Ex-GitHub CEO launches a new developer platform for AI agents

I may just be a "doomer", but my current take is we have maybe 3-5 years of decent compensation left to "extract" from our profession. Being an AI "expert" will likely extend that range slightly, but at the cost of being one of the "traitors" that helps build your own replacement (but it will happen with or without you).

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I think there's a distribution of agency in humans, hence why we have insults like "npcs". Its probably not fair to use that word to describe people, but the cliche has some truth in it and I think a lot of tech exploits this.

I personally rarely need to use google maps, and if I do its a glance at it on the beginning of a trip, and I can find my way there through normal navigation. I might look again if I get lost, whereas, I have friends that use it to give directions to go five blocks. I don't think sense of direction is innate either, but its a muscle you build and some people choose to not work on that muscle and they suffer the consequences, albeit minor consequences.

I think we are seeing something similar with LLMs with the development and maintenance of reading, planning, creative and critical thinking skills. While some people might have a higher baseline, I think everyone has the ability to strengthen those muscles and the world implores us to do that in many situations, however, now we can pay Altman $0.0010 cents to offload that workout onto a GPU much like people do with navigation and maps. Tech companies love to exploit the dopamine driven response from taking shortcuts, getting somewhere quickly, its no different here.

I think (/know) the implications of this are much more hazardous than consequences of not exercising your navigational abilities, and at least with navigation there are fallback to assist people (signs, landmarks ect). There are no societal fallbacks for llm assisted thinking once someone becomes dependent on it for all aspects of analysis, planning and creativity. Once it is taken away (or they can't afford a quality of output the previously did), where do those natural abilities stand? The implications are very terrifying in my opinion.

I'm personally trying to stay as far away as possible from these things, I see where this is heading and its not as inconsequential as needing Maps to navigate 5 blocks. I do not want my critical thinking skills correlated 1:1 to the quality and quantity of tokens I can afford or have access too anymore than I do not want my navigational abilities correlated 1:1 to the quality of Maps service available to me.

People will say that this is cope, its the new calculator, whatever.. Have fun, I promise you that not knowing trigonometry but having access to an LLM does not give you the ability to write CAD software. I actually think not using these will give you a huge competitive advantage in the future. Someone who has great navigation skills will likely win a navigational competition in the mountains, or survive longer in certain situations. While the scope of those skills is narrow, it still proves a point[0]. The scope of your reading, critical thinking, creativity and planning skills is not limited.

[0]: It should be noted that some of the worlds most high agency and successful people actually participate in navigation as a sport called Orienteering, and spend boatloads of money in it.. I wonder why that is?

Clicks through to see what Tom or Chris started…

Oh, nevermind, it’s some MS dude.

I have a reading list of a bunch of papers i didn't get through over the past 2 years. it is crazy how many papers on this list are completely not talked about anymore.

I kinda regret going through the SeLU paper lol back in the late 2010s.