, for that it would need sentience - and even humans fail at understanding what non techies want in their apps. As others pointed out such ai tools reduce the time taken to google something, so its more like a built in code search engine and very good at it. Other than that all the “software jobs automation” stories such as this article are written to impress either non techies or gullible newbies. A waste of content, scifi at best.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#15

Post by ab791055 »

pjc50 wrote: post #4

> Once an AI gets just 1% efficient at automation, it achieves 100% efficiency quickly thereafter This is really optimistic and completely overlooks the 80/20 problems that have plagued both AI automation and traditional automation. The AI sweeps up the easy cases and humans are left to fix, or paper over with heuristics, the remainder. Example? Speech-to-text. It's pretty good and the spread of automated closed capt…

Hmm, that said, the purpose of using AI is because it can replace human labour and save labour cost. Otherwise, we won't see half the money flowing into AI research. So AI certainly might prove to become a crisis for human on economic and military fronts. Since the end goal of AI will result in a crisis for human, isn't it time for governments to step in and regulate?

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#16

Post by horns4lyfe »

As I read this I thought all read as very philosophical and hand-wavy, as well as showing a misunderstanding of how software engineers actually work. I then looked at the authors profile and saw that they’re a young PM and “entrepreneur”. So interesting, but not an expert analysis at all, which explains the gaps.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#17

Post by gbin »

etothepii wrote: post #6

The main edge I see in AI today is the ability to create random ideas on a theme. I suspect this will end up being much more of a force multiplier than a replacement tool.

Exactly, think about it, it just creates content and the human is there to select, it can be wrong a lot but only need to succeed once and we are ok.

Programming is completely another deal, it is a creative task sure but once you get it wrong it is a costly mess! Another point is that most of the difficulty is not even actually coding but understanding what to code from people that cannot express what they want...

So yes I agree with this statement, AI would probably not fully replace the coding workforce but would help with some careful supervision.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#18

Post by jart »

timomax2 wrote: post #3

Not convinced at all. This stuff makes people more productive. This may mean fewer jobs orbit may just mean more output as the lower costs (not wages) make custom software more accessible. I see this as making the Google/stack overflow turn around much shorter.

It will. In particular, people who aren't software developers. Most devs are basically modern scribes working for kings who can't read or write. In order to exert willpower in digital society, you need to be able to code, which is why everyone with money who can't code wants coders to work for them. But that's all going to change the day ideas men can explain their idea to an AI instead, which whips up an app on the fly. When that happens there'll be a lot less demand for coders. It probably wouldn't impact things like software engineering, where it'd be more of a productivity booster, but it'd certainly narrow down the tech workforce by a bit.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#19

Post by etothepii »

rmahan wrote: post #5

Great article! Enjoyed the argument but I have a few disagreements I disagree with the response to objection 1. Look for more than a few moments at the right side picture and the shadows of the chess pieces are low quality, the shadows continue off the table, and the checkers on the board look more like backgammon than chess. The AI generated sites that clutter google are easily identified as low quality GPT 3 nonsen…

In addition, is it even fair to say, "Africa has a lot of desert." It has the biggest desert, but it's also a very big place.

Re: A new way to predict when software jobs will become automated

#20

Post by angarg12 »

If you work doing ML in production, you know how incredibly difficult it is to get an extra % improvement. The idea of exponential growth that accelerates into the singularity is a sci-fi concept that I have never experienced.

From the outside we've experienced exponential improvements in ML models, sure. But those didn't come out of nowhere. They are powered by massive efforts involving humans.

Personally I'm not worried about losing my dev job to machines in my lifetime.

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