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Re: You Are Here

#11

Post by monero-xmr »

I own (cofounded) a medium-sized saas business with hundreds of employees. I maintain final decision of everything technical and still code every day because it’s important. All of the engineers use LLM tools, you’d be stupid not to. But I need good engineers, I replace good engineers when someone leaves, and the business itself is so much larger than just programming. The system is just so huge and complex, and I am the benevolent dictator that architected it and maintains the core design decisions, that the LLM does not replace the need for engineers nor my own expertise.

Furthermore if we were truly in the utopia the author describes, why do all the LLM companies employ (and pay top dollar) for so many engineers? Why does OpenAI pay for slack when they could just vibe code a chat app in an hour?

The challenge of building a real, valuable software business (or any business) is so much harder than using LLM to prompt “build me a successful software business”

Re: You Are Here

#14

Post by themacguffinman »

pousada wrote: post #9
IhateAI_2 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

What went viral? To me it just seems like people are pretty divided on the topic which makes sense as it’s an emerging technology. I feel I see as many posts against AI as glazing it.

The recent frontpage post I see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46926245 (not on frontpage anymore, probably downranked by flamewar detector since it has tons of comments)

Re: You Are Here

#16

Post by AIorNot »

jdjdndbdhsjsb wrote: post #4
ossa-ma wrote: post #2

With all due respect to the author, this is a lot of words for not much substance. Rehashing the same thoughts everyone already thinks but not being bold enough to make a concrete prediction. This is the time for bold predictions, you’ve just told us we’re in a crucible moment yet you end the article passively….

Here is my bold prediction: 2026 is the year where companies start the lay offs. 2026 is the year where we all realise that we can be our own company and build the stuff in our dreams rather than the mundane crap we do at work. Honestly I am optimistic about computing in general. Llms will open things up for novices and experts alike. We can move into I the fields where we can use our brain power... But all we need i…

I don't know, its a bit of a hellscape in tech right now as thousands of people with deep domain knowledge and people knowledge and business knowledge (ie experienced engineers managers and product owners), were laid off by C Suites desperate to keep the AI funded mandates going

Do you know how hard it to make a successful company or even make money? Its like saying any actor can goto hollywood and be a star

VCs wont fund everyone

Nobody is sure of anything

Re: You Are Here

#17

Post by PostOnce »

I personally believe (and so far, my evidence suggests) that AI doesn't anywhere near as well as claimed for almost any of its use cases.

However, let's suppose the alternate case:

If AI works as claimed, people in their tens of millions will be out of work.

New jobs won't be created quickly enough to keep them occupied (and fed).

Billionaires own the media and the social media and will use it to attempt to prevent change (i.e. apocalyptic taxation)

What, then, will those people do? Well, they say "the devil makes work for idle hands", and I'm curious what that's going to look like.

Re: You Are Here

#18

Post by Muromec »

jdjdndbdhsjsb wrote: post #4
ossa-ma wrote: post #2

With all due respect to the author, this is a lot of words for not much substance. Rehashing the same thoughts everyone already thinks but not being bold enough to make a concrete prediction. This is the time for bold predictions, you’ve just told us we’re in a crucible moment yet you end the article passively….

Here is my bold prediction: 2026 is the year where companies start the lay offs. 2026 is the year where we all realise that we can be our own company and build the stuff in our dreams rather than the mundane crap we do at work. Honestly I am optimistic about computing in general. Llms will open things up for novices and experts alike. We can move into I the fields where we can use our brain power... But all we need i…

>Here is my bold prediction: 2026 is the year where companies start the lay offs.

Start? Excuse moi

Re: You Are Here

#19

Post by IhateAI_3 »

tptacek wrote: post #15
IhateAI_2 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

That's literally what automation is. You could make the same argument against the power loom. People did!

*THE word ''Luddite'' continues to be applied with contempt to anyone with doubts about technology, especially the nuclear kind. Luddites today are no longer faced with human factory owners and vulnerable machines. As well-known President and unintentional Luddite D. D. Eisenhower prophesied when he left office, there is now a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals and corporate CEO's, up against whom us average poor bastards are completely outclassed, although Ike didn't put it quite that way. We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, even though, because of the data revolution, it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the people any of the time. If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come - you heard it here first - when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass, let us devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed. It is certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward to if, God willing, we should live so long. Meantime, as Americans, we can take comfort, however minimal and cold, from Lord Byron's mischievously improvised song, in which he, like other observers of the time, saw clear identification between the first Luddites and our own revolutionary origins.

It begins : As the Liberty lads o'er the sea Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, So we, boys, we Will die fighting, or live free, And down with all kings but King Ludd!*

Your homework:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/r...

Re: You Are Here

#20

Post by ericpauley »

mohsen1 wrote: post #6

I am thinking about this a lot right now. Pretty existential stuff. I think builders are gonna be fine. The type of programmer were people would put up with just because they could really go in their cave for a few days and come out with a bug fix that nobody else on the team could figure out is going to have a hard time. Interestingly AI coding is really good at that sort of thing and less good at fully grasping use…

This has been my experience too. That insane race condition inside the language runtime that is completely inscrutable? Claude one-shots it. Ask it to work on that same logic to add features and it will happily introduce race conditions that are obvious to an engineer but a local test will never uncover.
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