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Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

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Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#341

Post by dbetteridge »

sofal wrote: post #197
prmph wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is unlikely to ever create great works of art because art is not, and has never been just about technical excellence; it is fundamentally a human thing: one human communicating to another. Just even knowing that some art was AI produced is enough to not see it as great: there is no human story or experience behind it, no human context, etc. You can definitely appreciate it in the category of AI work, however. AI s…

Your entire argument hinges on being able to tell the extent to which generative AI was used in the creation of any given piece of art, which capability you will not have. You therefore fall into the category the commenter mentioned in that your perception of the value of a piece of art can be heavily influenced by someone convincing you it was AI generated, regardless of the facts.

Art is subjective, entirely so.

People pay more for works by famous artists or specific artists despite there being artists who can replicate their style exactly.

So having someone discount AI art or what they think is AI art isn't a new phenomenon, just an extension of the existing norms

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#342

Post by dron57 »

Lutger wrote: post #224
JimDabell wrote: post #65

We have been aggressively and enthusiastically automating away software engineering for the entire history of the computer industry. Every time we do so, we are able to build bigger, better things more quickly. When this happens, our work becomes more valuable and expectations rise to match. The world’s appetite for software has been insatiable so far. AI hasn’t replaced software engineers because every time we becom…

We all tend to assume AI will only ever be good at the execute part, but what if AI will also be good at decide-deliver? What if some day, we could put AI in charge of not only running a company, but coming up with a business idea, getting funded, driving sales, pivoting until product-market fit and then scaling? Who would profit from such a company?

The capital backing it would profit. Your scenario is a real doom loop of runaway capital building up without any corresponding returns to human labour.

See Thomas Picketty and his “Capital in the 21st Century”.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#343

Post by dodu_ »

I get this is just another speculative opinion piece and nobody really knows what is going to happen, but I kind of wish shit would either happen or not already.

I'm absolutely fucking exhausted from this bullshit discourse after almost 4 years of it at this point.

These AI companies need to stop bloviating and administering verbal self-fellatio and either replace everyone or fuck off already. I don't even care which it is anymore, I just want to be done with this hype cycle and move on with my life/career.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#344

Post by FromTheFirstIn »

dodu_ wrote: post #343

I get this is just another speculative opinion piece and nobody really knows what is going to happen, but I kind of wish shit would either happen or not already. I'm absolutely fucking exhausted from this bullshit discourse after almost 4 years of it at this point. These AI companies need to stop bloviating and administering verbal self-fellatio and either replace everyone or fuck off already. I don't even care which…

Amen. I’m done trying to convince anyone- I know what I think and now I just want to see what happens and accept the outcome.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#345

Post by FromTheFirstIn »

tripleee wrote: post #324
aenis wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mn-TNLwQys&t=677s around 9:30 "this is a thing that has its use for the little things, but the moment you start expanding it" This is just plain wrong. We deal with codebases in double digit millions LOCs with models - it takes genuine skills and instrumentation to do right, but it does work. And I know devs who take this view - that AI is dumb, useless, a gimmick - and what they have…

You can't just take one sentence out of context. Huh? "...you're just kicking the can. You're still going to have to read all this code to make sure it makes sense" He's commenting on that maybe it's not a huge productivity boost once you include the reviewing- if you want to get good results you have to know what you're doing, direct it, review it. If you skip this, you get aimless slop. How on earth is this "plain…

Pretty sure you’re arguing with a chatbot that’s been told to Stan AI development. Don’t get baited!

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#346

Post by tossandthrow »

allajfjwbwkwja wrote: post #337
tossandthrow wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they do - there are a lot of people who thrive working with concrete technologies and solve relatively straight forward issues (implement this component - style work). These people will see a brutal job market that is forcing them to take more responsibility and work at a higher level of abstraction. This is nothing new - A bunch of people simply don't thrive well as knowledge workers. The bar for being a knowle…

The latest tools will walk any monkey through the process of planning out and thinking through whatever they're supposed to be doing, and will then write the documentation for it. The bar is likely to go down, actually.

Yes, so when a tool is walking any monkey through a process, it does bit have a value anymore.

This is why people stopped adding word, excel and googling skills into their resumes - it is assumed that you know how to use the office suite and a browser.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#347

Post by allajfjwbwkwja »

tossandthrow wrote: post #346
allajfjwbwkwja wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest tools will walk any monkey through the process of planning out and thinking through whatever they're supposed to be doing, and will then write the documentation for it. The bar is likely to go down, actually.

Yes, so when a tool is walking any monkey through a process, it does bit have a value anymore. This is why people stopped adding word, excel and googling skills into their resumes - it is assumed that you know how to use the office suite and a browser.

State of the art tools will soon be even better at being generalists and handling abstraction than at coding. Even GPT 4 could do a better job planning a project than implementing it. The main bottleneck is context, which all of the big companies are solving by hoovering up all their internal data that's in writing into agentic knowledge graphs. The end game is fully autonomous teams of agents, led by other agents.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#348

Post by mteoharov »

zuzululu wrote: post #299
Yokohiii wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now everybody has superpowers. I think that it's very odd how AI enthusiasts misinterpret the situation. If it turns out to be good enough to produce greenfield projects with agentic coding, then it will not only affect developers, but also whole companies and whole business sectors. The whole dev agency business model is only there because less technical companies don't know how to deal with software, others are j…

its not a misinterpretation but an observation. your moat as software dev is disappearing. i know several companies that reduced their 20+ full stack dev team to just 4, in some cases they got rid of them all together and it is now the CTO/CEO + contractors who are paid hourly and working less than 20 hours a week on average. We are only getting started, this trend is not going to revert, we are going to get cheaper…

I am not sure it's the moat that is disappearing. I think it's just redistribution of the talent. We do see a definite increase in the projects flowing into the company, something around 20-40% from my (not accurate) observations.

Re: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

#349

Post by Jioon »

AI isn't replacing software engineers as a whole; it is replacing specific tasks within their role. Because there are still dimensions of the job that only human engineers can handle, AI won't eliminate the profession entirely.

However, this isn't unique to software engineering. AI can automate parts of any job. It just so happens that software engineering faces the highest proportion of this displacement.

Therefore, instead of self-soothing with the delusion that "we are irreplaceable," engineers need to shift their mindset. They must identify exactly which tasks are being automated, figure out how to expand their scope beyond those tasks, and find ways to leverage AI to their advantage.

In fact, software engineering is a field where you can use AI to go incredibly deep, scale your impact, and boost your earning potential more than in any other profession. This is absolutely no time to be sitting around and wasting energy on these kinds of complacent thoughts.

“Software Is Eating the World” It is the software that is eating the world, not the engineers. It’s time for software engineers to drop the arrogance.

If you wonder why management is trying to lay off software engineers? The answer is obvious. It's because too many engineers still hold onto that exact complacent attitude.

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