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The AI Replaces Services Myth

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Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#41

Post by satyrnein »

tuatoru wrote: post #2

The title is slightly misleading. What the article is really about is the idea that all of the money that is now paid in wages will somehow be paid to AI companies as AI replaces humans. That idea being muddle-headed. It points out that businesses think of AI as software, and will pay software-level money for AI, not wage-level money. It finishes with the rhetorical question, are you paying $100k/year to an AI compan…

It's almost more of a warning to founders and VCs, that an AI developer that replaces a $100k/year developer might only get them $10k/year in revenue.

But that means that AI just generated a $90k consumer surplus, which on a societal level, is huge!

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#42

Post by tines »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #6
tines wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I quite get the point of the article. Sure, you won't capture $100k/year/dev. But if you capture $2k/year/dev, and you replace every dev in the world... that's the goal right?

They're saying expectations that AI revenues will equal HR expenditures, like you can take the funds from one column to the other, are wrong-headed. That makes sense to me.

I agree, but that doesn't have to be true for investors to be salivating, is my point.

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#43

Post by sublinear »

outworlder wrote: post #40
neuroelectron wrote: post #37

I have yet to see LLMs solve any new problems. I think it's pretty clear a lot of the bouncing ball programming demos are specifically trained on to be demoed at a marketing/advertising thing. Asking AI the most basic logical question about a random video game like, what element synergies with ice spike shield in Dragon Cave Masters and it will make up some nonsense despite it being something you can look up on gamef…

I don't disagree, but your comment is puzzling. You start talking about a game (which probably lacks a lot of training data) and then extrapolate that to mean AI won't replace engineering teams. What? We do not need AGI to cause massive damage to software engineering jobs. A lot of existing work is glue code, which AI can do pretty well. You don't need 'novel' solutions to problems to have useful AI. They don't need…

Can you give an example of a non-trivial project that is pure glue code?

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#44

Post by [deleted] »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

> You have to start from how the reality works and then derive your work. Every philosopher eventually came to the same realization: We don't have access to the world as it is. We have access to a model of the world as it predicts and is predicted by our senses. In so far as there is a correlation between the two in whatever fidelity we can muster, we are fated to direct access to a simulacrum. For the most part they…

[deleted]

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#45

Post by harwoodjp »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

> You have to start from how the reality works and then derive your work. Every philosopher eventually came to the same realization: We don't have access to the world as it is. We have access to a model of the world as it predicts and is predicted by our senses. In so far as there is a correlation between the two in whatever fidelity we can muster, we are fated to direct access to a simulacrum. For the most part they…

Your dualism between model and world is nearly Cartesian. The model itself isn't separate from the world but produced materially (by ideology, sociality, naturally, etc.).

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#46

Post by card_zero »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

> You have to start from how the reality works and then derive your work. Every philosopher eventually came to the same realization: We don't have access to the world as it is. We have access to a model of the world as it predicts and is predicted by our senses. In so far as there is a correlation between the two in whatever fidelity we can muster, we are fated to direct access to a simulacrum. For the most part they…

Urgh. I feel the stodge of relativism weighing down on me.

OK, yes, all models (and people) are wrong. I'll also allow that usefulness is not the same as verisimilitude (truthiness). But there is externality, even though nobody can as you say "perch" on it: it's important that there is objective reality to approach closer to, however uncertainly.

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#47

Post by nine_k »

harwoodjp wrote: post #45
kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

> You have to start from how the reality works and then derive your work. Every philosopher eventually came to the same realization: We don't have access to the world as it is. We have access to a model of the world as it predicts and is predicted by our senses. In so far as there is a correlation between the two in whatever fidelity we can muster, we are fated to direct access to a simulacrum. For the most part they…

Your dualism between model and world is nearly Cartesian. The model itself isn't separate from the world but produced materially (by ideology, sociality, naturally, etc.).

A map drawn on a flat piece of land is still not the whole land it depicts, even though it literally consists of that land. Any representation is a simplification, as much as we can judge, there's no adequately lossless compressing transform of large enough swaths of reality.

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#48

Post by lelandbatey »

Revisional_Sin wrote: post #16
tuatoru wrote: post #2

The title is slightly misleading. What the article is really about is the idea that all of the money that is now paid in wages will somehow be paid to AI companies as AI replaces humans. That idea being muddle-headed. It points out that businesses think of AI as software, and will pay software-level money for AI, not wage-level money. It finishes with the rhetorical question, are you paying $100k/year to an AI compan…

> What the article is really about is the idea that all of the money that is now paid in wages will somehow be paid to AI companies as AI replaces humans. Is anyone actually claiming this?

Not directly, but indirectly. It's what's leading to the FOMO w.r.t. investors. See the image in the parent blog post, where VCs are directly comparing the amount of money spent on AI at the moment (tiny) against the amount of money spent on headcount in various industries, with the implication being that "AI could be making all the money that was being spent on headcount, what an opportunity!"

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#49

Post by arevno »

sublinear wrote: post #43
outworlder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but your comment is puzzling. You start talking about a game (which probably lacks a lot of training data) and then extrapolate that to mean AI won't replace engineering teams. What? We do not need AGI to cause massive damage to software engineering jobs. A lot of existing work is glue code, which AI can do pretty well. You don't need 'novel' solutions to problems to have useful AI. They don't need…

Can you give an example of a non-trivial project that is pure glue code?

Parent never said pure glue code, they said "a lot", which is roughly correct.

Any nontrivial business application will be on the order of ~60% glue, API, interface/model definition, and CRUD UI code, which LLMs are already quite good at.

They're also good at writing tests, with the caveat that a human reviews them.

They're pretty decent at emitting documentation from pure code, too.

The only way these models don't result in mass unemployment in this industry is if the amount of work required expands to fill the gap. Which is certainly possible! The Jevons Paradox of software development.

Re: The AI Replaces Services Myth

#50

Post by kelseyfrog »

card_zero wrote: post #46
kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

> You have to start from how the reality works and then derive your work. Every philosopher eventually came to the same realization: We don't have access to the world as it is. We have access to a model of the world as it predicts and is predicted by our senses. In so far as there is a correlation between the two in whatever fidelity we can muster, we are fated to direct access to a simulacrum. For the most part they…

Urgh. I feel the stodge of relativism weighing down on me. OK, yes, all models (and people) are wrong. I'll also allow that usefulness is not the same as verisimilitude (truthiness). But there is externality, even though nobody can as you say "perch" on it: it's important that there is objective reality to approach closer to, however uncertainly.

I'm willing to grant non-symbolic externality. Though, I don't know how useful that is.

We will never access the signified only the signifier. When we believe that signifiers exist externally, we are engaging in a suspension of epistemic honesty, and I get why we do it - it makes talking about and engaging with the world infinitely easier. But we shouldn't ever believe our own trick. That's reverting to a pre-operational version of cognition.

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