Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm worried it might get bad

danielmiessler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 237 posts

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#121

Post by jmaestrooper »

maxehmookau wrote: post #11
generalpf wrote: post #2

Referencing Marc Benioff making bold claims about AI isn't much evidence, he's pulling these numbers out of thin air. Despite claiming they won't hire software engineers in 2025, there are plenty of positions open at Salesforce for software engineers.

Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans. Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place. That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would…

Can someone please refer me to the hard data on "overhiring in 2020"?

I was laid off as part of the initial panic in early 2020. The job market for IT for the entirety of 2020 was dead. D-E-A-D. There was a _very_ small pickup in the summer when people got more optimistic about the vaccines but it waned very quickly.

I'm in the Midwest so it might have been different in the West but I doubt it was that much different.

There was _some_ pickup in 2021, when companies realized the end of the world isn't happening soon, but it was not very significant. IT job market never really normalized, there was some pickup in 2022 but by then LLM hype started causing layoffs to go up and openings down.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#122

Post by evklein »

fusslo wrote: post #110
ponector wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many examples of buggy and vuln-ridden non-AI-hallucinated software. Never been a rush to fix them.

I've been thinking about this lately. While we engineers understand how to judge and evaluate AI solutions, I am not sure Business Owners (BO) care. BO's are ok with a certain percentage of bugs/rework/inefficiency/instability. And the tradeoff of eliminating (or marginalizing) Engineering may be worth the increased percentage of unfavorable outcomes.

Probably depends on BO/stakeholder as well. B2B solution that has a low risk of killing anyone? Maybe fuck it, let the model have its way.

Technology that controls software that keeps people alive, controls infrastructure, etc., uhhhh I don't think so. I guess we're just waiting for the first news story of someone's pacemaker going haywire and shocking them to death because the monitoring code was vibed through to production.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#123

Post by quesera »

righthand wrote: post #70

> Homelessness skyrockets because people can't pay their rent, but now it's whole families on the streets > We start to see unrest and/or riots against "the rich" because there are no jobs, and people are being evicted > Crime goes up significantly Arguably once a good percentage of people become unhoused, we are no longer living in a fair society. IT SHOULD break down into violence. But then so say "Crime goes up si…

How about "activities we consider crimes today"?

A society always exists, even in a total dissolution of the previously-existing social order (which we are not truly contemplating here).

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#124

Post by dysoco »

I don't want to come off as insensitive, and as a developer with a few years of experience and about to graduate, I'm obviously a bit worried about AI as well. However, this reads like an American overpanicking because they're used to living with a certain employment and economic stability that is just not the norm in most of the world, and are coming to terms with instability for the first time.

I come from a country where emigrating in search of new work, or trying to reinvent yourself and switch jobs, driving an Uber or flipping burgers if necessary to stay afloat, etc. is the norm. We've had a lot of political and economic instability, science and health defunding, etc., and yes, it's not great, but also people just... live on, and manage to do okay.

Yes, I know about the recent advancements in AI, but barring the AGI case which I believe is a bit overblown in this article, I think the rest, especially the Trump situation, tariffs, unrest, etc., will pass as well.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#125

Post by JKCalhoun »

edoceo wrote: post #64
JKCalhoun wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been a fan of UBI (and I'm often downvoted for that, ha ha). I like the idea of mandating an 18 hour work week or similar though. It still keeps the incentive to work — still rewards those who want to achieve more. One wonders though what impact that will have on society — so much additional free time. More television binging? I hope not.

Why do folk "need" to work? To justify their existence? Don't we have a duty of care for fellow humans?

Curiously, and this is probably just me, but I find I need to work in order to enjoy (value) my leisure time. Odd, I know.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#126

Post by CalRobert »

mikestew wrote: post #67
CalRobert wrote: post #36

Surprised he didn’t also mention US national debt and servicing it as interest rates rise.

Why would he? I’ve been hearing concerns about national debt my whole life (including the 80s when interest rates were a hell of a lot higher than now), and I’m retirement age. I’m not saying those chickens won’t eventually come home to roost, but probably not anytime soon. The U. S. has become quite skilled at giving that tin can a swift kick down the road.

I generally agree but servicing costs alone are over a trillion a year and have doubled in the last five or so, which is worrying. I don’t see how current leadership can address this https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-big-beautiful-bill-federa...

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#127

Post by jmaestrooper »

Sure, it wasn't bad when IT caused automation and elimination of many job positions and entire occupations, both manual and office. Now that we're on the receiving end of it, it is a bad thing all of a sudden.

As for the upcoming crisis, there's an increase in inequality and further accumulation of wealth among fewer and fewer individuals. As long as these individuals continue to spend their newly acquired wealth to compensate for lower spend by the less fortunate (which is exactly what's been happening), the economy will be fine.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#129

Post by Nevermark »

xunil2ycom wrote: post #89

If humans are replaced en masse by AI agents, companies will save billions until there is nobody left who can pay for their products and/or services because we're all destitute and on the dole. I'm scheduled to retire in about 9 years. I'm not sure I'm going to make it that long.

Owners of capital and machine labor can continue making bank and driving demand, even if there are no more human laborers making any money.

Humans are not necessary for an economy. It’s an easily missed assumption, because until now we are the only intelligent units of labor, capital ownership and demand.

But corporations long ago become units of all three, and AIs effectively become citizens simply by acting through an umbrella corporation. Corporations are (in)famously already first class political participates, via their money.

As long as AIs/corporations are motivated to compete and survive, demand from humans won’t be necessary for the economy to keep growing.

If anything, the ease with which AI/robotics will adapt to space habitats, and the vast resources untapped in the solar system, will enable a potentially human-independent economic explosion.

Re: I'm worried it might get bad

#130

Post by westurner »

enraged_camel wrote: post #86
aisosozjbx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Seems to match the trend of tech innovation creating more demand for tech. The reality is lots of software problems can’t be solved with the level of “intelligence” LLMs have. And if they could, it wouldn’t be just software in danger - it’d be every human profession. Even the physical ones, since AI would quickly figure out how to build machinery to automate those.

>> Why not? Because it's just cope. Look at the current reality. Are companies rushing to fix bad or even buggy code written by human devs? No, not in most cases. In most cases, if a piece of code "works", it is left the hell alone. And that's the thing about AI code: it does work. The quality is irrelevant in the overwhelming majority of cases (especially if it's other AIs that are adding to it, which is the case mo…

> The quality is irrelevant in the overwhelming majority of cases

Software quality is especially important in safety critical applications.

We should not expect an LLM trained solely on formally-verified code to produce formally-verified code. I don't think that also training on specs and hateful training material will fix that.

So then we're back to the original software engineering objectives of writing better SAST, DAST, Formal Method, side channel, and fuzzing tools for software quality assurance.

Post reply on HN