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What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

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Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#331

Post by gnatolf »

lelanthran wrote: post #187
ACCount37 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are these companies slowly gaining rot in those codebases? Yes! And that "yes" holds regardless of whether they use AI or not. Let's not pretend tech debt accumulation is somehow an AI problem. Some of the world's biggest companies routinely ship code that reeks of years of rot and decay.

> Let's not pretend tech debt accumulation is somehow an AI problem. Some of the world's biggest companies routinely ship code that reeks of years of rot and decay. While that is true, there's a large difference you are ignoring: a company can survive this type of rot indefinitely if it takes place at a certain rate. Their customers get time to acclimatise , the processes take into account the breakage, and adapt to…

I don't disagree, but AIs 'willingness' to do the most painful chores mitigates a lot, I think

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#332

Post by Der_Einzige »

overgard wrote: post #42
01100011 wrote: post #8

I don't feel like reading an article that will probably be out of date in 6 months, but from what I've seen, if agents keep improving at this rate, 80% of SWEs are going to be looking for new careers in 5 years.

If my baby keeps growing at this rate, in 5 years she'll be as tall as the empire state building.

This is a deepity.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#333

Post by simonw »

janussunaj wrote: post #327
simonw wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineering is about tradeoffs. The single most important tradeoff is always time: this feature would be better if I did X, but doing X would take me Y hours, is it worth the time or should I spend that time on something else? Not having to type in and then iterate on the code manually has a material effect on those time calculations. I absolutely agree that you need to understand the domain and code and too…

I agree, good software engineering is largely about making good trade-offs. However, I completely disagree with your characterization of LLM coding as saving you "typing in the code and sweating over every line of syntax". Claude will happily architect complex layers of OOP, multithreading, SIMD (a "personal favorite" of both Claude and ChatGPT). If you don't immerse yourself in the details, you will never know if yo…

> I think a reasonable tradeoff, in theory, would be: use the LLM to help you explore the space of solution, then dive into the details and choose the path that feels right.

Oh absolutely. One of my favorite prompting patterns is "suggest options for X", followed by serval rounds back and forth to discuss tradeoffs and maybe introduce new ideas into the mix.

I also use LLMs to build exploratory prototypes. I'm working on a project today which I've had different coding agents build a total of four times already. Those explorations gave me the confidence to dictate a finished solution that I'm sure will work well against all sorts of future cases.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#334

Post by nozzlegear »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #227
overgard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I (along with the rest of my team) got laid off from a big tech company at the end of January. The stated reason was "AI", although I think as we all know the real reason was "we overhired in 2022". I managed to get a job by April without putting in a lot of work, though (mostly just listened to recruiters until something hit my fancy). My work experience is good, but I don't know if it's so good that I…

>Long story short, I think narrative of job loss is way overblown. Long story short, I ate dinner so I think the narrative of people over the world being hungry is way overblown.

How many studies do we need showing that AI isn't causing massive job loss before you'll believe it? This isn't the first one showing these results.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#335

Post by nitwit005 »

chrsw wrote: post #264

The biggest impact of AI at my job are LLM code generators for software engineers. That's only scratching the surface of what AI can do for enterprises. My company doesn't yet have the orientation, inclination or technical expertise to unlock the true power of AI for our business goals. We're stuck buying packaged solutions from third parties and aren't integrating layers of intelligence in our environment. I doubt w…

Some companies have failed at hiring someone to write code, using low code solutions, and hiring contractors. They aren't going to succeed at using AI to create code either.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#336

Post by nozzlegear »

simonw wrote: post #240
jcranmer wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since so many people are doubting you here, here is a post from ~a year ago that's pulling the same "LLMs 6 months ago were crap, now they're awesome" shtick: https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/ . There's more posts along this vein being put out from 2024 on or so.

I find this attitude baffling. Things are allowed to get better more than once! The idea that "yeah, you said technology had improved in the past, and now you're saying it has improved again" is a gotcha just seems incoherent to me.

I think people are, rightly or wrongly, identifying goalpost moving re: coding agents are only just this year working well enough to impact work. I'm reminded of a quote I read last year from one of my favorite writers, Noah Smith:

> The debate over whether AI is taking people’s jobs may or may not last forever. If AI takes a lot of people’s jobs, the debate will end because one side will have clearly won. But if AI doesn’t take a lot of people’s jobs, then the debate will never be resolved, because there will be a bunch of people who will still go around saying that it’s about to take everyone’s job. Sometimes those people will find some subset of workers whose employment prospects are looking weaker than others, and claim that this is the beginning of the great AI job destruction wave. And who will be able to prove them wrong?

Source: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/ai-and-jobs-again

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#337

Post by thenthenthen »

lagrange77 wrote: post #151
thenthenthen wrote: post #91

99% of the AI product pitches I see here are for some kind of marketing tool. Its really sad

This is so true. It has so much potential to help with humanity's actual problems. But no, lets use it to manipulate people even more.

ouroboros

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#338

Post by qwerpy »

ben_w wrote: post #265
qwerpy wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matters is the benefit it affords to drivers, not what "biggest proponents" say. Elon got overly excited in 2016, but for my day to day usage, I don't need it to self-charge on a drive across the country to get me. I need it to safely drive my family on my daily errands or weekend trips, which I now consider solved. I'm mentally prepared for the next US administration to exact retribution on his companies, and I…

> Elon got overly excited in 2016 Yes. He was before and remains so to this day, but he did so then, too. > I need it to safely drive my family on my daily errands or weekend trips, which I now consider solved. This is probably unwise. As with LLMs, the statistics suggest a spikiness in the intelligence, with it being mostly good but also sometimes still making some very odd mistakes that humans would essentially nev…

The data shows that FSD (supervised) is safer than human alone driving. Given that I value the well-being of my family, FSD (supervised) it is as often as possible. Separately from the data, it is just so nice to hit a button and sit back and relax for the entirety of the drive.

The usual HN nits at this point are that the data is unreliable/biased and that the way I’m using it isn’t supervised enough. I’ll admit to the latter. In my experience the mistakes tend to be navigational but I’ve seen a few of the “nearly drove through the lane closed gate” videos so I definitely keep a closer watch when there is complicated highway stuff going on. I also have my foot at the ready for when I go through the gate to my community, similar failure mode and about 1% of the time it forgets to wait for the gate to close and reopen.

I look forward to the other car companies catching up, competition and more options are good. Elon is a loose cannon, so I need alternatives if Tesla ceases to be.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#339

Post by colesantiago »

QwenGlazer9000 wrote: post #260
colesantiago wrote: post #88

> AI’s effects on overall employment is likely small, though a tough job market for new graduates may be partly due to AI. This is a great opportunity. There will be new jobs.

Yeah no

Yes.

There will be new jobs.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#340

Post by a34729t »

phoghed wrote: post #178
johnyzee wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You heard it from someone with no experience developing software. A lot of AI hype comes from that, even (or especially) from people in the actual business of developing software - a surprising amount of managers and adjacent or supporting roles in the field actually have very little clue about software development. It's cool that 'regular' people can now create solutions to many small problems, and automate stuff -…

IMO it doesn’t replace software engineers, but it certainly changes the job. The problem lies with VPs and executives that rose to their positions through managing phones and printers and shit who don’t appreciate all of the work that isn’t “write code”, and those people are the majority outside of big tech in my experience. Currently in a re-org justified by AI, AI changing the roles people will need to play. It’s d…

At my employer (a reasonably well known company) every internal communication appears to be AI generated, from emails to slide decks.

It gets better: The internal AI gateway chat thingy where you can ask questions has AI autocomplete that pops up after your write more than 10 characters. What the fuck!?

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