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Cannibalism

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Re: Cannibalism

#21

Post by kombookcha »

tags2k wrote: post #5
kombookcha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced the people who swear by them either have very different work tasks from me, or they have very different ideas about what a job well done looks like. I feel like everything I apply these things to sends me up a much messier and long winded route to a useable result, when compared to just doing it myself from the jump. Even the things they're ostensibly good at like sorting data comes out so messy it's p…

I tend to do the main structural parts myself and tell it to fill in the gaps and add tests, which sort of works 70% of the time. It may not be worth what my company is being charged.

That's my approach as well. When I try to mentally compare the cost of the subscription to the performance, I think it's extremely dubious at best.

Re: Cannibalism

#22

Post by wiseowise »

nelsonfigueroa wrote: post #18

"Fourth, we will not find ourselves working less. Rather, there will be a bimodal outcome: those unable to find a place in the new AI-powered industry will fall out of it entirely, while those that remain are worked harder and harder as they drive automated development systems. Five PRs a week? Hah! Try fifty. Or five hundred." My experience with AI/LLMs summed up. The baseline expectation got higher. I didn't get an…

Why would it? Who, with a half brain, thought that you’d ever work less?

Re: Cannibalism

#23

Post by notarobot123 »

I think this is largely right. Software engineering as a stable, high-earning and in demand career is a thing of the past.

Those who make it work from here are those who've changed their work completely to resemble something more like a hands-off tech lead. There will of course be the lucky few who've made it work as artisans without direct commercial pressures to conform to the new "right way to do it". But the careers many of us have had is not a path available for others to follow anymore.

The irony of automating away "inefficiencies", "drudgery" and the "labour intensive" parts of other professions stings all the more when the sharp end of that shtick is pointed back in our direction.

Re: Cannibalism

#24

Post by Joker_vD »

9dev wrote: post #19
nelsonfigueroa wrote: post #18

"Fourth, we will not find ourselves working less. Rather, there will be a bimodal outcome: those unable to find a place in the new AI-powered industry will fall out of it entirely, while those that remain are worked harder and harder as they drive automated development systems. Five PRs a week? Hah! Try fifty. Or five hundred." My experience with AI/LLMs summed up. The baseline expectation got higher. I didn't get an…

As it was the case with all productivity catalysts in the past. The Industrial Revolution promised machines would work and we’d get to have leisure time. Instead, it brought 16 hour factory shifts. This will be no different

> Instead, it brought 16 hour factory shifts.

To paraphrase Marx, "And so, the equivalent amount of labour required to produce the goods needed to sustain a worker for a day is, say, 4 hours. But that doesn't mean the selfsame worker can work for no longer that 4 hours! He can be forced to work six, or eight, or twelve hours a day, and whatever additional goods he produces — that's the surplus product, which in this case goes straight to line up the factory owner's pockets".

Re: Cannibalism

#25

Post by wiseowise »

tags2k wrote: post #2

I was with the article - especially the bit about the 10% an LLM loses and how that loss can be de-amplified across eventual meaning, but then... "My first instinct is to laugh and shake my head. One need not look very far to find indignant software developers absolutely certain that their jobs cannot possibly be automated away by the very tools their industry contemporaries are creating to replace them. I suspect yo…

Tech bro lamenting and berating developers how immoral and hypocritical they’re for “laughing” (has this ever happened?) at other professions, while doing the same. Story as old as time.

Re: Cannibalism

#26

Post by totetsu »

vatsachak wrote: post #8
cjs_ac wrote: post #7

> These tools are here. They’re not going away. They might very well go away. There is definitely an AI bubble, and it remains to be seen whether it deflates gradually or pops spectacularly. Geoeconomics might destroy them by constraining their access to hardware. The capabilities are real, but whether those capabilities are realised is a different matter.

Deepseek is realistic about this and is offering great prices. I think that once companies are more realistic about token demand they can start making a profit

What is China subsidises its inference providers to provide like utility level "intelligence" at or below cost globally until all the knowledge jobs in the west go the way of the manufacturing ones..

Re: Cannibalism

#27

Post by 9dev »

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #3

Are people seriously getting use out of LLMs? Everything they produce is extermely sloppy in my experience, like actually mostly useless. I really dont understand the hype. Its very confusing.

Every time I have actually engaged in conversations with people making the same claim you do, it turned out they did not really invest time into learning how to work with coding agents: They assumed, given that they’re developers, the know how to code, and thus would knew how to steer a coding agent.

That is a wrong assumption, however. An agent is an entirely new tool in your toolbox, with no similarity to any of those you already have. You will need to learn how to wield it, like a new programming language or technology you’re unfamiliar with. You will need to do some small side projects to learn. You will need to develop a feeling for how it reacts to your inputs, when to reset the session, pass it links to documentation, or interrupt it.

None of this comes intuitively. It takes time and effort, and if you’re not ready to consciously invest that, coding agents are not going to work efficiently for you. That doesn’t take away from their utility though.

Re: Cannibalism

#28

Post by wiseowise »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #11
tags2k wrote: post #2

I was with the article - especially the bit about the 10% an LLM loses and how that loss can be de-amplified across eventual meaning, but then... "My first instinct is to laugh and shake my head. One need not look very far to find indignant software developers absolutely certain that their jobs cannot possibly be automated away by the very tools their industry contemporaries are creating to replace them. I suspect yo…

Is this sarcastic or do you just not see the irony?

There’s no irony. Author made a straw man of some bad, bad developer laughing at poor cabbies and it all clicked once VCs came for the fellow professionals.

Re: Cannibalism

#29

Post by dmje »

Great piece, well written and succinctly sums up my thoughts.

The bit I still don’t understand is how we all put up with the hallucinations. I was questioning Gemini last night about whether it could analyse a Fourtet song and give me a break down of the structure from beginning to end. “Sure!” it said with the endless enthusiasm you get from Gen tools, and then proceeded to spit out an absolute sack of fabricated shit. I pushed back, it apologised, and then generated more crap that had nothing to do with reality, I pushed back, we looped again, still just total fiction: “the drums don’t come in until bar 16” on a song that opens with a drum loop, that kind of crap.

We’re so so far away from tools here that are anywhere near being trustworthy and accurate. And yet we (including myself) are chunking out code after code. It’s so bizarre.

I’m guessing it’s that humans don’t have capacity to deal with this kind of scenario - it’s like having a junior staff member who is utterly incredible 90% of the time - completely convincing in their certainty and skill level, and then 10% of the time you catch them doing a shit in their desk drawer because they couldn’t be arsed to walk to the toilet. AI’s are basically sociopaths.

Re: Cannibalism

#30

Post by watwut »

wiseowise wrote: post #22
nelsonfigueroa wrote: post #18

"Fourth, we will not find ourselves working less. Rather, there will be a bimodal outcome: those unable to find a place in the new AI-powered industry will fall out of it entirely, while those that remain are worked harder and harder as they drive automated development systems. Five PRs a week? Hah! Try fifty. Or five hundred." My experience with AI/LLMs summed up. The baseline expectation got higher. I didn't get an…

Why would it? Who, with a half brain, thought that you’d ever work less ?

Literally no one, no one even claimed we would work less due to AI. It is one of many absurd claims about AI here. There was no period in which we would get think pieces predicting more leisure time.

We had plenty of think pieces about making people obsolete, about destruction, generally in celebratory tone. I cant even think of period where AI think pieces would promises much positive - it was sold to CEOs, so pitch was always "higher unemployment".

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