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Post-GPT Computing

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Re: Post-GPT Computing

#71

Post by sebzim4500 »

imtringued wrote: post #42
dakial1 wrote: post #4

I don't get some coders/devs/software engineers surprised that LLM can now pretty much create a whole code out of a prompt. Wasn't this the final objective of the programming languages abstraction evolution? From Binary/Assembly to Natural Language Programming? I think it is awesome that more people will be able to create software/products as this accelerates innovation cycles a lot. And, for now, I believe devs that…

I am banging my head against a heisenbug. I wrote the code that works yesterday. I spent a lot of time rewriting it a dozen times. Now I am back to the original and it works for unexplainable reasons. I doubt that a chatbot could have sped this up. I envy the people who are bottlenecked on their typing speed and benefit 10 times more from the chat bot than I do.

Have you tried? GPT-4 is pretty good at spotting bugs. It would probably also spot a bunch of other 'bugs' that don't exist, but that would still be better than rewriting it a dozen times.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#72

Post by CuriouslyC »

msm_ wrote: post #63
DethNinja wrote: post #14

I don’t get the overall doom and gloom towards LLMs on the software field. If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. In my opinion this technology will be as democratising as the YouTube’s early days. Instead of worrying, learn to work with it. It wil…

> If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Is this really true? I may be missing something (I probably am), but I didn't find much use for AI tools in my itsec/programming work. It's a nice tool to have, but I don't write that much boilerplate. I've tried to use it as a better Google, but it kept replying with made up nonsense (things I have problem with are u…

There is already software to basically run unit tests on LLM output and re-run the prompt until it passes. As the models get better and the tooling improves, a lot of programming will become specifying constraints on the program you want, and letting the AI explore the latent space until it finds a solution, which you then evaluate before providing more detailed constraints until it does everything you want.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#73

Post by piyh »

Jevon23 wrote: post #46
DethNinja wrote: post #14

I don’t get the overall doom and gloom towards LLMs on the software field. If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. In my opinion this technology will be as democratising as the YouTube’s early days. Instead of worrying, learn to work with it. It wil…

I really don’t want my productivity to increase. Worst case scenario is that it gets SO good at writing code that software engineering teams are severely downsized or are made obsolete altogether, and I find myself out of a job. I’m not expecting UBI to start falling out of the sky any time soon, especially while there are still manual labor jobs that robots can’t do. Alternative scenario is that individual developer…

Alternatively, there's more developer output, the unit price of an application gets cheaper, and this stimulates demand for more developers. CPUs getting cheaper and faster didn't decrease demand for CPUs.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#74

Post by piokoch »

Ok, so we have that software written by AI, AI is clever, it does not need good variable names or functions/methods/class names, some of the stuff it will call according to passed specification so it will be understandable, but the further it goes, everything will get more generic, taken from kirjillion of other code snippets on Github. And it all will be working.

Until someone starts testing this and finds a bug. And then AI will say, hey, there is no bug, I don't make mistakes. So you need a human to look on the code, a huge pile of spaghetti code with cryptic names and conventions, code patterns that fell out of fashion years ago but, since there is a lot of code that uses them, AI thinks they are ok.

How long it will take to fix anything, how long it will take to extend the code?

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#75

Post by metalrain »

While chat is intuitive interface to start with. I think we'll see more integration of these NLP models in traditional tools, like we saw with Adobe Firefly and Unreal Engine. That way users retain the control for fine tuning and doing problem specific tasks, but also gain this superpower of doing many actions with few words.

Key thing for adoption is to make models smaller and more context specific (to make them smaller), we've seen how LLaMA was downsized to run on commodity PCs, we've seen how Stable Diffusion can run on mobile phones. Even when we have to use larger models remotely, cost and ownership matters.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#76

Post by rvz »

ape4 wrote: post #28
OccamsMirror wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who will hire the junior software devs?

And how can somebody become a senior dev unless they first worked as a junior

You become a 'senior dev" by running a company / startup yourself, since it is clear that after the tech layoffs, almost no-one has the money or profits to hire any new developers - junior and senior, which is why I say they are both affected.

But even then, self-proclaimed seniors are too scared to start their own startup(s) now because of (1) Unfavourable market conditions (2) VCs hesitant to raise money (3) ChatGPT will extinguish their startup; even if it uses "AI".

I guess this was the result of a decades long quantitive easing, near zero interest rate bubble of cheap money that had to collapse.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#77

Post by KrugerDunnings »

Working as a software engineer I often feels like I am living in the world of the Handmaidens Tale as a women with a functioning womb where the hole of society is organised around controlling everything I do. Hopefully LLM will change this but I do not underestimate the intellectual laziness of most "knowledge workers"

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#78

Post by Arubis »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #19
DethNinja wrote: post #14

I don’t get the overall doom and gloom towards LLMs on the software field. If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. In my opinion this technology will be as democratising as the YouTube’s early days. Instead of worrying, learn to work with it. It wil…

> Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. You are overestimating the vast amount of "software engineers" in the world. The overwhelming majority of us are just programmers, we are just gluing together CRUD spaghetti in the random language we grew up with. We don't care too much about work or a career. And most of us don't want to do more, we want…

Hard agree.

Like sibling commenters, I love the idea of building something new with greater leverage. On an individual level, I'm looking forward to leveling up and finding new ways to be effective in my work.

Unlike sibling commenters, I don't think that should be our only option in life. It saddens me greatly that, given a new option to increase the effective output of a unit of time, we repeatedly choose as a society to profit monetarily (and with vast disparity in who benefits) rather than to give people more options in life than drilling on their jobs.

The industrial revolution promised people lives of relative leisure by replacing the need for much physical labor, but instead we concentrated the benefit to the few—and we keep making that same choice over and over.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#79

Post by muffles »

agentultra wrote: post #66
muffles wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't care too much about work or a career. And most of us don't want to do more, we want to get a decent salary for our boring work. Yikes. Productive work is not just a way to earn a living but also a way to achieve personal fulfillment and happiness. It's a means of creating value and contributing to society. A person who works just for the salary and does not find any meaning in his work is not living up to…

Yikes. Your full potential isn't your work. We are all creative beings with deep emotional lives and connections to everything around us. And there are a ton of jobs in programming that pay well enough that you can live relatively well in a capitalist society. Some people find fulfillment in their families, neighbours, art, and dreams. How many jobs in modern society are complete bullshit? A good deal of them, I woul…

I'm not suggesting your work is the only source of fulfillment or that one's career should be the sole measure of their self-worth. Rather, the importance of finding value and meaning in one's work is a complementary means of achieving personal fulfillment and happiness. It is still possible to find value and meaning in jobs that do not align with a person's interests or passions. The key is to find a balance between work and other aspects of life.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#80

Post by olalonde »

Jevon23 wrote: post #46
DethNinja wrote: post #14

I don’t get the overall doom and gloom towards LLMs on the software field. If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. In my opinion this technology will be as democratising as the YouTube’s early days. Instead of worrying, learn to work with it. It wil…

I really don’t want my productivity to increase. Worst case scenario is that it gets SO good at writing code that software engineering teams are severely downsized or are made obsolete altogether, and I find myself out of a job. I’m not expecting UBI to start falling out of the sky any time soon, especially while there are still manual labor jobs that robots can’t do. Alternative scenario is that individual developer…

I'm sure secretaries had similar thoughts about the arrival of personal computers. Yet, few would argue that computers have made the world a worse place. The truth is people will do less work, or it will feel like it. Most of our ancestors did not have the comfortable software jobs we have today. Life will become easier, products and services will become more abundant. Of course, the transition will be harder for those who refuse to adapt and resist change.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when AI truly surpasses human level intelligence, as in, being able to completely replace human jobs, but we're not there yet. It's likely that when we reach that stage, the world will change dramatically and we will either live lives of abundance and leisure or face extinction :)

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