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Feeling Sad about AI

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Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#231

Post by mike_hearn »

willchis wrote: post #211
notpachet wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a larger existential crisis still in store for you. Our global civilization is collapsing. We are choking to death on the unchecked negative externalities of our own progress. It is our species' Achilles heel. Whether or not an individual developer adapts to this temporary capability blip (agentic coding) will not matter in the long run. The systems necessary for supporting these capabilities are too brittle…

I keep mentioning to people that last winter parts of the arctic were 10C hotter than the average for the last 100 years and I get blank looks.

Where did you get that from? This must be relying on picking very specific parts of the Arctic. This year has not been unusual for the Arctic, in fact, it was colder than the normally cited average (1958-2002). Take a look, see for yourself:

https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

It didn't go above freezing this year, which is unusual (actually I think it may be the first time on record!)

Sea ice extent is a fair bit above the record low in 2012, where "record" here means arbitrarily starting in 1981, although sea ice extents have been observed much further back.

https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...

Greenland mass balance was entirely average and is currently at the top end of the known observations, it seems:

https://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#232

Post by cindyllm »

urue wrote: post #22
asdfman123 wrote: post #6

I feel like this is a rational response. Personally, while I'm becoming increasingly convinced there's going to be a wave of SWE layoffs, another part of me doesn't grasp it yet. I don't feel it. I was an AI skeptic for a while but it's literally doing my job for me right now. Every month it needs less of my help. Once they replace SWEs, they're going to turn around and replace every other knowledge worker yet. But m…

Lmao this is hilarious. I’m not a SWE (I’m retired) but this idea that hurrrr durr - if SWE’s are fked so is everyone else! No this is wrong - it may hurt your ego but get over it. What software is and what software engineers do is pretty unique compared with other industries and what workers do. And it just so happens producing software is uniquely suited to llm’s. Moreover much of software will become consolidated…

[dead]

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#233

Post by forinti »

chasd00 wrote: post #224
forinti wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This week I helped a colleague with a bug. He used an LLM to sort it out before telling me about it. I'm old fashioned, so I looked at the code, saw that it used an old lib and then I searched online for a newer version. Lo and behold, the bug had been ironed out. AI makes it really easy to not think properly about your task.

how did his AI solve the bug? I've had cc recognize a bug was in an outdated lib and then update it to resolve the issue. Granted it made that determination by finding the source code to the lib, identifying the bug, and then verifying it was fixed by looking at the source of the updated lib.

AI told him to use an alternative function which was similar but didn't have the same bug.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#234

Post by mike_hearn »

ericmcer wrote: post #210
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

I am wondering how this will effect other industries more. We are pretty flexible as software engineers because our skillset needs to constantly evolve. For a lawyer or radiologist or anyone who has been able to do the same thing every day for 20 years? What kind of reaction will they have when they see the ground shifting beneath them.

They won't.

Radiologists already got told years ago they were doomed by no less than Geoff Hinton. There are more of them working today than before and their salaries are humungous.

https://fortune.com/article/ai-godfather-radiologists-obsole...

Lawyers are the best protected of anyone. The whole industry is caked in laws that lock in the existing cartels. You can't just do law, it's not an open industry like programming is.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#235

Post by mike_hearn »

gh0stcat wrote: post #155
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

I somewhat agree with this... but what is the long-term viability of vibe-coding? Of paying someone/something else for intelligence? Do you feel that you have stopped learning or could not create software now without the tool? Is it all just going to be local models? I'm not as confident that long term, we will be happy that the knowledge of software building itself might be broadly lost. Happy to hear thoughts of th…

But it was ever thus. The knowledge of writing assembly language has largely been lost. The vast majority of working programmers today could not write a whole program in assembly, without looking up nearly everything.

In the early years, when compilers were quite bad, it was common for people to write whole programs in assembly even when they could have written C because their output was higher quality. And there were in fact die-hards who just refused to use a compiler in principle, even long after that became irrational. Rollercoaster Tycoon was totally written in assembly, not a single line of C or C++ anywhere. In the mid 90s!

But now only a small number of people need to know it and learn it. For everyone else we let the "artificial intelligence" of the compiler work it out. And whereas it was once worse than humans at writing assembly, these days it's usually better.

Does anyone care? No. It wasn't important.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#236

Post by doc_roniday »

slowin wrote: post #88
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

> The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well, is to be very disheartened by it. I think it depends on the person. I've been waiting for AI since I first saw Wargames as a child. As soon as I saw that agents could code at or beyond my level, it felt like the entire world was unlocked. Now I can explore so many ideas that I was bottle-n…

Completely agree. There was never a lack of things for me to do, just time. I can explore so many ideas that I simply couldn't before.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#237

Post by mike_hearn »

datakan wrote: post #82
qarl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in both the game industry and the film industry - tell your son this: When you are passionate about your work - it comes at a serious price. We live in capitalism and so everything has its cost. Passion in the workplace is taken-advantage of by the corporation. Sure, maybe there are a few places. Maybe more at the beginning of the industry. But by and large you and your skills will be treate…

That's kinda what I feel like telling him. He has a lot of passion and he's a very smart kid. I don't want to crush that, I want to nurture it. I think being real about things is important though and he has a lot of years still to ultimately decide.

Don't sweat it. Everyone wants to write games at that age. I wanted to write games at 13, I was taking part in an open source game project at 15. Kid's interests in what kind of things they want to make do widen over time.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#238

Post by dmantis »

HEmanZ wrote: post #217
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

The fear isn’t about now, it’s about trajectory. Everyone’s existential dread would evaporate if this is where it stops. The dread is: where does this stop? Right now, with ai I can fly. But when does ai no longer need me? Just as an extreme example: a this pace, how far are we from “AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”? If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai. I…

If there is no jobs, there is no modern economy in today's sense and "money" costs nothing.

That will trigger very interesting consequences.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#239

Post by simonw »

palmotea wrote: post #230
chasd00 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI technology has not been developed to make any regular person's life better or help humanity in any way What are some examples of technology that did make regular people's life better or help humanity? I think of AI as like the invention of the loom. It made textiles a lot faster but idk about making lives better by itself. It made more clothes but you still had to buy them. I can't really think of a technology t…

What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have. It's not like a building that's being built become some person needs shelter. It's more like some guy building a howitzer and just firing it randomly (hitting homes and people), just because he can and thinks it's cool and maybe can make some money selling tickets. After all, it was inevitable someone was going to built a howitz…

> What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have.

How confident are you in that? ChatGPT has over a billion monthly active users now (https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio...), I expect at least some of those users are using it to help solve problems they have.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#240

Post by HEmanZ »

dmantis wrote: post #238
HEmanZ wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear isn’t about now, it’s about trajectory. Everyone’s existential dread would evaporate if this is where it stops. The dread is: where does this stop? Right now, with ai I can fly. But when does ai no longer need me? Just as an extreme example: a this pace, how far are we from “AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”? If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai. I…

If there is no jobs, there is no modern economy in today's sense and "money" costs nothing. That will trigger very interesting consequences.

Why would no jobs mean no money?
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