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Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

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Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#61

Post by quonn »

caesil wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't feel threatened by this at all. As a software engineer, I'd love to have an AI engineer automate the boring stuff so I can work on higher-level architecture concerns.

I don‘t quite see why the high level architecture couldn‘t be done by AI either, once it get‘s good enough to build the low level one (which is what software development really is). Half of architecture is best practices anyway, which are explicitly in the training data, and the other half can be inferred from implicit principles in existing systems that are also in the training data.

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#62

Post by LtWorf »

quonn wrote: post #61
caesil wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't feel threatened by this at all. As a software engineer, I'd love to have an AI engineer automate the boring stuff so I can work on higher-level architecture concerns.

I don‘t quite see why the high level architecture couldn‘t be done by AI either, once it get‘s good enough to build the low level one (which is what software development really is). Half of architecture is best practices anyway, which are explicitly in the training data, and the other half can be inferred from implicit principles in existing systems that are also in the training data.

Because it's mostly undocumented, so they have to learn from where?

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#63

Post by quonn »

No matter which side of the debate you fall on, it would be interesting to discuss the practical impact and timeframe of any AI software engineer.

I think a realistic timeframe is about 15 years from the time someone releases a viable tool to complete replacement of the last engineer. About half way through the pressure on salaries will become noticeable. I base this guess on how companies typically operate and how long practical adoption of smaller technology changes take.

In the first half there should be both a downward pressure due to the threat of replacement but at the same time an upward pressure for the same reason. New grads will stop coming and existing engineers can look forward to being phased out and command a premium for as long as they can.

Another possibility is that it doesn‘t quite get good enough, but regardless students start picking other subjects, creating a temporary shortage that sustains existing employees. Employees will just be reduced through retirement with half being retired after 20 years of this process anyway.

Yet another possibility is that a half-assed tool only reduces demand - again that can be fixed through retirement plus less or no new people joining the field.

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#64

Post by johnwheeler »

I’m in the Penrose camp who thinks understanding is the result of quantum activity. LLMs are really good at making associations, but they don’t make “connections” in the sense that they’re able to integrate an understanding of the world to contribute to it in an original way. Also, the power efficiency of the brain relative to GPU farms. It just makes me think we’re no where even close.

I certainly hope that’s the case. I really like programming and building things for money, fun, and status.

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#65

Post by quonn »

LtWorf wrote: post #62
quonn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don‘t quite see why the high level architecture couldn‘t be done by AI either, once it get‘s good enough to build the low level one (which is what software development really is). Half of architecture is best practices anyway, which are explicitly in the training data, and the other half can be inferred from implicit principles in existing systems that are also in the training data.

Because it's mostly undocumented, so they have to learn from where?

It‘s not undocumented, it‘s implicit in the structure of existing projects.

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#66

Post by LtWorf »

quonn wrote: post #65
LtWorf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's mostly undocumented, so they have to learn from where?

It‘s not undocumented, it‘s implicit in the structure of existing projects.

How do you pass "implicit structure" as parameters?

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#67

Post by blibble »

rglullis wrote: post #54
azinman2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people and skillsets to successfully run a company have little overlap with strong software engineers. It happens, but no where near the numbers of engineers out there. Plus if you kill off many engineers jobs, who is left to buy your products?

Let's go all back to trade school. I hear that plumbers and electricians are making a killing nowadays.

what will happen to their wages when all white-collar workers take up that career?

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#68

Post by tarruda »

toyg wrote: post #57
tarruda wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost you 1 trillion dollars How did you come up with this number? It seems pretty unrealistic. > There is a reason why we still have people working at McDonald's even though fully automating it has been possible for a couple of decades now. Maybe the low salary is the reason? If it is a bit more costly to automate certain aspects of manual labor, then the low salaries might remove the incentive to do so. This is no…

Beyond the snark, this is basically it. It's the same reason the Roman Empire, despite all its technological prowess, never tried hard to automate relatively low-hanging-fruit tasks: because slaves were cheap, plentiful, and more flexible ("reprogrammable") than anything mechanical could ever be. If it costs $1m p/y to run a machine that cooks burgers and fries, or $30k for an employee who can do that _and_ cover som…

> If a machine costs 500k p/y

Do you mean an AI programmer would cost $500k per year? If so I think you greatly overestimate the cost.

Recently I did some text processing with GPT-4 turbo (128k context) and I reached the daily limit of 5 million tokens. IIRC it cost me around $70 bucks for the day.

I think $70 is the hourly rate of a SE with $150k salary working 40 hours per week. Note that we are at early stages with this tech, it will probably only get cheaper from here.

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#69

Post by tarruda »

betaby wrote: post #44
tarruda wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see the Gemini 1.5 1M token demo? They upload the three.js library and ask it to make changes, which it does successfully and pretty quickly. I want LLMs to fail at my profession as much as everyone at risk of losing their jobs, but unless Google is lying, things are looking pretty grim. https://youtu.be/SSnsmqIj1MI?si=N0zYY_Zbbfz3KRWK

I didn't see Gemini, I saw other demos only to learn later on that they were staged.

I hope that you are right, and that they faked the demo to have a short term pump on stock price.

Re: Magic AI Secures $117M to Build an AI Software Engineer

#70

Post by rglullis »

blibble wrote: post #67
rglullis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go all back to trade school. I hear that plumbers and electricians are making a killing nowadays.

what will happen to their wages when all white-collar workers take up that career?

They can go back to work in the farms, or weave baskets, or pottery...

Still not good? Ok, maybe this is too radical but hear me out: how about we take this incredible increase in productivity as an opportunity to start paving the way for a true post-scarcity future that can benefit most people, eliminate intellectual property and take everything produced by robots to fund UBI, instead of worrying about our cushy jobs and (relative) wealth/status obtained through bullshit jobs?

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