If there will be actual AGI (or super intelligence), none of these arguments hold. The machines will just be better than any programmer money can buy.
Of course at that point every knowledge worker is probably unemployable anyway.
Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
141–150 of 886 posts
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#142What evidence do we have that AI is actually replacing programmers already? The article treats messaging on this as a forgone conclusion, but I strongly suspect it's all hype-cycle BS to cover layoffs, or a misreading of "Meta pivots to AI" headlines.
Zuckerberg said it. https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/mark-zuckerberg-plans-to-repla...
Zuckerberg, as always, is well known for making excellent business decisions that lead to greater sector buy in. The Metaverse is going great.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#143What evidence do we have that AI is actually replacing programmers already? The article treats messaging on this as a forgone conclusion, but I strongly suspect it's all hype-cycle BS to cover layoffs, or a misreading of "Meta pivots to AI" headlines.
There is little evidence that AI is replacing engineers, but there is a whole lot of evidence that shareholders and execs really love the idea and are trying every angle to achieve it.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#144There's such a huge disconnect between people reading headlines and developers who are actually trying to use AI day to day in good faith. We know what it is good at and what it's not.
It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase. In fact I've become so bearish on the technology trying to use it for this, I'm thinking there's going to have to be some other breakthrough or something other than LLM's. It just doesn't feel right around the corner. Now completing small chunks of mundane code, explaining code, doing very small mundane changes. Very good at.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#145We have fired all our programmers. However, the AI is hard to work with, it expects specific wording in order to program our code as expected. We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.
What job title are you thinking of using?
oftwaresay engineeryay
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are skating where bleachers full of hype men are screaming that the puck will go.
I think the common theme is that a lot of people: meaning both people in the community, like here on HN, and people making decisions in industry, are treating AI today as if it's what they hope it will be in five years. That's a very leveraged bet, which isn't always the wrong call, but I'm not convinced they are aware that that's what they're doing. I think this is different from the usual hype cycle.
Well, it still feels like a form of hype to me. They are being very loudly told by ever AI cloud service, of which there are many, that worker-replacing AI agents are just around the corner so they should buy in with the inferior agents that are being offered today.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#147What evidence do we have that AI is actually replacing programmers already? The article treats messaging on this as a forgone conclusion, but I strongly suspect it's all hype-cycle BS to cover layoffs, or a misreading of "Meta pivots to AI" headlines.
Another issue is that the article assumes companies will let go of all programmers. They will make sure to keep some in case the fire spreads. Simple as that.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#148We have fired all our programmers. However, the AI is hard to work with, it expects specific wording in order to program our code as expected. We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision.
That was pretty funny.
Bonus points if it was posted by an AI bot.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#149Some companies will try to fire as many programmers as possible and will end up struggling bc they have no moats against other companies with access to the same AI, or will hit some kind of AI saturation usefulness threshold. Other companies will figure out a smart hybrid to utilize existing talent and those are probably the ones that will thrive among the competition.
But why do you need programmers to utilize the AI? The whole point of AI is that it doesn't need an "operator".
I'm not talking about GH Copilot or some autocomplete IDE feature, I'm talking about fully autonomous agents 2-3 years in the future. Just look at the insane rate of progress in the past 2 years. The next two years will be even faster if the past few months are anything to go by.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#150Time to wake up and think in terms of 10-20 years ahead. Everyone around NVIDIA dies out... anyone with GPU compute ideas just cannot succeed... 3Dfx full of saboteurs that hinder their progress.
Open source takes away the livelihood of programmers and gives it to moneymen for free. They used open source to train AI models. Programmers got back a few stars and a pat in the back. And some recognition, but mostly nothing. All this while big corps use their work without compensation. There is zero compensation options for open source programmers on github. Somehow it's left out.
Same bullshit comes up again and again in different forms. Like your ideas worth nothing blablabla. Suuure, but moneymen usually have zero ideas and they like to expropriate others' ideas, FOR FREE. While naive people give away their ideas and work for free, the other side gives back nooothiiiing.
It's already too late.
So programmers and other areas that will be aiified in the coming decades will be slowly going extinct. AI is a skill appropriation device that in the long term will make people useless, so they don't need an artist, a musician etc. They will just need a capable AI to create whatever they want, without the hassle of the human element. It's the ultimate control tool to make people SLAVES.
Hope I'm wrong.