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"AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

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Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#121

Post by sasmithjr »

lapcat wrote: post #40
roywiggins wrote: post #5

What if it just makes most jobs worse, or replaces good jobs with more, worse jobs? "Meat robot constantly monitored and directed by AI overlords" is technically a job.

> What if it just makes most jobs worse, or replaces good jobs with more, worse jobs? Right. Consider: 1) Senior engineer writing code vs. 2) Senior engineer prompting and code reviewing LLM agent The senior engineer is essential to the process in each case, because the LLM agent left to its own devices will produce nonfunctional crap. But think about the pleasantness of the job and the job satisfaction of the senior…

I don't think it's an exclusive choice between the two, though. I think senior engineers will end up doing both. Looking at GitHub Copilot's agent, it can work asynchronously from the user, so a senior engineer can send it off to work on multiple issues at once while still working on tasks that aren't well suited for the agent.

And really, I think many senior engineers are already doing both in a lot of cases where they're helping guide and teach junior and early mid-level developers.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#122

Post by theSherwood »

kypro wrote: post #110
theSherwood wrote: post #60

The analogies to previous technologies always seem misguided to me. Maybe it allows us to make some predictions about the next few years, but not more than that. We do not know when/where we will hit the limits on AI capabilities. I think this is completely unlike any previous technology. AI is intentionally being developed to be able to make decisions in any domain humans work in. This is unlike any previous technol…

While robotics are still relatively immature, I would think of AI as something akin to a remote worker. Anything a human remote worker can do, a super human remote worker will be able to do better, faster and for a fraction of the cost – this includes work that humans currently do in offices but could theoretically done remotely. We should therefore assume if (when) AI broadly surpasses the capabilities of a human re…

This matches my expectations for the near term pretty closely.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#123

Post by roywiggins »

qoez wrote: post #23
roywiggins wrote: post #5

What if it just makes most jobs worse, or replaces good jobs with more, worse jobs? "Meat robot constantly monitored and directed by AI overlords" is technically a job.

I can't make up my mind if I'd prefer an AI boss or not. Human bosses can be quite terrible and not having to deal with an emotional being seems kinda nice.

Your human boss can't feasibly maintain a panopticon with only their human brain, AI arguably can. Every single word uttered or pixel emitted can be saved and analyzed, for relative pennies.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#124

Post by palmotea »

tines wrote: post #115

People compare AI to the automation that happened in e.g. car factories. Lots of people were put out of jobs, and that’s just the way things go, they say. But the difference is that automotive automation does create way more jobs than it destroyed. Programmers, designers, machine maintainers, computer engineers, mechanical engineers, materials scientists, all have a part to play in making those machines. More people…

I think one interesting way to frame AI is that it will "degrade" jobs: force speed-ups and remove much of the enjoyable and engaging aspects and replace them with drudgery.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#125

Post by gh0stcat »

eranation wrote: post #16

My personal thoughts on this are - A good lawyer + AI will likely win in court against a non lawyer with AI who would likely win in court against just an AI - A good software engineer + AI will ship features faster / safer vs a non engineer with AI, who will beat just AI - A good doctor + AI will save more lives than a non doctor + AI, who will perform better than just AI As long as a human has a marginal boost to AI…

My concern though is that over time, a "good ANYTHING" + AI will converge to just AI, as you continue to outsource your thinking processes to AI, it will create dependence like any tool. This is a problem for any individual's long term prospects as a source of expertise. How do you think one might combat this? It seems the skills are at odds, and you are in the best position at the very START of using AI, and then your growth likely slows or stops completely as you migrate to thinking via AI API calls.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#126

Post by ednite »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #114
ednite wrote: post #108

Not an expert here, just speaking from experience as a working dev. I don’t think AI is going to replace my job as a software developers anytime soon, but it’s definitely changing how we work (and in many cases, already has). Personally, I use AI a lot. It’s great for boilerplate, getting unstuck, or even offering alternative solutions I wouldn’t have thought of. But where it still struggles sometimes is with the why…

I suspect that we will be seeing some very creative supply chain compromises. If you can train AI to insert calls to your malware server, in whatever solutions it provides, that's a huge win.

Totally agree! That’s where I think cybersecurity experts and system administrators deserve a lot of credit too. AI might help automate some of the work, but it’s also conjuring up threats that are way more complex and sneaky.

Hopefully, countermeasures and AI-powered defense tools can keep up. It's going to be some type of an arms race, for sure.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#127

Post by bob1029 »

siliconc0w wrote: post #100

For SWE, there is a huge misconception that implementation is bottleneck - for mid level to senior it takes much longer to decide what to build than to actually build it. Each additional line of code adds weight to the airframe.

Architecture & aesthetics are the real bottlenecks in developing products that customers are actually interested in paying money for. This is why everyone seems to struggle so hard with the frontend development duties.

You cannot solve for taste and art with frameworks and patterns. Having a fixed-sized canvas and standardized brushes/paints to work with is not much help if you are ass at painting.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#128

Post by tines »

ednite wrote: post #108

Not an expert here, just speaking from experience as a working dev. I don’t think AI is going to replace my job as a software developers anytime soon, but it’s definitely changing how we work (and in many cases, already has). Personally, I use AI a lot. It’s great for boilerplate, getting unstuck, or even offering alternative solutions I wouldn’t have thought of. But where it still struggles sometimes is with the why…

I would agree with you, but the people making the decision to fire or keep you don’t care about quality, nor do they care about understanding AI or its limitations. If AI mostly does kinda the right thing 70% of the time but saves the company $80k a year, that’s a no-brainer. We’re being Pollyanna-ish to think that anyone cares about the things we care about, that you mention in your post.

If firing you saves $1.50 a year, they’ll do it.

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#129

Post by bluefirebrand »

AstroBen wrote: post #99
bluefirebrand wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand does not always boom this way AI companies are positioning themselves as "the everything machine" The vast majority of software written today is "capture data -> transform data (optional) -> display data nicely formatted and easily accessible" If an AI can wire into your database to retrieve the data in the format you want, then a bunch of the job is done If the AI can also be made to present a form to users t…

These basic CRUD apps are solved with no-code tools today aren't they? Why do we need AI for that 'the everything machine' is pure fantasy and hype

No they aren't solved by No-Code tools. No-Code tools have become "Don't write code, just write endless configuration. And then when it doesn't do what you want, write code anyways"

Except now your code starting point is an absolute mess under the hood so it's a complete crapshoot to build out anything meaningful

Re: "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing

#130

Post by lambdasquirrel »

ednite wrote: post #108

Not an expert here, just speaking from experience as a working dev. I don’t think AI is going to replace my job as a software developers anytime soon, but it’s definitely changing how we work (and in many cases, already has). Personally, I use AI a lot. It’s great for boilerplate, getting unstuck, or even offering alternative solutions I wouldn’t have thought of. But where it still struggles sometimes is with the why…

The AI I use at work can’t set up IAM correctly, didn’t even know it needed to, let alone associate said IAM principal with the correct k8s RBAC groups. I do appreciate that it ground through a lot of boilerplate, but I’m concerned that it’s like buying a new Sony or Leica camera as a beginner photographer. As with your non-coder VBA friend, it might make them think they’re a lot more skilled than they really are. And this is specifically why I’ve never touched VBA.
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