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I agree, his takes should not be dismissed lightly. I'm not sure about "demand is fixed" though. I feel like software demand has been declared saturated at least a few times.
I strongly agree with the author replies. I cannot grasp the reasonment of those who underestimate the power of these tools and their growing potential. We should remember that the outside world care about things that work, not about how good they are inside sadly.
> We should remember that the outside world care about things that work, not about how good they are inside sadly. Until they go wrong because they are not good inside.
We’re in some weird stage of capitalism where everything is a grift and nobody really cares anymore.
Your argument boils down to: it’s different this time.
The article: it's different this time because X and Y. You: you're saying "it's different this time." I don't know. It looks like AI really rots people's brains. As if that they just shut down their minds when they see an anything AI-related. Imagine if this article were about anything else , like: Article: the stock bubble is going to burst because... Comment: your argument boils down to "the stock bubble is going t…
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There’s not much articulation except some personal snippets about someone caught in the hype cycle of a product, that the hive mind is buzzing about deafeningly. Tools/improvements have rarely been negative in such a massive way except rare instances, and even then society moved on and past those tools to bigger & better things. How many people today seriously consider agriculture as a career prospect but almost all…
This is the technology that aims to replicate all of the human functionality. So, the aim is unprecedented. You might not be convinced that this aim is achievable (despite having the human brain that achieves it, unlike, say, superluminal travel), but, at least, you might be inclined to recognize that something potentially unprecedented is going on.
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Surely you can judge people by results though?
measuring programmer productivity is notoriously difficult. Does james, who shipped 20 features without testing thoroughly provide more value? or does joe, who patched a security hole in that time and avoided disaster? what about jason, who facilitated communication between them, and kept the infra going so their changes could go into prod without issues?
I strongly agree with the author replies. I cannot grasp the reasonment of those who underestimate the power of these tools and their growing potential. We should remember that the outside world care about things that work, not about how good they are inside sadly.
The outside world itself will stop working if we replace labor with LLMs. Mass unemployment equals riots equals an end to the status quo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article: it's different this time because X and Y. You: you're saying "it's different this time." I don't know. It looks like AI really rots people's brains. As if that they just shut down their minds when they see an anything AI-related. Imagine if this article were about anything else , like: Article: the stock bubble is going to burst because... Comment: your argument boils down to "the stock bubble is going t…
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> Work that introduces new methods, highly creative ideas, or solutions that have not been used or experienced before. More generally, an approach that introduces an innovative strategy to solve a complex problem.
Something that I've been thinking about for the past year or so is coming to grips with the fact that the vast majority (anecdote) of software engineering work is not novel (and maybe that's okay). Few opportunities lend themselves to doing truly novel work. Other than infrastructure work and highly specialized software, pause and ask yourself when you last encountered software were you said "how the hell did they do that?" or "damn, that's nice" (for me, the most recent was Ghostty). I think much of the angst that people have when they fear for their job is coming to the realization that LLMs can do most of the "standard" work that a lot of highly compensated individuals currently do. We've built livelihoods around this and the threat of that coming to an end is genuinely frightening.
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The outside world itself will stop working if we replace labor with LLMs. Mass unemployment equals riots equals an end to the status quo.
The next big revolution probably involves burning down datacenters.
AI maximalism is making a lot of assumptions that I think are not a given * The curve of AI improvement will continue at the current pace * AI companies will have the capital continue to expand infrastructure * there will be some kind of functioning economy if all knowledge workers are replaced There are strong headwinds to all three of these. Hey it may come to pass but it’s very speculative at this point. I see a l…
Regarding AI companies having capital to expand infrastructure; this is largely irrelevant. The cat is out of the bag, and you can already make serious gains by finetuning to local problems on a desktop machine. There is enough hardware out there to run these things en masse; it's more a question of power. Regardless, this stuff will always keep progressing, regardless of who is doing it.
Regarding the economy, it may be largely irrelevant if we, the people, don't do something very soon. The wheel keeps spinning as long as there are productive workers; it's just that those workers are being replaced by machines. The last year has increasingly demonstrated that you don't need normal people to buy your stuff to remain afloat. You can just keep selling amongst your rich friends while the masses starve, as long as _something_ is still producing what the wealthy want, and enough systems are in place to protect them.