Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

aphyr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 190 posts

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

#61

Post by Jtarii »

embedding-shape wrote: post #48
nmeofthestate wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It's "playing it safe" in the same way that wearing full hockey gear to go to the store is "playing it safe".

He is either making a political point or excessively paranoid.

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

#62

Post by chii »

jppope wrote: post #50
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

why can't the name be 'scape goat'? Since that's what they are - the "real" responsibility rests on the owners, and they happily shed it as limited liability ownership of shares.

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

#63

Post by xienze »

ej88 wrote: post #21

I am personally of the opinion that ML will end up being 'normal technology', albeit incredibly transformative. I think you can combine 'Incanters' and 'Process Engineers' into one - 'Users'. Jobs that encompass a role that requires accountability will be directing, providing context, and verifying the output of agents, almost like how millions of workers know basic computer skills and Microsoft Office. In my opinion…

> Hence why I've been quite bullish on software engineering (but not coding). You can easy set up 1) and 2) on contrived or sandboxed coding tasks but then 3) expands and dominates the rest of the role.

Why can't LLMs and agents progress further to do this software engineering job better than an actual software engineer? I've never seen anyone give a satisfactory answer to this. Especially the part about making mistakes. A lot of the defense of LLM shortcomings (i.e., generating crappy code) comes down to "well humans write bad code too." OK? Well, humans make mistakes too. Theoretically, an LLM software engineer will make far fewer than a human. So why should I prefer keeping you in the loop?

It's why I just can't understand the mindset of software engineers who are giddy about the direction things are going. There really is nothing special about your expertise that an LLM can't achieve, theoretically.

We're always so enamored by new and exciting technology that we fail to realize the people in charge are more than happy to completely bury us with it.

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

#64

Post by Jtarii »

pixl97 wrote: post #57
nonameiguess wrote: post #18

This is part 9 of a 10-part series. The author has posted every chapter to Hacker News every day for the past 9 days. Every time four of the first five or so comments are: Someone noting it is unavailable in the UK. Someone posting an archive.is link. Someone asking why the above posted an archive link to a static site. An answer that it is because the content is otherwise unavailable in the UK. Do we really need to…

>Can we get a new rule that an author posting their own content, knowing it is unavailable in the UK, has to post their own archive link and explain why they're doing so as part of the submission? [Author blocks link to avoid being potentially in violation of the law] You ask author to willingly provide link to again potentially be in violation of the law You do not see the irony in your question

So you are thinking that the UK government is going to do an international criminal investigation against aphyr for posting an archive link on a hacker news thread.

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

#65

Post by guzfip »

xienze wrote: post #63
ej88 wrote: post #21

I am personally of the opinion that ML will end up being 'normal technology', albeit incredibly transformative. I think you can combine 'Incanters' and 'Process Engineers' into one - 'Users'. Jobs that encompass a role that requires accountability will be directing, providing context, and verifying the output of agents, almost like how millions of workers know basic computer skills and Microsoft Office. In my opinion…

> Hence why I've been quite bullish on software engineering (but not coding). You can easy set up 1) and 2) on contrived or sandboxed coding tasks but then 3) expands and dominates the rest of the role. Why can't LLMs and agents progress further to do this software engineering job better than an actual software engineer? I've never seen anyone give a satisfactory answer to this. Especially the part about making mista…

> It's why I just can't understand the mindset of software engineers who are giddy about this brave new world. There really is nothing special about your expertise that an LLM can't achieve, theoretically.

They’re stupid or they’re already set up for success. The general ideas seems to be generalists are screwed, domain experts will be fine.

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

#66

Post by jayd16 »

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…

A magic 8-ball "can process the myriad of internal states" of any questions you throw at it. But we don't use it even tho it can give us answers.

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

#67

Post by nemomarx »

Jtarii wrote: post #61
embedding-shape wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's "playing it safe" in the same way that wearing full hockey gear to go to the store is "playing it safe". He is either making a political point or excessively paranoid.

It's probably a political point, but I think your comparison over sells how inconvenient it is for someone to geoblock one small country and the headache if anything did happen. It's not much more effort than doing nothing really?

And clearly users in the UK can find their own way to read it if they like, so the cost is also small there.

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

#68

Post by chii »

crote wrote: post #42
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 o…

> someone with a heartbeat they can blame when stuff inevitably goes wrong.

if said person can be blamed (and take on the liability), but cannot stop the action or audit the action, take preventative measures (which costs money) etc, then they cannot take responsibility for real and thus whether the blame falls on them on paper is irrelevant - if there's real punishment (like jail time), but no real power to enforce anything, then who would be stupid enough to take on this job? If there's no real punishment, then what does it matter that the blame on paper is there?

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

#69

Post by xienze »

guzfip wrote: post #65
xienze wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence why I've been quite bullish on software engineering (but not coding). You can easy set up 1) and 2) on contrived or sandboxed coding tasks but then 3) expands and dominates the rest of the role. Why can't LLMs and agents progress further to do this software engineering job better than an actual software engineer? I've never seen anyone give a satisfactory answer to this. Especially the part about making mista…

> It's why I just can't understand the mindset of software engineers who are giddy about this brave new world. There really is nothing special about your expertise that an LLM can't achieve, theoretically. They’re stupid or they’re already set up for success. The general ideas seems to be generalists are screwed, domain experts will be fine.

> domain experts will be fine

But I don't see how this holds up to even the slightest amount of scrutiny. We're literally training LLMs to BE domain experts.

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

#70

Post by bobthepanda »

pixl97 wrote: post #53
bobthepanda wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accountability is really a way to address liability. So long as people can sue and companies can pay out, or individuals can go to jail, there is always going to be a question of liability; and historically the courts have not looked kindly at those who throw their hands up in the air and say “I was just following orders from a human/entity”

>nd historically the courts have not looked This is dependent on having a court system uncaptured by corruption. We're already seeing that large corporations in the "too big to fail" categories fall outside of government control. And in countries with bribing/lobbying legalized or ignored they have the funds to capture the courts.

While this is true, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that few sectors are truly monopolized and large corporations also sue each other.
Post reply on HN