Frankly, I agree with the points in the article, yet I'm triggered slightly by the screaming dramatic writing like "destroy everything".
Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
161–170 of 886 posts
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#162Earlier 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.
I genuinely wonder if this is a "too big to fail" scenario though, where mass belief (and maybe a helping hand via govt subsidies/regulations) powers it to a point where everything is just kind of worse but cheaper for shareholders/execs and the economic landscape can't support an actual disruption. That's my fear at least.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#163There'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…
> It's incredibly far away from doing any significant change in a mature codebase
The COBOL crisis at Y2K comes to mind.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#164We 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.
Actually I think that's the near future, or close to it.
1. Humans also need specific wording in order to program code that stakeholders expected. A lot of people are laughing at AI because they think getting requirements is a human privilege.
2. On the contrary, I don't think people need to hire AI interfacers. Instead, business stakeholders are way more interested to interface with AI simply because they just want to get things done instead of filling a ticket for us. Some of them are going to be good interfacers with proper integration -- and yes we programmers are helping them to do so.
Side note: I don't think you are going to hear someone shouting that they are going to replace humans with AI. It started with this: people integrate AI into their workflow, layoff 10%, and see if AI helps to fill in the gap so they can freeze hire. Then they layoff 10% more.
And yes we programmers are helping the business to do that, with a proud and smile face.
Good luck.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#165There'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…
Same, LLMs are interesting but on their own are a dead end. I think something needs to actually experience the world in 3d in real time to understand what it is actually coding things or doing tasks for.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#166"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." - King Solomon
Litter, palanquin, and sedan chair carriers were fired.
Oarsmen were fired.
Horses were fired.
. . . [time] . . .
COBOL programmers where fired.
and, so on.
What was the expectation; that programmers will be forever? Lest we forget, barely a century ago, programmers started to push out a large swath of non-programmers.
The more important question is what roles will push out whatever roles AI/LLMs create.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#167If 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.
What if AGI is extremely expensive to run?
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tech innovation destroys lives in our current capitalist society because only the owners get the benefits. If you want to become a (partial) owner, buy stocks. :-)
Do I really own Intel/Tesla/Microsoft by buying their stock? No I don't. I can't influence anything on any of these companies unless I was already a billionaire with a real seat at the table. Even on startups where, in theory, employees have some skin in the game, it's not really how it works is it? You still can't influence almost anything and you're susceptible to all the bad decisions the founders will make to app…
You can pretty easily submit shareholder proposals for trolling purposes or ask questions.
Other investors will probably vote "no" to your proposals, but for many companies you can force a vote for a pretty low minimum. In Canada, you're legally entitled to submit a proposal if you've owned C$2000 shares for 6 months.
https://www.osler.com/en/insights/updates/when-can-a-company...
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#169We 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.
> We have hired people with expertise in the specific language needed to transmit our specifications to the AI with more precision. These people are however not experts in pretending to be a obedient lackeys.
Hey! I haven't spent a decade of smiling through the pain to be considered an amateur lackey.
Re: Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
#170Such writings, articles, and sayings remind me of the Luddite movement. Unfortunately, preventing what is to come is not within our control. By fighting against windmills, one only bends the spear in hand. The Zeitgeist indicates that this will happen soon or in the near future. Even though developers are intelligent, hardworking, and good at their jobs, they will always be lacking and helpless in some way against th…
Once AI achieves runaway self improvement predicting the future is even more pointless than it is today. You’re looking at an economy in which the best human is worse at any and all jobs than the worst robot. There are no past examples to extrapolate from.
> You’re looking at an economy in which the best human is worse at any and all jobs than the worst robot.
Yeah yeah, they said that about domesticated working animals and steam powered machines too.
Humans in mecha trump robots.