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The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

aphyr.com

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Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#41

Post by kaashif »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #29
Aperocky wrote: post #26

As an engineer, I'm never more excited about this job. My implementation speed and bug fixing my typed code to be the bottleneck - now I just think about an implementation and it then exist - As long as I thought about the structure/input/output/testability and logic flow correctly and made sure I included all that information, it just works, nicely, with tests. Unix philosophy works well with LLM too - you can have…

I mostly agree with you. Though something I half-miss is using my own software as I build it to get a visceral feel for the abstractions so far. I've found that testability is a good enough proxy for "nice to use" since I think "nice to use" tends to mean that a subsystem is decoupled enough to cover unexpected usage patterns, and that's an incidental side-effect of testability. One concern I have is that it's gettin…

Those things are all still signals. If taken from a snapshot of the Internet pre-AI.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#42

Post by crote »

elcapitan wrote: post #2

Is there a way back to calling human beings human beings and not "meat"? Or is the sociopathic Jeffrey Dahmer undertone now the new normal?

That is exactly why the term is being used.

A company like Amazon doesn't treat its warehouse workers as human beings. Workers are seen as disposable: forced to piss in bottles, forced to work around the corpses of their collapsed coworkers, paid the absolute minimum possible, and replaced the second they don't operate like a perfect unfailing machine. You aren't viewed like a human, you are a tool. Cattle. A piece of meat they are forced to retain because a robot isn't quite capable of doing your task yet.

The article's use of "meat shields" isn't any different. Humans are going to be hired for the sole reason of taking accountability for actions dictated by AI. They are there only because the company can't put blame on a machine and will be sued to oblivion if there's nobody to blame at all. Your existence as a person is irrelevant, they are just interested in someone with a heartbeat they can blame when stuff inevitably goes wrong.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#44

Post by gessha »

gordonhart wrote: post #9
pmg102 wrote: post #4

https://archive.is/OjGox

Why post an archive link for a static site with no ads or subscriptionware?

Can people make a soft assumption that if somebody went through the trouble of digging up an archive link, then access to the article is limited in some way?

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#45

Post by simonw »

rootusrootus wrote: post #32
Aperocky wrote: post #26

As an engineer, I'm never more excited about this job. My implementation speed and bug fixing my typed code to be the bottleneck - now I just think about an implementation and it then exist - As long as I thought about the structure/input/output/testability and logic flow correctly and made sure I included all that information, it just works, nicely, with tests. Unix philosophy works well with LLM too - you can have…

> My implementation speed and bug fixing my typed code to be the bottleneck I remember those days fondly and often wish I could return to them. These days it's not uncommon to go a couple days without writing a meaningful amount of code. The cost of becoming too senior I suppose.

Anecdotally I've been observing a significant uptick in the amount of code being produced by my peers who are in senior engineer, leadership and engineering management positions.

They can take their 20+ years of experience and use it to build working systems in the gaps between meetings now. Previously they would have to carve out at least half a day of uninterrupted time to get something meaningful done.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#46

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

ai_critic wrote: post #19

I think that this is an interesting attempt at taxonomy, but it's a bit on the magical thinking end (and I say this as somebody that does a good amount of what's described as the incanter role). It's a combination of the author's previous witchy aesthetic (see his excellent " ing the technical interview" series) and progressive labor politics (which are asymptotically doomed in the current automation push). The bigge…

Yes, I had the same impression. I'm sympathetic to the author's perspective but I can't muster even the minimal optimism they've shown here. The "process engineers" as described would themselves quickly be replaced by an automated system. The "statistical engineers", I think, would never be able to keep up with the rate of change of the AI models, which would likely have different statistical behavior and biases in each language/context/etc with each update, and so it's unlikely anyone would pay them to develop that required deep expertise in the first place. More likely, that work would be done at an AI foundation model company -- but it would be done just once, and then incorporated into the training process.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#47

Post by sebg »

gordonhart wrote: post #13
sebg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47779352

I see, thanks. Strange times for internet censorship in the west.

Agreed. If I remember correctly from the other sections of this post, I think it's a self-directed ban.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#48

Post by embedding-shape »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #27
nemomarx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geo blocking the UK satisfies any age verification, otherwise the site owner would have to check if their content is considered adult in the UK and implement something.

"otherwise the site owner would have to check if their content is considered adult in the UK and implement something" IMO a small blog website is not going to get pulled-up for this - it's about the author making a point. They're entitled to do so of course.

> IMO a small blog website is not going to get pulled-up for this

Well, maybe not the typical engineering blog but I think if you're a puritan some posts/texts from Aphyr probably reaches borderline "adult content", so I'm not that surprised Aphyr rather play it safe and also make a point at the same time.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#49

Post by abstracthinking »

Humans will be held accountable, not machines, whatever is the technology used. The jobs you suggest are based on the state of LLM right now, this could change rapidly, considering the state of progress. These are just activities that are already done by people that work with these instruments, because they want to optimize and obtain the best/safest output from these machines.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

#50

Post by jppope »

simonw wrote: post #43

Loved that section about "meat shields". LLMs cannot be held accountable. Someone needs to be involved in decision making, with real stakes if those decisions are bad.

the name is very sticky too. I can't imagine not calling people taking the blame meat shields now
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