Claude Sonnet 4.6 • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#701

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

zaphirplane wrote: post #687

cmiles8 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. AI is dead in the water for the supposed mass labor replacement that will happen unless this is fixed. Summarize some text while I supervise the AI = fine and a useful productivity improvement, but doesn’t replace my job. Replace me with an AI to make autonomous decisions outside in the wild and liability-ridden chaos ensues. No company in their right mind…

1 you are massively assuming less than linear improvement, even linear over 5 years puts LLM in different category 2 more efficient means need less people means redundancy means cycle of low demand

1 it has nothing to do with 'improvement'. You can improve it to be a little less susceptible to injection attacks but that's not the same as solving it. If only 0.1% of the time it wires all your money to a scammer, are you going to be satisfied with that level of "improvement"?

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#702

Post by pvab3 » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

cmiles8 wrote: post #558

zmmmmm wrote: post #400

I see a big focus on computer use - you can tell they think there is a lot of value there and in truth it may be as big as coding if they convincingly pull it off. However I am still mystified by the safety aspect. They say the model has greatly improved resistance. But their own safety evaluation says 8% of the time their automated adversarial system was able to one-shot a successful injection takeover even with saf…

This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. AI is dead in the water for the supposed mass labor replacement that will happen unless this is fixed. Summarize some text while I supervise the AI = fine and a useful productivity improvement, but doesn’t replace my job. Replace me with an AI to make autonomous decisions outside in the wild and liability-ridden chaos ensues. No company in their right mind…

Part of the problem is the word "replacement" kills nuanced thought and starts to create a strawman. No one will be replaced for a long time, but what happens will depend on the shape of the supply and demand curves of labor markets.

If 8 or 9 developers can do the work of 10, do companies choose to build 10% more stuff? Do they make their existing stuff 10% better? Or are they content to continue building the same amount with 10% fewer people?

In years past, I think they would have chosen to build more, but today I think that question has a more complex answer.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#703

Post by vineyardmike » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #632

dakolli wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is to monopolize labor for anything that has to do with i/o on a computer, which is way more than SWE. Its simple, this technology literally cannot create new jobs it simply can cause one engineer (or any worker whos job has to do with computer i/o) to do the work of 3, therefore allowing you to replace workers (and overwork the ones you keep). Companies don't need "more work" half the "features"/"products…

Last I checked, the tractor and plow are doing a lot more work than 3 farmers, yet we've got more jobs and grow more food. People will find work to do, whether that means there's tens of thousands of independent contractors, whether that means people migrate into new fields, or whether that means there's tens of multi-trillion dollar companies that would've had 200k engineers each that now only have 50k each and it's…

America has lost over 50% of farms and farmers since 1900. Farming used to be a significant employer, and now it's not. Farming used to be a significant part of the GDP, and now it's not. Farming used to be politically significant... and not its complicated?.

If you go to the many small towns in farm country across the United States, I think the last 100 years will look a lot closer to "doom" than "bumps in the road". Same thing with Detroit when we got foreign cars. Same thing with coal country across Appalachia as we moved away from coal.

A huge source of American political tension comes from the dead industries of yester-year combined with the inability of people to transition and find new respectable work near home within a generation or two. Yes, as we get new technology the world moves on, but it's actually been extremely traumatic for many families and entire towns, for literally multiple generations.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#704

Post by xyzzy123 » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:25 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #607

dakolli wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is to monopolize labor for anything that has to do with i/o on a computer, which is way more than SWE. Its simple, this technology literally cannot create new jobs it simply can cause one engineer (or any worker whos job has to do with computer i/o) to do the work of 3, therefore allowing you to replace workers (and overwork the ones you keep). Companies don't need "more work" half the "features"/"products…

> Its also worth noting that if you can create a business with an LLM, so can everyone else. And sadly everyone has the same ideas Yeah, this is quite thought provoking. If computer code written by LLMs is a commodity, what new businesses does that enable? What can we do cheaply we couldn't do before? One obvious answer is we can make a lot more custom stuff . Like, why buy Windows and Office when I can just ask clau…

Even if code gets cheaper, running your own versions of things comes with significant downsides.

Software exists as part of an ecosystem of related software, human communities, companies etc. Software benefits from network effects both at development time and at runtime.

With full custom software, you users / customers won't be experienced with it. AI won't automatically know all about it, or be able to diagnose errors without detailed inspection. You can't name drop it. You don't benefit from shared effort by the community / vendors. Support is more difficult.

We are also likely to see "the bar" for what constitutes good software raise over time.

All the big software companies are in a position to direct enormous token flows into their flagship products, and they have every incentive to get really good at scaling that.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#705

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

nprz wrote: post #665

vardalab wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We said the same thing when 3D printing came out. Any sort of cool tech, we think everybody’s going to do it. Most people are not capable of doing it. in college everybody was going to be an engineer and then they drop out after the first intro to physics or calculus class. A bunch of my non tech friends were vibe coding some tools with replit and lovable and I looked at their stuff and yeah it was neat but it wasn't…

You can basically hand it a design, one that might take a FE engineer anywhere from a day to a week to complete and Codex/Claude will basically have it coded up in 30 seconds. It might need some tweaks, but it's 80% complete with that first try. Like I remember stumbling over graphing and charting libraries, it could take weeks to become familiar with all the different components and APIs, but seemingly you can now j…

I figure it takes me a week to turn the output of ai into acceptable code. Sure there is a lot of code in 30 seconds but it shouldn't pass code review (even the ai's own review).

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#706

Post by dakolli » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

benlivengood wrote: post #676

dakolli wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is to monopolize labor for anything that has to do with i/o on a computer, which is way more than SWE. Its simple, this technology literally cannot create new jobs it simply can cause one engineer (or any worker whos job has to do with computer i/o) to do the work of 3, therefore allowing you to replace workers (and overwork the ones you keep). Companies don't need "more work" half the "features"/"products…

decreasing COGS creates wealth and consumer surplus, though. If we can flatten the social hierarchy to reduce the need for social mobility then that kills two birds with one stone.

Do you really think the ruling class has any plans to allow that to happen... There's a reason so much surveillance tech is being rolled out across the world.

If the world needs 1/3 of the labor to sustain the ruling class's desires, they will try to reduce the amount of extra humans. I'm certain of this.

My guess is during this "2nd industrial revolution" they will make young men so poor through the alienation of their labor that they beg to fight in a war. In that process they will get young men (and women) to secure resources for the ruling class and purge themselves in the process.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#707

Post by alexpotato » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:29 AM UTC

dakolli wrote: post #486

zmmmmm wrote: post #400

I see a big focus on computer use - you can tell they think there is a lot of value there and in truth it may be as big as coding if they convincingly pull it off. However I am still mystified by the safety aspect. They say the model has greatly improved resistance. But their own safety evaluation says 8% of the time their automated adversarial system was able to one-shot a successful injection takeover even with saf…

Their goal is to monopolize labor for anything that has to do with i/o on a computer, which is way more than SWE. Its simple, this technology literally cannot create new jobs it simply can cause one engineer (or any worker whos job has to do with computer i/o) to do the work of 3, therefore allowing you to replace workers (and overwork the ones you keep). Companies don't need "more work" half the "features"/"products…

> Its also worth noting that if you can create a business with an LLM, so can everyone else. And sadly everyone has the same ideas, everyone ends up working on the same things causing competition to push margins to nothing.

This was true before LLMs. For example, anyone can open a restaurant (or a food truck). That doesn't mean that all restaurants are good or consistent or match what people want. Heck, you could do all of those things but if your prices are too low then you go out of business.

A more specific example with regards to coding:

We had books, courses, YouTube videos, coding boot camps etc but it's estimated that even at the PEAK of developer pay less than 5% of the US adult working population could write even a basic "Hello World" program in any language.

In other words, I'm skeptical of "everyone will be making the same thing" (emphasis on the "everyone").

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#708

Post by intended » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

vardalab wrote: post #638

josephg wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its also worth noting that if you can create a business with an LLM, so can everyone else. And sadly everyone has the same ideas Yeah, this is quite thought provoking. If computer code written by LLMs is a commodity, what new businesses does that enable? What can we do cheaply we couldn't do before? One obvious answer is we can make a lot more custom stuff . Like, why buy Windows and Office when I can just ask clau…

We said the same thing when 3D printing came out. Any sort of cool tech, we think everybody’s going to do it. Most people are not capable of doing it. in college everybody was going to be an engineer and then they drop out after the first intro to physics or calculus class. A bunch of my non tech friends were vibe coding some tools with replit and lovable and I looked at their stuff and yeah it was neat but it wasn't…

3 things

1) I don’t disagree with the spirit of your argument

2) 3D printing has higher startup costs than code (you need to buy the damn printer)

3) YOU are making a distinction when it comes to vibe coding from non-tech people. The way these tools are being sold, the way investments are being made, is based on non-domain people developing domain specific taste.

This last part “reasonable” argument ends up serving as a bait and switch, shielding these investments. I might be wrong, but your comment doesn’t indicate that you believe the hype.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#709

Post by josephg » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:39 AM UTC

vardalab wrote: post #638

josephg wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its also worth noting that if you can create a business with an LLM, so can everyone else. And sadly everyone has the same ideas Yeah, this is quite thought provoking. If computer code written by LLMs is a commodity, what new businesses does that enable? What can we do cheaply we couldn't do before? One obvious answer is we can make a lot more custom stuff . Like, why buy Windows and Office when I can just ask clau…

We said the same thing when 3D printing came out. Any sort of cool tech, we think everybody’s going to do it. Most people are not capable of doing it. in college everybody was going to be an engineer and then they drop out after the first intro to physics or calculus class. A bunch of my non tech friends were vibe coding some tools with replit and lovable and I looked at their stuff and yeah it was neat but it wasn't…

I don't think claude code is like 3d printing.

The difference is that 3D printing still requires someone, somewhere to do the mechanical design work. It democratises printing but it doesn't democratise invention. I can't use words to ask a 3d printer to make something. You can't really do that with claude code yet either. But every few months it gets better at this.

The question is: How good will claude get at turning open-ended problem statements into useful software? Right now a skilled human + computer combo is the most efficient way to write a lot of software. Left on its own, claude will make mistakes and suffer from a slow accumulation of bad architectural decisions. But, will that remain the case indefinitely? I'm not convinced.

This pattern has already played out in chess and go. For a few years, a skilled Go player working in collaboration with a go AI could outcompete both computers and humans at go. But that era didn't last. Now computers can play Go at superhuman levels. Our skills are no longer required. I predict programming will follow the same trajectory.

There are already some companies using fine tuned AI models for "red team" infosec audits. Apparently they're already pretty good at finding a lot of creative bugs that humans miss. (And apparently they find an extraordinary number of security bugs in code written by AI models). It seems like a pretty obvious leap to imagine claude code implementing something similar before long. Then claude will be able to do security audits on its own output. Throw that in a reinforcement learning loop, and claude will probably become better at producing secure code than I am.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4.6

#710

Post by intended » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:39 AM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #670

theappsecguy wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More jobs where? In farming? Is that why farming in the US is dying, being destroyed by corporations and farmers are now prisoners to John Deer? It’s hilarious that you chose possibly the worst counter example here…

More output, not more farmers. The stratification of labor in civilization is built on this concept, because if not for more food, we'd have more "farmer jobs" of course, because everyone would be subsistence farming...

That’s not the statement made by the grand parent comment tho. That comment reads as stating an increase in farming jobs.