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AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

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Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#51

Post by citizenpaul »

augusteo wrote: post #19

The tractor analogy keeps coming up in these threads, and I think it's actually more pessimistic than people realize. Tractors didn't just change farming. They emptied entire regions. What saved the people (not the communities) was that other industries absorbed them. Factory work, services, construction. The question for software isn't whether AI creates efficiency. It's whether there's somewhere else for displaced…

>build things we never would have attempted

I think there is something here but not much. The majority of business are carrying some SAS products that are an entire marching band when all they want are a drummer and guitar player. Making bespoke efficient tools will surge for sure.

The problem is that the building of these tools is all the same end. Increasing industry control to few players and further widening wealth inequality. Which leads us back to where does everyone go to work at that point?

We are at some sort of societal inflection point where we need new industries but only 20% of degrees are in some sort of science. 80% of degrees are in what is becoming nothing more than resume checkboxing for jobs that no longer will exist. Who is going to make the next big industry breakthough with 20% of degrees in business management? I don't see any push to get people in college for actual meaningful progress.

It seems it did happen, humans have hit post scarcity in survival terms(unevenly distributed). However we have in no way planned for what happens here, fairness has never been a priority. The cuthroat capitalism that made this possible is now eating itself with no plans to change.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#52

Post by fragmede »

aspenmartin wrote: post #47
spicyusername wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will replace humans in performing every cognitive task This is probably true, but on a time horizon that is almost certainly much much longer than we think. Centuries. Perhaps millennia, even. It's fun to go back to the newspapers of the 1920, 30s, and 40s, and see how absolutely CERTAIN they were this was going to happen to them. I'm sure there are examples from the 19th and 18th centuries as well. Advancement ha…

I think I completely agree with you but I think HN folks seriously underestimate the rate of progress. Believe what you will about the magnitude of capex but it’s coming and it’s coming fast. And we are extremely extremely close now. I agree we constantly have gotten timelines wrong, and I think it’s easily possible SOME capabilities may take longer but I think it’s hard to overstate just how much we are accelerating…

> self driving cars are still not here

Yeah they are, even if you don't have one yet. We can rathole into whether the need to hit level 5 before it "counts", but Waymos drive around multiple cities, today, and Tesla FSD works well enough that I'd rather drive next to a Tesla with FSD than a drunk driver.

If your evidence that AI isn't something to be worried about is saying self-driving cars aren't here, when they are, will then, we're fucked.

The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed. For cars, this manifests as they're physically not available everywhere yet. For programming, it's unevenly distributed according to how much training data there was in that language and that domain to scrape across the whole Internet.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#53

Post by CodingJeebus »

fragmede wrote: post #49
pixl97 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countless games and applications in the app stores these days. Almost all of them are money losing ventures. The vast majority of these variants are going to go extinct and earn negative revenue for its creator. The big problem comes in when creators stop running into any variants that can earn them a living at all. >We will never settle on one version of a thing This depends on how well a monopoly can fit…

You can't make money playing a guitar and warbling into a microphone anymore either. Hasn't stopped my local bar from hosting local musicians who are in it for the craft.

I don't think that's really an apt comparison. Most software people who are in it purely for the craft are deep in open source, and open source doesn't necessarily build the most user-friendly tooling. If it did, you'd see apps like GIMP seriously challenging Adobe, etc. So much of the software layer built for enterprise and consumers relied on VC. I can only speak for myself, but I'd be willing to bet that 95+% of developers I've worked with would not build user-facing software for free. We are all in it for the money.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#54

Post by citizenpaul »

tjr wrote: post #27
elevatortrim wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do not understand is why is it that software engineers are so afraid? I have heard from so many other white collar people that AI already changed their job entirely (technical salesmen, translators, designers, government researchers, the list goes on), yet it is the software engineers that I hear the most noise from. Software engineering is one of the most intellectually demanding categories of white collar wo…

I also hear the most from software engineers, but then again, I don't really follow translation or government research discussion forums.

>government research discussion

Its bad. The most depressing part is that it is because of de-funding not AI. While at the same time this field is probably one of the only venues for escaping the AI sinkhole but its being dismantled rather than built up. Source my partner in research.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#55

Post by pixl97 »

aspenmartin wrote: post #47
spicyusername wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will replace humans in performing every cognitive task This is probably true, but on a time horizon that is almost certainly much much longer than we think. Centuries. Perhaps millennia, even. It's fun to go back to the newspapers of the 1920, 30s, and 40s, and see how absolutely CERTAIN they were this was going to happen to them. I'm sure there are examples from the 19th and 18th centuries as well. Advancement ha…

I think I completely agree with you but I think HN folks seriously underestimate the rate of progress. Believe what you will about the magnitude of capex but it’s coming and it’s coming fast. And we are extremely extremely close now. I agree we constantly have gotten timelines wrong, and I think it’s easily possible SOME capabilities may take longer but I think it’s hard to overstate just how much we are accelerating…

>self driving cars are still not here

That's one of my triggers that we've reach AGI. In may senses, self driving cars are here. In the vast majority of tasks self driving likely works fine. It's when you get to the parts where you need predictive capabilities, like figuring out what other idiots are about to do, or what some random object is doing in the road that our AI doesn't have the ability to deal with these things.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#56

Post by pixl97 »

steve1977 wrote: post #15
throwfaraway4 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI will replace every humans in performing every cognitive task Maybe? I guess the better question is "when?" >unless you believe that there is something about biology that makes it categorically better for certain kinds of computation.There's no reason to believe that's the case. How about the fact that we don't actually know enough about the human mind to arrive at this conclusion? (yet)

> Maybe? I guess the better question is "when?" And also at what cost and at what scale? Will we be able to construct a supercomputer/datacenter that can match or exceed human intelligence? Possibly, even probaby. But that would only be one instance of such an AGI then and it would be very expensive. IMHO it will take a long time to produce something like that as a commodity.

Remember when a digital computer was not a device, but the entire floor of a building?

We will be able to construct a datacenter that exceeds human intelligence. And every year after that the size of the datacenter will get smaller for the same intelligence output. Eventually it will be a rack. Then a single server. Then something that is portable.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#57

Post by drivebyhooting »

paul7986 wrote: post #38
drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the macro level shifting workers to RN makes complete sense. It is the coup de grâce of the boomer generations: tax the young’s earnings, cancel SS, force them to work as nurses.

yeah and Im not young ... started my first web design job at 33 in 2009. I thought of going for pharmacy but that's too many years. Accelerated RN programs are 18 to 24 months.

Thanks for sharing.

What’s the expected compensation difference between previous career and RN?

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#58

Post by aspenmartin »

fragmede wrote: post #52
aspenmartin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I completely agree with you but I think HN folks seriously underestimate the rate of progress. Believe what you will about the magnitude of capex but it’s coming and it’s coming fast. And we are extremely extremely close now. I agree we constantly have gotten timelines wrong, and I think it’s easily possible SOME capabilities may take longer but I think it’s hard to overstate just how much we are accelerating…

> self driving cars are still not here Yeah they are, even if you don't have one yet. We can rathole into whether the need to hit level 5 before it "counts", but Waymos drive around multiple cities, today, and Tesla FSD works well enough that I'd rather drive next to a Tesla with FSD than a drunk driver. If your evidence that AI isn't something to be worried about is saying self-driving cars aren't here, when they ar…

Oh wait I’m not sure if I was clear I just mean: yes we’ve gotten lots of hyped claims like “FSD will be here in 5 years” in 2014 wrong but it is to our peril not to take the very short AI timelines seriously

Also — I think the arguments of yourself and another comment are also great analogies to AI situation, we can haggle over “ok but what is {FSD, AGI} really and in many ways it’s already here!”

I agree totally and I would just point out we’re at an even more intense moment in the AI space

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#59

Post by program_whiz »

sidpatil wrote: post #5
program_whiz wrote: post #3

Easy to cherry pick examples and counter-examples. See the luddites for counter-example. Artisans making high-quality textiles are no longer broadly in demand. Lots of pro examples too, I just don't find analogies helpful. It may be that like clothes, there's only so much need for software. We don't really need 1000 browsers or operating systems after all, 3 or 4 good ones is enough (and 90% of people use 1 or 2), de…

> It may be that like clothes, there's only so much need for software. Clothing demand has increased greatly in the past decade due to fast fashion. Much of this clothing is designed to cost a few bucks, last a few wears, then get thrown out. It's an ecological disaster. Maybe we'll see something similar happen with software — as production costs fall, trends will shift toward few-use throwaway software. I highly sus…

Sorry I meant -- only so much demand for people to produce clothing. the thesis "AI will not replace software engineers" could go the same way as textiles (or not). Massive demand for software, no need for developers. Same as I'm sure having AI art will probably increase the total consumption of art/music, but probably reduce the jobs for artists.

Re: AI will not replace software engineers (hopefully)

#60

Post by paul7986 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #57
paul7986 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah and Im not young ... started my first web design job at 33 in 2009. I thought of going for pharmacy but that's too many years. Accelerated RN programs are 18 to 24 months.

Thanks for sharing. What’s the expected compensation difference between previous career and RN?

Its top pay is $20 to $30 less an hour per the top pay i was making as a Sr UX Researcher/Designer/UI Dev. But as noted the latter career is slowly vanishining and the former is in no way a vanishing career (until the robots proliferate).
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