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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

#431

Post by Closi »

gavinhoward wrote: post #377
Closi wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Everyone has limited time, and if AI assistance can increase the speed you can develop & iterate the product to better match user needs that is how it can result in a better product.

Equally if it can help devs launch a month earlier, that’s a huge advantage in terms of working out early product/market fit.

All things being equal, I would rather have a company with better product/market fit than one with great code (even though both are important!).

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

#432

Post by lanstin »

labrador wrote: post #108
gavinhoward wrote: post #13

I completely disagree. I'm building a business, and this business will be based on excellent software and excellent support for that software. I will refuse to use AI. But instead of AI users taking my job, I'm sure that refusing to use AI will become my differentiator as every AI user becomes more and more like each other. You may think that good AI users will not become so bland, but they will. Human laziness will…

I hate to break it to you, but a for loop is a for loop is a for loop is a for loop...

Here, I have this short program; can you please tell me if it will terminate or loop forever?

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

#433

Post by gavinhoward »

shadowgovt wrote: post #411
gavinhoward wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if they have 300% the convenience. But I am pretty sure I will have more convenience. I'll have a Matrix server and website where customers, including their employees, can ask me questions. I'm pretty sure it will be maximally convenient for senior developers or a CTO helping to make the purchase if interns never ask them questions about my software.

It sounds like you're in the right place. I'm thinking more about local retailers getting curb-stomped by Amazon because they barely have a website while Amazon has same-day delivery requestable via a phone app (and at the end of the day, the local retailer's only differentiation is local-market knowledge; the same trucks that deliver to their storefronts deliver to the warehouse that Amazon routes product to front p…

I agree with you 100% here.

This kind of convenience matters, and I acknowledge that as someone who drives to the local bank for a lot of my bank stuff; convenience may not matter to me personally, but I would be stupid if I didn't acknowledge that it matters most too most people.

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

#434

Post by lanstin »

gavinhoward wrote: post #307
fnordpiglet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Henry beat the steam powered drill after all!

Yes, he did. But working machines vs thinking machines is still a different ball game. I won't give details of why I believe the way I do (I might someday; I have a blog post draft), but I'm extremely confident that thinking machines will never surpass humans.

A very strong claim. Do you think intelligence from other biological systems could also never surpass human intelligence?

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

#435

Post by lanstin »

gavinhoward wrote: post #424
lanstin wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all else being equal, better code means you aren’t changing the system as fast and likely have stagnated in the business or growth side. Maybe that is appropriate for where your company is, but worse is better wins so often. And I would bet that AI design would help things where the existing designers are bad, e.g. so much open source UI (that is, not cli UX) written by devs, but it is still a bit away from t…

I don't need my business to grow. I want to support myself and my wife. That's it. You can call that whatever you like, but stagnation isn't it, unless you think that SQLite is stagnant because SQLite had the same business model. "AI" design will not help until we have a true AI that can reason. (I don't think we ever will.) Why is reasoning necessary? Because design is about understanding constraints and working wit…

That all makes sense.

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

#436

Post by JohnFen »

Herval_freire wrote: post #427
JohnFen wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes.. an emergency fund (the bigger the better, but I compromise on keeping at least 1 year's pay) and disaster planning are extremely important regardless of whether or not advanced AI exists. A plan B that targets the consequences of an advanced AI specifically is more problematic because, if the people who are all excited here see their fantasies come true, then not only are we all screwed, but the hardship…

No I mean more than an emergency fund. An emergency fund can be part of it, but I think you have to plan more given the greater uncertainties posed by AI. More than a fund, an alternative.passive income source(s) is another factor. Given the situation now, it makes sense to ramp these side sources up and get them closer to mainline viability.

Absolutely true. They're very hard to get going, but worth the effort -- AI or not.

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

#437

Post by Closi »

gavinhoward wrote: post #424
lanstin wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all else being equal, better code means you aren’t changing the system as fast and likely have stagnated in the business or growth side. Maybe that is appropriate for where your company is, but worse is better wins so often. And I would bet that AI design would help things where the existing designers are bad, e.g. so much open source UI (that is, not cli UX) written by devs, but it is still a bit away from t…

I don't need my business to grow. I want to support myself and my wife. That's it. You can call that whatever you like, but stagnation isn't it, unless you think that SQLite is stagnant because SQLite had the same business model. "AI" design will not help until we have a true AI that can reason. (I don't think we ever will.) Why is reasoning necessary? Because design is about understanding constraints and working wit…

GPT4 can clearly already reason IMO (I mean it can play chess fairly well without ever being taught, or if you create a puzzle from scratch and tell it to it it can try to work it out and describe the logical approach it took). It’s definitely surprising that a next-word generator has developed the ability to reason, but I guess that’s where we are!

What is your definition of reasoning that you do not think GPT-4 would demonstrate signs of?

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

#438

Post by danogentili »

Herval_freire wrote: post #308
danogentili wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1) That is a horribly denigrative view of human creativity, one that simply does not reflect reality. 2) I kind of don't care: creativity always was and always will be about humans wanting to create something, the satisfaction and excitement of writing down a fanfic you've been thinking about for the last 3 weeks, the emotion of bringing your thoughts to life. Even with endless AI-generated content, I wil…

>1) That is a horribly denigrative view of human creativity, one that simply does not reflect reality. No it's not. It's a realistic view. Do not discount a view just because it's not inline with positivity. Only the realism of the view should be considered. And unfortunately it does reflect reality. There's a huge amount of data supporting my viewpoint. Most of the content right now on the internet in books and in m…

> There's a huge amount of data supporting my viewpoint. Most of the content right now on the internet in books and in movies are generic human generated content.

You literally picked the closest thing to AI-generated content, soulless statistics-driven garbage, literally the first thing that will be automated by AI in corporate media ;)

> You can be creative all you want, it doesn't mean other people will care or want to consume the creative products you produce.

If there are any people at all with my same worldview (and there are, outside of HN of course), people will want to enjoy creations made by a human, not by a corporate AI. Either way, as I said, the absence of a market does not affect in any way my will to create ;)

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

#439

Post by danogentili »

digging wrote: post #335
danogentili wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1) That is a horribly denigrative view of human creativity, one that simply does not reflect reality. 2) I kind of don't care: creativity always was and always will be about humans wanting to create something, the satisfaction and excitement of writing down a fanfic you've been thinking about for the last 3 weeks, the emotion of bringing your thoughts to life. Even with endless AI-generated content, I wil…

> 1) That is a horribly denigrative view of human creativity, one that simply does not reflect reality. I disagree with this. Part of the long trajectory of imagining and creating AI is figuring out what makes a human do what it does. Many believe there is no magic spark which cannot be replicated. And if there's no magic spark, then eventually AI can replicate the entire human creative experience. Whether it will or…

I'm one of those that believe there is a magic spark :)

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

#440

Post by fl7305 »

gavinhoward wrote: post #380
jmfldn wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> These LLM's are not Turing-complete.

Aren't they? I view them as "language processors", that execute one token (instruction) at a time, and use the token window as their working memory.

Sure, they have a limit to their instruction count (8k/32) before stopping. The working memory is small, but 8k tokens goes a lot longer than 8 kB.

I've seen you state in other comments that LLM's cannot reason. I used to think so too until a couple of weeks ago.

But I had to change my mind. They're not just fancy autocomplete tools any more. They exhibit intelligence in that they can understand a given problem statement, reason about it, and make predictions and recommendations.

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