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Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

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Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#71

Post by Draiken »

yodsanklai wrote: post #42
bloomingkales wrote: post #29

I'm sure there is a formal proof someone can flesh out. - Half assed developer can construct a functional program with AI prompts. - Deployed at scale for profit - Many considerations were not considered due to lack of expertise (security, for example) - Bad things happen for users. I have at least two or three ideas that I've canned for now because it's just not safe for users (AI apps of that type require a lot of…

Why half-assed developer? It could be high-level developer that take advantage of AI to be more productive. This will reduce team sizes.

Because a high level developer will still have to fix all the shit the AI gets wrong, and therefore won't be "2x more productive" like I read in many places.

If they're that much better with AI, they were likely coding greenfield CRUD boilerplate that nobody uses anyways. When the AI generated crap is actually used, it becomes evident how bad it is.

But yes, this will reduce team sizes regardless of it being good or not, because the people making those decisions are not qualified to make them and will always prefer the short-term at the cost of the long-term.

The only part of this article I don't see happening is programmers being way more expensive. Capitalism has a way of forcing everyone to accept work for way less than they're worth and that won't change.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#72

Post by seletskiy »

I would say that AI is not to blame here. It just accelerated existing process, but didn't initiate it. We (as a society) started to value quantity over quality some time ago, and, apparently, no-one care enough to change it.

Why tighten the bolts on the airplane's door yourself if you can just outsource it somewhere cheaper (see Boeing crisis)?

Why design and test hundreds of physical and easy-to-use knobs in the car if you can just plug a touchscreen (see Tesla)?

Why write a couple of lines of code if you can just include an `is-odd` library (see bloated npm ecosystem)?

Why figure out how to solve a problem on your own if you can just copy-paste answer from somewhere else (see StackOverflow)?

Why invest time and effort into making a good TV if you can just strap Android OS on a questionable hardware (look in your own house)?

Why run and manage your project on a baremetal server if you can just rent Amazon DynamoDB (see your company)?

Why spend months to find and hire one good engineer if you can just hire ten mediocre ones (see any other company)?

Why spend years educating to identify a tumor on a MRI scans if you can just feed it to a machine learning algorithm (see your hospital)?

What more could I name?

In my take, which you can say is pessimistic, we already passed the peak of civilization as we know it. If we continue business as usual, things will continue to detiorate, more software will fail, more planes will crash, more people will be unemployed, more wars would be started. Yes, decent engineers (or any other decent specialists) will be likely a winners in a short term, but how the future would unfold when there will be less and less of them is a question I leave for the reader.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#73

Post by ryanjshaw »

pyrale wrote: post #11

We have fired all our programmers. However, the AI is hard to work with, it expects specific wording in order to program our code as expected. We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.

What job title are you thinking of using?

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#74

Post by aleph_minus_one »

pyrale wrote: post #11

We have fired all our programmers. However, the AI is hard to work with, it expects specific wording in order to program our code as expected. We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.

> We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.

These people are however not experts in pretending to be a obedient lackeys.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#75

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Nullabillity wrote: post #57
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #36

Well, what will happen, is that programmers will become experts at prompt engineering, which will become a real discipline (remember when “software engineering” was a weird niche?). They will blow away the companies that rely on “seat of the pants,” undisciplined prompting. I’m someone that started on Machine Language, and now programs in high-level languages. I remember when we couldn’t imagine programming without I…

This is like arguing that surely we can get rid of all our formers as soon as we have a widespread enough caste of priests. There is no such thing as "prompt engineering ", because there is no formal logic to be understood or engineered into submission. That's just not how it works.

I remember saying the same about higher-level languages.

Discipline can be applied to any endeavor.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#76

Post by batuhandumani »

geraneum wrote: post #51
batuhandumani wrote: post #28

Such writings, articles, and sayings remind me of the Luddite movement. Unfortunately, preventing what is to come is not within our control. By fighting against windmills, one only bends the spear in hand. The Zeitgeist indicates that this will happen soon or in the near future. Even though developers are intelligent, hardworking, and good at their jobs, they will always be lacking and helpless in some way against th…

> The Zeitgeist indicates that this will happen soon or in the near future. Can you elaborate?

What I mean by Zeitgeist is this: once an event begins, it becomes unstoppable. The most classic and cliché examples include Galileo’s heliocentric theory and the Inquisition, or Martin Luther initiating the Protestant movement.

Some ideas, once they start being built upon by certain individuals or institutions of that era, continue to develop in that direction if they achieve success. That’s why I say, "Zeitgeist predicts it this way." Researchers who have laid down important cornerstones in this field (e.g., Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, etc.)[1, 2] suggest that this is bound to happen eventually, one way or another.

Beyond that, most of the hardware developments, software optimizations, and academic papers being published right now are all focused on this field. Even when considering the enormous hype surrounding it, the development of this area will clearly continue unless there is a major bottleneck or the emergence of a bubble.

Many people still approach such discussions sarcastically, labeling them as marketing or advertising gimmicks. However, as things stand, this seems to be the direction we are headed.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugvHCXCOmm4 [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1i2nugu/ilya_s...

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#77

Post by [deleted] »

yodsanklai wrote: post #42
bloomingkales wrote: post #29

I'm sure there is a formal proof someone can flesh out. - Half assed developer can construct a functional program with AI prompts. - Deployed at scale for profit - Many considerations were not considered due to lack of expertise (security, for example) - Bad things happen for users. I have at least two or three ideas that I've canned for now because it's just not safe for users (AI apps of that type require a lot of…

Why half-assed developer? It could be high-level developer that take advantage of AI to be more productive. This will reduce team sizes.

[deleted]

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#78

Post by penetrarthur »

kypro wrote: post #56
outime wrote: post #4

Has there been any company so far that has fired 100% of their programmers to replace them with AI?

Small companies, yes, absolutely. If you have a small non-tech company with a website you pay a freelance programmer to maintain you should seriously consider replacing your programmer with AI. I work for a company which among other things provides technical support for a number of small tech-oriented businesses and we have lot of problems right now with clients trying to do things on their own with the help of AI. I…

This still implies that the person who is currently paying freelance programmers is 1) good with LLMs 2) knows some html and js 3) can deploy the updated website.

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#79

Post by pyrale »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #73
pyrale wrote: post #11

We have fired all our programmers. However, the AI is hard to work with, it expects specific wording in order to program our code as expected. We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.

What job title are you thinking of using?

Speaker With Expertise

Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake

#80

Post by MonkeyClub »

isakkeyten wrote: post #63
bryukh wrote: post #3

"Let AI replace programmers" is the new "Let’s outsource everything to ." Short-term cost savings, long-term disaster.

[flagged]

GP sounds shortsighted on first take, but consider how outsourcing is good and cheap for the companies, but in the long run creates huge unemployment pools in the original country.

Negative consequences can also be social, no-one is saying that it's, say, lowering of product quality.

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