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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

#41

Post by scaredginger »

29athrowaway wrote: post #21
AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Self-checkout at supermarkets does 90% of the work. The 10% of work remaining is done by a human supervising the self-checkout stations. And same will happen to development. Lots of tasks will be automated and less people will be needed as a result.

Self-checkout isn't a great example since it's mainly just shifting the work from one human (the employee) to another (the customer), rather than true automation.

As a side note, we were told decades ago that visual programming would similarly displace developers; however, I'm doing perfectly fine

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

#42

Post by throwaway4220 »

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.

This is not random though it’s derivative of toms of input data. Can it be genuinely creative?

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

#43

Post by mjr00 »

jtwebman wrote: post #30
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…

I think this is thinking small. An AI doesn't need to use human readable programming languages or frameworks to solve problems. Also software engineers are expensive. Corporate greed will drive this faster.

> An AI doesn't need to use human readable programming languages or frameworks to solve problems.

Why would an AI writing assembly give it an advantage?

> Also software engineers are expensive. Corporate greed will drive this faster.

Are they? You can get a software engineer for less than $10,000/year.

When I was going to university in the mid-00s I had quite a few "advisors" recommend against going into computer science, because corporate greed meant all the jobs were going to be outsourced and US salaries would tank as a result.

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

#44

Post by ipaddr »

ajafari1 wrote: post #2

OpenAI estimates that Github’s Copilot can already complete 37% of coding tasks. DeepMind’s AlphaCode is estimated to be 59% better at coding competitions than Codex. Will automation start in 2023?

As useful as Copilot has been 37% paints an untrue picture. It helped with 80% of copy paste tasks that repeat in a pattern. For data seeding thousand line files.. super helpful. In other areas it can create tough bugs instead of solving them.

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

#45

Post by 29athrowaway »

dumpsterlid wrote: post #32
29athrowaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-checkout at supermarkets does 90% of the work. The 10% of work remaining is done by a human supervising the self-checkout stations. And same will happen to development. Lots of tasks will be automated and less people will be needed as a result.

Self checkout at supermarkets absolutely sucks. For the customer it is a huge downgrade in experience.

Yes, but it's improving. Look at Amazon Go, for example, where you can take your items and leave.

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

#46

Post by 29athrowaway »

vishnugupta wrote: post #35
29athrowaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-checkout at supermarkets does 90% of the work. The 10% of work remaining is done by a human supervising the self-checkout stations. And same will happen to development. Lots of tasks will be automated and less people will be needed as a result.

> And same will happen to development. It is already happening. For example; setting up a production DB in primary-secondary mode; with daily back up and what not used to be quite a bit of manual grunt work. AWS Aurora and similar services handle 70-80% of the pain leaving you with setting up right table, index etc., Same in setting up a backend stack with DNS, load balancer etc., My guess is cloud services will auto…

That's why most dev teams now do dev ops, where before you had an ops team and on premise infrastructure, which is still necessary in some sectors with strict data regulations but not for everyone.

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

#47

Post by Ekaros »

scaredginger wrote: post #41
29athrowaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-checkout at supermarkets does 90% of the work. The 10% of work remaining is done by a human supervising the self-checkout stations. And same will happen to development. Lots of tasks will be automated and less people will be needed as a result.

Self-checkout isn't a great example since it's mainly just shifting the work from one human (the employee) to another (the customer), rather than true automation. As a side note, we were told decades ago that visual programming would similarly displace developers; however, I'm doing perfectly fine

True automation would be system that would at 100% accuracy note and bill all of the bagged items you carry out of the shop. Without ever scanning them. Which turns the whole thing to much harder case to solve. 90% is simple, but it really doesn't change the last 10% still needing to do essentially the 90% again...

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

#48

Post by gz5 »

In games like Go, the problem is very well defined and bounded. Most high value software dev work is working with humans to define the problem itself, and the problem usually exists in a multi-actor, non-deterministic, dynamic, somewhat irrational environment.

Meanwhile, the resultant code or 'solution' is also not a solution in a vacuum - it needs to work within certain workflows, tooling, skills, cultures, processes, orgs etc...which are also often undefined, dynamic and irrational.

Not saying AI can't help in many areas, but do the areas which are growing exponentially as described by OP help AI function effectively in enviros such as the above?

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

#49

Post by 29athrowaway »

scaredginger wrote: post #41
29athrowaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-checkout at supermarkets does 90% of the work. The 10% of work remaining is done by a human supervising the self-checkout stations. And same will happen to development. Lots of tasks will be automated and less people will be needed as a result.

Self-checkout isn't a great example since it's mainly just shifting the work from one human (the employee) to another (the customer), rather than true automation. As a side note, we were told decades ago that visual programming would similarly displace developers; however, I'm doing perfectly fine

Even better, less money spent by companies, cheaper products due to lower expenses at the retail level.

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

#50

Post by zeroonetwothree »

dumpsterlid wrote: post #32
29athrowaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-checkout at supermarkets does 90% of the work. The 10% of work remaining is done by a human supervising the self-checkout stations. And same will happen to development. Lots of tasks will be automated and less people will be needed as a result.

Self checkout at supermarkets absolutely sucks. For the customer it is a huge downgrade in experience.

I like it. It’s one of my favorite innovations of all time. I don’t use it when I have a ton of stuff of course but for my frequent trips to buy <10 items it’s much quicker than waiting in line.
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