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AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

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Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#371

Post by fnimick »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #312
fnimick wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not. I'm not even in the top 10%. Also, we can be concerned for people less fortunate than us. "You're probably wealthy so why do you care" is such a stupid argument.

I will add even more to this point. If anything, people who are more fortunate have an actual incentive to ensure some level of care for those less fortunate even if it is just for purely selfish reasons. Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe. There are obviously non-pragmatic considerations, but I am trying to a…

> Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe.

Not if you have AI-powered autonomous "law" enforcement to gun them all down when they threaten you. It's only a matter of time.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#372

Post by Closi »

gavinhoward wrote: post #318
Closi wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed their point - calculators don't exist in accountancy firms to 'encourage accountants not to think', they exist because they dramatically speed up accountancy and make accountants more productive. Sure you can open an accountancy business and refuse to use calculators, but that's just working with a strange self-imposed limit rather than using technology to best support your business.

And you missed my point. Yes, calculators do that. I'm arguing that "AI" does not let programmers write better code faster. It lets them write worse code faster, or better code slower .

> Yes, calculators do that. I'm arguing that "AI" does not let programmers write better code faster. It lets them write worse code faster, or better code slower.

The idea isn't to write better code faster, it's to build better products faster.

Although IMO in the future, AI will probably also enable programmers to write better code too (faster, less bugs, more secure, more frequently refactored etc)

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#373

Post by gavinhoward »

fnovd wrote: post #365
gavinhoward wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you missed my point. Yes, calculators do that. I'm arguing that "AI" does not let programmers write better code faster. It lets them write worse code faster, or better code slower .

I'm sure people said the same thing about compilers. And then interpreters. Even today people complain about interpreted languages being too slow and not requiring people to understand "enough" of what's actually happening. Turns out that really doesn't matter. I think your argument is incredibly weak; the fact that some people don't use these tools effectively doesn't mean that nobody can. Whoever figures this stuff…

> Turns out that really doesn't matter.

Except that it does!

For every level of abstraction, you lose something, and abstractions are leaky.

The lower levels of abstraction make you lose the least, and they are also the least leaky. The higher you go, the more you lose, and the more leaky.

What I'm claiming is that these "AI" tools have definitely reached the point where the losses and the leaks are too large to justify. And I'm betting my career on that.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#374

Post by UncleMeat »

zamalek wrote: post #190
UncleMeat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the one that is most scary to me as a user of software. Have the AI write some of the code, sure. But tests have to be correct. Autogenerating a mountain of mostly-correct tests strikes me as a great way of ending up with surprising behavior that is a nightmare to untangle.

> But tests have to be correct. From my experience, ChatGPT-3 has been pretty good at exercising all meaningful branches (I look at code coverage results, I don't care for percentages at all), in the least amount of tests, on the first go. I definitely have to modify each test quite a bit, because it frequently hallucinates API calls that don't exist, but the code that it produces is an incredible blueprint. And I ha…

If you write a unit test for each branch in your method and just put in the current behavior as the expectation, all you've done is created a test that says "the method does what it currently does."

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#375

Post by Herval_freire »

kingboss wrote: post #364
Herval_freire wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could one day be possible for AI content to be so superior to human content that it becomes distinguishable. We may actually be identifying human content by how inferior it is to AI generated content. It could be happening already.

Why would I choose the inferior product?

Who said you would? You'd choose the superior product.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#376

Post by Herval_freire »

JohnFen wrote: post #367
Herval_freire wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm having a very hard time seeing what could be done (in the possible future we're talking about). Easy. While industrial automation has largely eliminated repetitive mechanical tasks robotics has not yet advanced to the point where it can replicate the versatility of the human form. The gap is partly closing with 3D printing but this is not moving nearly as fast as AI. Additionally there's just multitudes of const…

> Additionally there's just multitudes of construction jobs, maintenance jobs, physical jobs that can't be replaced. Yes, I should have been more specific: I can't think of a way I could adapt to such a world in a way that wouldn't be utterly soul-crushing. If those sorts of jobs were appealing to me, I would still be doing them. In any case, this is why I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this eventuality. I…

> There's far too much uncertainty right now to engage in anything like planning.

I agree there's a huge amount of uncertainty. But I think there still must be some sort of plan B. Maybe a sort of nest egg of sorts of what to do in case it all goes to shit.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#377

Post by gavinhoward »

Closi wrote: post #372
gavinhoward wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you missed my point. Yes, calculators do that. I'm arguing that "AI" does not let programmers write better code faster. It lets them write worse code faster, or better code slower .

> Yes, calculators do that. I'm arguing that "AI" does not let programmers write better code faster. It lets them write worse code faster, or better code slower. The idea isn't to write better code faster, it's to build better products faster. Although IMO in the future, AI will probably also enable programmers to write better code too (faster, less bugs, more secure, more frequently refactored etc)

> The idea isn't to write better code faster, it's to build better products faster.

All else being equal, better code means better products.

Also, to have a better product without better code, you're implying that the design of the product is better and that these "AI" tools help with that.

Until they can reason, they cannot help with design.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#378

Post by m348e912 »

gavinhoward wrote: post #354
m348e912 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI driven business will be cheaper, and faster. The "better" factor will be a case by case situation. One could argue that your competitor combined with their skills, expertise, AND AI would have a market advantage over you.

And my bet is that they will not, long term. If you use "AI" to increase productivity, you're doing it by reviewing the code from the "AI" less than you would your own. That lack of review, and testing, will slow down velocity over time as the software becomes untenable, unmanageable, and too complicated to understand. Meanwhile, my slow velocity at first will result in great design and little technical debt. Eventua…

I think you're describing the difference of AI creating code vs developing _with_ AI which firmly keeps humans in charge but enabling them to be many times more efficient.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#379

Post by gpgn »

sharemywin wrote: post #345
uconnectlol wrote: post #342

What's this constant obsession with "stealing jobs"? The tech industry has been dead for something like 30 years. There is zero intellectual design being put into it. Music is just a bunch of sellouts. You know how "content creators" do that cringy shit where they try to base their life around monetizing their "content"? That's how "musicians" worked before the internet. I couldn't care less how their jobs are threat…

> As technological capability increases, there will just be a point where food and everything will be handed out for free. that's not the trend line I'm seeing.

yeah, no way "food will be handed out for free" when you can make a profit by selling it; they'd rather throw it away (as they do right now) than give it away for free

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#380

Post by gavinhoward »

jmfldn wrote: post #368
gavinhoward wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that's a bet I'm willing to take. Here's the rub: if my competitors are going to realize "massive productivity gains," where are those gains actually coming from? Are they coming from the time it takes to type? No, because typing is a small portion of the time we spend as programmers. Are the gains coming from the time spent on design and architecture? Maybe, but that means my software will have better arc…

Honestly I wish you well in this approach, I just worry that ignoring this completely may be too costly. I'm just advocating a very cautious middle path. For now, these tools are just code helpers to me (and right now I barely use them for that), but the moment I sense a genuine advantage to using them in my job, and I don't think it undermines my engineering, I think I'll have to engage further. Undermining for me m…

Fair enough.

> This doesn't need AGI

This is where we disagree.

Code is so complex that I believe, strongly, that anything less than AGI will not be good enough. Notice I said "good enough". Sure, something less might be able to do something, but not good enough to make it a part of my toolkit.

Also, code is Turing-complete. These LLM's are not Turing-complete. How could something that is not Turing-complete hope to "understand" (for some definition) something that is?

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