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Technical Deflation

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Re: Technical Deflation

#41

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

cootsnuck wrote: post #34
JacobiX wrote: post #28

In the end, the article says: > writing functioning application code has grown easier thanks to AI. > It's getting easier and easier for startups to do stuff. > Another answer might be to use the fact that software is becoming free and disposable to your advantage. For me, the logical conclusion here is: don't build a software startup!

Yup. I'm starting to wonder if the startup space has a pretty big blind spot not realizing that how easy it is to build mostly/semi functioning software is not a unique advantage... I left an AI startup to do tech consulting. What do I do? Build custom AI systems for clients. (Specifically clients that decided against going with startups' solutions.) Sometimes I build it for them, but I prefer to work with their own…

Of course it still makes sense to have a startup. Not because you will ever find a decent enough market. But if you are well connected enough you can find a VC and play with other people’s money for awhile.

You aren’t doing it to get customers, it’s for investors and maybe a decent acquisition

Re: Technical Deflation

#42

Post by vrighter »

Aurornis wrote: post #33
vrighter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only really faster and better if you don't use them for gaming, unfortunately. Upscaling and frame generation is not a better GPU, it's one with a band-aid applied to hide the fact that it actually did not get much faster. RTX doesn't count to me either, because that's some bullcrap pushed by gpu manufacturers that requires the aformentioned upscaling and frame generation techniques to fake actually being anywhere cl…

> only really faster and better if you don't use them for gaming, unfortunately. Upscaling and frame generation is not a better GPU, it's one with a band-aid applied to hide the fact that it actually did not get much faster. The generations gains haven’t been as great as past generations, but it’s getting silly to claim that GPUs aren’t getting faster for gaming. Intentionally ignoring frame generation and DLSS up sc…

"Guessing what a pixel's color might be were one to actually do the work and render it" is not the same as actually rendering it. No, upscaling doesn't count.

Doing it for a whole screenful of pixels, for the majority of frames (with multi-frame generation) is even less of it.

Re: Technical Deflation

#43

Post by zkmon »

Infact, the opposite is true. There is tech inflation. Coding will get easier, but that doesn't mean tech is getting easier. It will only get more complex and will drive more segregation.

Tech is dividing the society and driving a wedge deeper. There is a huge population that are being thrown wayside by the high-speed tech highway. Which means the tech is getting more and more unreachable.

AI assistants are only going to make this worse, by removing the direct touch between users and the tech. Tech becomes just unmanageable for average person.

Just like how you were able to do all repairs for your bike, as a kid. But you can't do the same for your car now. Tech never gets easier or reachable.

Re: Technical Deflation

#44

Post by toast0 »

vrighter wrote: post #13
Zigurd wrote: post #8

Technology has always been deflationary. But you don't put off buying a computer because it will be cheaper next year. Nobody seems to be putting off buying GPUs despite scary depreciation and a blistering pace of new product introductions that are ever cheaper faster and better.

only really faster and better if you don't use them for gaming, unfortunately. Upscaling and frame generation is not a better GPU, it's one with a band-aid applied to hide the fact that it actually did not get much faster. RTX doesn't count to me either, because that's some bullcrap pushed by gpu manufacturers that requires the aformentioned upscaling and frame generation techniques to fake actually being anywhere cl…

I dunno, the kiddo went from a 1650 Super to a 3060 and it's a lot nicer looking, I don't think frame gen and what not is enabled. Sure, that's up a notch on the SKU list and tons more VRAM. The 1650 Super was working with most of the games he tried, but Marvel Rivals was terrible (haven't seen him play it with the new card though)

It does help that he has a small screen and regular DPI. Seems like everyone wants to run with 4x the pixels in the same space, which needs about 4x the GPU.

Re: Technical Deflation

#45

Post by locknitpicker »

Sevii wrote: post #40

Good explanation for why hiring stopped. If AI is improving rapidly why hire engineers now that you might not need in 6-12 months?

> Good explanation for why hiring stopped. If AI is improving rapidly why hire engineers now that you might not need in 6-12 months?

I'm not so sure that's the reason. I mean, to believe LLMs replace engineers you first need to believe engineers spend the bulk of their time typing frantically churning out code in greenfield projects. That's not compatible with reality. Although LLMs excel at generating new code from scratch, that scenario is the exception. Introducing significant changes to existing projects still requires long iterations which ultimately end up consuming more development time than actually rolling out the changes yourself.

The truth if the matter is that we are not observing an economic boom. The US is either stagnant or in a recession, and LLMs are not their cause. In an economic downturn you don't see spikes in demand for skilled workers.

Re: Technical Deflation

#46

Post by vrighter »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #37
vrighter wrote: post #35

"But building the same functionality has undoubtedly become simpler." I disagree with this statement. It has become simpler, provided you don't care about it actually being correct, and you don't care about whether you really have tests that test what you think you asked for, you don't care about security, and other things. Building the same thing involves doing the things that LLMs have proved time and again that th…

And subtle bugs don’t get inserted by humans? Did security flaws in software just start happening after LLMs were introduced?

So? The point is that humans do it much less often.

Let's say there are 10 subtasks that need to be done.

Let's say a human has 99% chance of getting each one of them right, by doing the proper testing etc. And let's say that the AI has a 95% chance of getting it right (being very generous here).

0.99^10 = a 90% chance of the human getting it to work properly. 0.95^10 = only a 60% chance. Almost a coin toss.

Even with 98% success rate, the compounding success rate still goes down to about 81%.

The thing is that LLM's aren't just "a little bit" worse than humans. In comparison they're cavemen.

Re: Technical Deflation

#47

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

vrighter wrote: post #46
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And subtle bugs don’t get inserted by humans? Did security flaws in software just start happening after LLMs were introduced?

So? The point is that humans do it much less often. Let's say there are 10 subtasks that need to be done. Let's say a human has 99% chance of getting each one of them right, by doing the proper testing etc. And let's say that the AI has a 95% chance of getting it right (being very generous here). 0.99^10 = a 90% chance of the human getting it to work properly. 0.95^10 = only a 60% chance. Almost a coin toss. Even wit…

So humans do it much less often yet we have 30 years of evidence to the contrary? Humans still can’t figure out how to write code not subject to sql injection after 25 years or how to write code and commit it to GitHub without exposing admin credentials

Re: Technical Deflation

#48

Post by MangoToupe »

cootsnuck wrote: post #34
JacobiX wrote: post #28

In the end, the article says: > writing functioning application code has grown easier thanks to AI. > It's getting easier and easier for startups to do stuff. > Another answer might be to use the fact that software is becoming free and disposable to your advantage. For me, the logical conclusion here is: don't build a software startup!

Yup. I'm starting to wonder if the startup space has a pretty big blind spot not realizing that how easy it is to build mostly/semi functioning software is not a unique advantage... I left an AI startup to do tech consulting. What do I do? Build custom AI systems for clients. (Specifically clients that decided against going with startups' solutions.) Sometimes I build it for them, but I prefer to work with their own…

> Fast forward 3+ years and we're going to see more everyday SMBs hiring a dev to just build them the stuff in-house

I don't see this happening. Businesses generally want familiar tools that work reliably with predictable support patterns.

Re: Technical Deflation

#49

Post by coolThingsFirst »

zkmon wrote: post #43

Infact, the opposite is true. There is tech inflation. Coding will get easier, but that doesn't mean tech is getting easier. It will only get more complex and will drive more segregation. Tech is dividing the society and driving a wedge deeper. There is a huge population that are being thrown wayside by the high-speed tech highway. Which means the tech is getting more and more unreachable. AI assistants are only goin…

I think this is a very solid take. Moreoever, tech will be optimized for LLMs and not humans. Shitty languages will remain shitty because there's no need to optimise them or make them more elegant. Web dev will remain ultra fragmented and will get even worse as the years go by.

Not going to lie, it looks like a bleak future.

Re: Technical Deflation

#50

Post by lubujackson »

What will become apparent is that when coding costs go to 0, support and robustness costs will be the new "engineering" disciple. Which is in reality how things work already. It is why you can have open source code and companies built on providing enterprise support for that code to companies.

If you want to build a successful AI company, assume the product part is easy. Build the support network: guarantee uptime, fast responses, direct human support. These are the shovels desperately needed during the AI gold rush.

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