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Devin: AI Software Engineer

cognition-labs.com

41–50 of 604 posts

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#41

Although the demos are impressive, they seem short and limited in scope which makes me wonder how well this will work outside of these planned cases. Can it do software architecture at all? Is it still essentially just regurgitating solutions? How often will the solution only be 90% correct, which is 100% not good enough? Even so, I realize the demos are still broad in scope and the results are incredible. Imagine se…

Ah yes, you've entered the first stage of grief. Denial. Next you'll start bargaining, you'll get angry, and you'll become depressed, eventually you'll just accept that AI is taking over software.

In my mind, I've concluded that I have less than 3 years to find an off ramp.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an AI was truly capable of replacing engineers en mass, the upside would hugely outweigh the downside. Engineering muscle will be limited by chips instead of brains. Injecting millions of AI “engineers” into any economy would be a massive boon. Many of us would be out of work, but if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus, this will still be a net-win for us all. I think the top engineers will still be able…

> but if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus History suggests that we cannot. This is very much like saying "but if we can redistribute the wealth of all the billionaires". Like, uh huh, but that won't happen because, short of fear of murder, people winning a class war have no incentive to stop.

Millions of people being put out of work might change the political landscape quite a bit. We’re talking about a technological revolution, so I don’t think it’s too crazy to consider an economic or political revolution to go with it.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#43

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

> Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. We continually hear anxiety about technology leading to mass unemployment and it keeps not happening. Instead, workers tend to have higher productivity, which drives higher wages. Technological advancements transformed agriculture from being…

Not sure why this is being downvoted, as it's essentially a description of the lump of labour fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy).

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#45
post #6

I mean, this might just be existential cope, but my first thought when looking at the Upwork demo posted on Twitter ( https://x.com/cognition_labs/status/1767548768734294113?s=20 ) was that it seemed a little bit suspicious. Namely, the client was asking for an unusually specific (for Upwork) ask. It was an almost perfect example of a job to be given to an AI agent for testing purposes.

You're looking at the worst version that will ever be released. If these guys don't get better over time, someone else will.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#46

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

[dead]

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#47

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

If an AI was truly capable of replacing engineers en mass, the upside would hugely outweigh the downside. Engineering muscle will be limited by chips instead of brains. Injecting millions of AI “engineers” into any economy would be a massive boon. Many of us would be out of work, but if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus, this will still be a net-win for us all. I think the top engineers will still be able…

> "if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus"

I'm curious to know why you think there is even the slightest chance of this happening.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#48
While impressive, the demo on UpWork didn’t even come close to fulfilling the job requirements. The job asked for instructions on how to set it up on an EC2 machine. It didn’t ask to run the model, or do anything that was depicted.

It makes me question the truthfulness of the other claims.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#49

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

>can focus on more interesting problems Kind of like how art was supposed to be what humans would be doing while AI does the jobs we don't want, but looks like that will be the first thing to fall to the machines, while humans fight for carpet installation and plumbing jobs (for a while).

Have you ever seen people dreaming of becoming a soulless cog in the machine creating forgettable 3D assets for mobile video games at a no-name studio once we achieve "full automation"?

Me neither.

What people dream about is being able to go to a field and paint or sing at their leisure, not engaging in the soul crushing rat race that is artistic entrepreneurship.

AI is replacing the jobs that make money but are most certainly creatively bankrupt.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#50

There is no way this is going to make it so that "engineers can focus on more interesting problems and engineering teams can strive for more ambitious goals." Instead it will mean that bosses can fire 75-90% of the (very expensive) engineers, with the ones who remain left to prompt the AI and clean up any mistakes/misunderstandings. I guess this is the future. We've coded ourselves out of a job. People are smiling an…

If an AI was truly capable of replacing engineers en mass, the upside would hugely outweigh the downside. Engineering muscle will be limited by chips instead of brains. Injecting millions of AI “engineers” into any economy would be a massive boon. Many of us would be out of work, but if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus, this will still be a net-win for us all. I think the top engineers will still be able…

> Many of us would be out of work, but if we can redistribute the AI-generated surplus, this will still be a net-win for us all.

This won't happen. It does NOT trickle down, Mr. Reagan. The past 40+ years, every single graph you pull up shows the widening gulf between the wealthy and the not.

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