This time is different

> It's laziness because they have little CS fundamentals to base such claims on

So, what CS fundamentals do you need to evaluate if AI is the real thing, or will disappoint in the future? Until a few months ago, coding agents were met with skepticism, until Anthropic introduced their new model and, with it, a hype train that cannot be rationally justified. Look, SOTA LLMs, and coding agents in particular, are impressive. However, current predictions about the future of software development (and the world in general) are speculative. There is little to no data showing whether AI can deliver on its promises. How could there be in this short time frame? No one knows what the future will hold, no one knows how coding agents will be integrated into our work life and everyday life in the long run, or what hard limitations they will reveal. No one can tell you how professions will change in the coming years; every prediction is purely speculative, and anyone making prophecies is either trying to cope with the uncertainty themselves or has some stakes in the AI bet. It would be nice if people were actually humble enough to admit that they have no idea what will happen in the future, instead of writing the hundredth doom and gloom post.

I work for an old enterprise, so far rather conservative with LLM/AI usage. However the copilot cli adoption in the last 2 weeks is spreading light wild fire. Codex 5.3, a good instructions file and it works. Features are getting done and delivered in days, proper test coverage is done, proper documentation in place. Onboarding to it is also very fast.

There are all sorts of algorithms in use that were once thought of as AI, but transitioned to being mere algorithms well before they entered public awareness, if they did that at all. Some are still useful and used everywhere, but they have never been thought of as AI by the public. For them, AI is a term that has long been reserved for some far-off, sci-fi future.

LLM's are not artificial general intelligence (i.e. not sci-fi AI). Why haven't they transitioned to being mere algorithms by now? Why is the public being told AI is finally arriving when it's really just another algorithm?

We have some truly slick and shady corporations involved in the bubble right now and they're marketing LLM's like tobacco. LLM's have been pushed out, at immense cost, to the public in a way that makes them more directly accessible to average people than any past algorithm. Young children can ask a LLM to do their homework for them. Middle managers can ask a LLM to create a (shitty) ad campaign for them. Corporations have gone to tremendous expense to make that widely available and, for the moment, mostly free. They seem to be following the Joe Camel school of marketing. Get them hooked while they're young so they come to you first when they're older! The only difference is that nobody is stepping in to stop the new Joe Camel from handing out free samples to kids.

Then there's the "go big" aspects of the bubble. The major competitors are trying to out-spend each other to dominance, but the suckers are so colossally big that their bubble is affecting global GPU, memory, and storage prices. This bubble is going to stress power grids wherever it operates and do considerable environmental harm. The financial games being played behind the bubble are absolutely stupid. The results, so far, are tantalizing for billionaires. LLM's offer the promise of being able to fire all their pesky and annoying human workers. It won't deliver on that, and none of these companies is ever going to make enough to pay their debts. There might be "too big to fail" government bailouts, but there are going to be some big bankruptcies too.

Useful algorithms will come out of all this, a lot of tears too, but not "AI".

do you understand every line of code you churn out?

The hype around AI is admittedly annoying - especially from the Wall St crowd who don't know how to pronounce 'Nvidia' correctly, and who haven't managed to internalize the fact that the chatbots they use hallucinate.

It really is 'different', though, in the same way the Internet was.

It took about 20 years (ie: since The World ISP) for the Internet to work its way into every facet of life. And the dot com bubble popped half-way through that period of time.

AI might 'underwhelm' for another five or ten years. And then it won't. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know.