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Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

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Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#161

Post by acjacobson »

revelio wrote: post #119
acatnamedjoe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the plumber/electrician thing a lot. But talking to my friends who do these jobs it always seems like it would be even more vulnerable to AI than programming. Experienced electricians get paid decent wages because they have had lots of training and then have seen loads of different problems. So they intuitively know things like 'This is a 1960s house so if there's a problem with the lighting the first thing I s…

I wonder if there's enough info about how to do tradesmen's jobs online for that to happen. Programmers are at risk because we filled the internet with free training materials but many jobs aren't like that especially anything with a physical component.

I don't know if it is enough yet but there has been an explosion of this kind of content on Youtube over the last 10 years. For typical home repairs it seems most topics are pretty well covered.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#162

Post by chii »

anon7725 wrote: post #122
carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

> Since they hire software developers to make the specification more rigid, and the managers don't seem to be getting better at this over time, why would you believe this skill set is going to go away? Are we sure that an AI could not engage in enough back and forth conversation to firm up the spec? You’re kind of assuming that systems will be generated from a one-shot prompt, but it seems more likely that an interac…

Currently, we don't even trust the car's automatic driving capability to let it be on the roads without a human.

Until that day happens, i highly doubt that a business owner would just blindly trust an AI to generate their business code/software, without hiring someone to at least look after it. Therefore, software jobs could evolve, but not disappear.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#163

Post by gsatic »

carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

Pure fantasy with a heavy dose of pretending our own limitations wont come in the way of it all or totally shifting what the outcomes we end up with

Managers exist mostly cause ppl are not machines. Given enough time they want to go off and do things that have nothing to do with what everyone else wants. Its the same reason you still need a farmer to run the dairy even though everything is mechanized cause cow cant run things.

Ppl are too full of shit. The attention economy amplifies this poor to mediocre mental masturbation thats going on everywhere. And Americans have a track record of too much mentally masturbation too much way above their pay grade. Its like watching Alex Jones falling into the trap of taking what comes out of his 3 inch chimp brain too seriously. The only right thing to do is tell Alex to chill the fuck down and go milk the cows.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#164

Post by jstx1 »

pjmlp wrote: post #6
jackblemming wrote: post #2

If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can every other white collar job and humanity will look very different than what it is now. And I’ve been using ChatGPT and copilot and it’s a nice tool but nowhere near a replacement for knowing how to program.

Right now it is a kindergarten child at cognitive level, and like humans it will grow up and evolve, unless we nuke ourselves before it happens.

Children don't have the same level of general knowledge in kindergarten. Adults don't have it either, not even the best adults.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#165

Post by jstx1 »

tambourine_man wrote: post #123

I never would have expected these kinds of words from Carmack. Product skills, delivered value, help accomplish something for people. All sound like consulting/coaching. Carmack to me was a true hacker’s hacker. I guess it either gets to most of us eventually or programming as I knew it is truly over.

> I never would have expected these kinds of words from Carmack.

He already talked about this in his interview with Lex Fridman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPuGf89vpI

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#166

Post by zirgs »

amelius wrote: post #127
twelve40 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the original question was specifically about coding jobs, not hobbies, hence i think a reasonable business angle on the answer.

Perhaps coding will become a hobby, while professionals use AI tools.

Back in the 80-90s you could earn money by making games for the NES.

You can still do it - lots of documentation, emulators and other tools are available.

But nobody is going to pay for it now.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#167

Post by szundi »

jstummbillig wrote: post #39
szundi wrote: post #4

I would just remind everyone that this so-called intelligence is generative text editor and feeds on our creativity/content. Probably it is going to degenerate (pun intended) after feeding on stuff that it generated itself. What do you think?

I'd say don't count on that one. Feeding on others knowledge and then recombining it is also what we do. In comparison to AI we do not appear to be particularly great at any part of this game.

What GPT does as recombining is what it sees from us. AFAIK. Hopefully this AI thing will evolve faster than our compute capacity and we can switch it off in time :) Oh shit. It will read this later... :/

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#168

Post by tommiegannert »

carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

Also, people-people don't want to use no-code tools. They want to hire people to do that for them. If using the tool is really simple, the salaries will go down, but it won't remove the demand for "translators".

For the tinkerer, no-code tools are (probably) great, but if successful, even tinkerers will hire managers who will hire translators.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#169

Post by msla »

carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

Behold: THE LAST ONE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29

> The Last One is a computer program released in 1981 by the British company D.J. "AI" Systems.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Now obsolete, it took input from a user and generated an executable program in the BASIC computer language.

It was THE LAST ONE because it was the last program you'd need to buy. FOR-EV-ER. While its baseball-eating ability was unknown, it was "all the programs you'd ever need for £260" and it apparently focused on ETL jobs; that is, extracting data from files, transforming it, and loading it into some other file. Talend for the Doctor Who set, in other words, and it was set to EX-TER-MI-NATE programmers. Maybe it did; after all, we don't very well write programmes, now, do we?

https://modeling-languages.com/last-one-code-generator-basic...

https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1981-02

It certainly got a lot of hype at the time but, like all Coming Things, it's hard to tell where it Went.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#170

Post by dr_dshiv »

lewisjoe wrote: post #144
carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

I too believed that a software engineer's job is to identify and enforce rigorous specification of the abstract high level requirement. And I too was not taking AI advancements seriously but then I took a closer took at what AI tools do today. Here's my concern: 1. AI assistance thrive on structured data 2. Computer programs are some of the most structured data. And it's available abundantly out in the open. 3. Yes,…

> you can fire half your development team and increase the productivity of the rest of your dev team with an OpenAI subscription.

Here’s another perspective on job loss: Given that…

1. …OpenAI accelerates ALL knowledge work productivity, meaning that any human laborer is suddenly much more valuable than last year;

2. …there is a notable arms race at the moment that is accelerating tech and business innovation at a blistering speed, where higher rates of innovation outcomes will be expected across industries just to keep up;

3. …there is still a lot of money looking for growth;

…then, because shouldn’t this result in an overall increase in demand for human labor?

Looking around society, there is clearly a LOT of work to be done. “Leaning in” with a spirit of optimism may be more advantageous for the long-term.

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