641–650 of 1001 posts
I think it could do with a little bit more friendly, but… it’s got its own charm.
It also convinced me I should be using agents rather than raw dogging Gemini 2.5 pro
I use Claude for specific questions, it works great (but apparently I’m doing it wrong according to the author), code generation doesn’t, I don’t want my boilerplate code to have subtle differences in every file, that’s the worst kind of boilerplate and that’s what I get if I automate it.
There are real world implications of all the infrastructure being built for this too, not to mention the extremely short e-waste cycles during the boom we’re in right now. To me it also seems like LLMs are the wrong thing to solve for, it’s like a gasoline car, make the engine larger and more fuel consuming to go faster and no matter how much you perfect it, it will still be fossil fuel being burnt at a high rate. What’s the alternative, I don’t think we know yet, but if we were a smarter species we would see that this is not it.
I’m an AI skeptic. I’m probably wrong. This article makes me feel kinda wrong. But I desperately want to be right. Why? Because if I’m not right then I am convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil. It will power scams on an unimaginable scale. It will destabilize labor at a speed that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a gentle breeze. It will concentrate immense power and wealth in the hands of pe…
To be blunt, this describes sticking one's head in the sand to a tee.
If you're convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil, then fight to make sure that it doesn't happen. If that means you want to slow down AI, then fine, fight to slow it down.
If by skepticism, you mean "desperately" wanting reality to be one way rather than the other, that is not going to significantly affect the trajectory of AI.
Being clear-eyed about where AI is going, and then fighting nonetheless for what you want is the way to go.
Be intellectually honest with yourself. Don't hold on to ideas that you yourself acknowledge are probably wrong simply for their comfort. Don't stick your head in the sand. Assess what you want, and fight for that.
Safeguards and slowing things down will not happen via wishful thinking.
I'm mostly skeptical about AI capabilities but I also think it will never be a profitable business. Let's not forget AI companies need to recoup a trillion dollars (so far) just to break even [1]. VCs are already doubting if the billions invested into data centers are going to generate a profit [1 and 2]. AI companies will need to generate profits at some point. Would people still be optimistic about Claude etc if th…
And this is quickly spreading beyond software engineering. Software engineers are just being guinea pigs for agentic AIs eventually popping up in all sectors. Basically, while security and quality issues are being sorted out, it helps having users that are a bit more clued in about what they are doing.
That's why AI investments are so hot right now. Of course there are a lot of AI companies that will fall short. There always are. And companies like Nvidia that will make a lot of money selling GPUs.
But there is some non trivial amount of revenue potential there. Anybody still in denial about that is probably penny pinching.
I’m an AI skeptic. I’m probably wrong. This article makes me feel kinda wrong. But I desperately want to be right. Why? Because if I’m not right then I am convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil. It will power scams on an unimaginable scale. It will destabilize labor at a speed that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a gentle breeze. It will concentrate immense power and wealth in the hands of pe…
The solution is to put an AI intermediary into interactions. We already should have AI that rewrite the web pages we view into an ad-free format but I guess my ideas on this topic is ahead of the inevitable curve.
>It will destabilize labor at a speed that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a gentle breeze.
Most of our work and employment lines are a variation of drugery a d slave labor so that's a good thing way overdue.
>It will concentrate immense power and wealth in the hands of people who I don’t trust.
It have democratized the access to consultation expertise and an increasingly widening pool of digital skills/employees for everyone to use and access. A huge amount of things previously locked or restricted by capital access are now freely accessible to literally anyone (with some skill and accuracy issues still to be ironed out).
And this last point is particularly important because we're only going to have more and better AI crop up, and unlike a humans their time isn't priced according to living expenses and hourly wage locked behind formalized business structures with additional layers of human employees that all need to pay rent and eat that drives the cost skywards.
It also matches my own prediction of a mundane non-singularity. Long before we get anything properly superhuman we'll have a proliferation of innumerable sub- or parahuman AI that proliferates and become ambiguous in society and the world.
I’m an AI skeptic. I’m probably wrong. This article makes me feel kinda wrong. But I desperately want to be right. Why? Because if I’m not right then I am convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil. It will power scams on an unimaginable scale. It will destabilize labor at a speed that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a gentle breeze. It will concentrate immense power and wealth in the hands of pe…
If AI is truly as revolutionary as it could be... well, who is to say it isn't the pandoras box that destabilizes the tech giants today and gets us back to a place where a team of 10 can genuinely compete against 1000. And not in the "raise cash, build fast, and get out while things are good" trend... but actually in building, small, more principled, companies that aren't pushed to do the unsustainable things that current market pushes them to do.
Once again... it is more likely than not to be a pipe-dream... but I am starting to think it may well be better to be realistic about the momentum this freight train is building and see if it can be repurposed for my world-view rather than to cede the space to the worst of the grifters and profit-seeking-at-all-cost types.
I found this comment especially interesting: "The code in an agent that actually “does stuff” with code is not, itself, AI. This should reassure you. It’s surprisingly simple systems code, wired to ground truth about programming in the same way a Makefile is. You could write an effective coding agent in a weekend. Its strengths would have more to do with how you think about and structure builds and linting and test h…
That's really it. Stuff the context, loop over the LLM until work is done.
While I don’t believe the “AI will take all jobs” VC tales, I also think not using LLMs in software development workflows is similar to not wanting to use Excel as an accountant in the 1990s.
AI won’t replace all jobs, but companies that cleverly integrate it into their processes will be faster and more efficient compared to those that don’t.
If it becomes so easy to write apps, then everyone can build their own. They won't need your app.
The entire point of most SaaS business revolves around the simple concept/question: build vs. buy.
So if there's no point in buying since building is so easy, then AI isn't helping you like your software product/SaaS.
I think programmers may just become the "IT person" or "webmaster" or "AI guy" at a company that needs software. Not at a separate company building it for others.
This may greatly reduce the need for programmers. This will in turn reduce the need for fancy computers like that expensive MacBook Pro. It will reduce the need for web hosting. Don't get me wrong, these things will still exist...but the demand will decrease.
Essentially it will become the biggest bubble since the dot com bust. It'll be much larger.
The dust will eventually settle and we'll all adapt to a new world with AI...but I think the years and years of over specialization could come to a screeching halt.
The industry will likely implode and suck in all of the orbiting industries along with it. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think people quite understand here. I greatly suspect there will be far fewer sales of high end computers. Compute power will continue to move to data centers.
Think about it this way. Code aside, because it's not just a coding thing. If everyone can create amazing videos and full on films with AI, then they don't need all those high end machines. They don't need tons of hard drive space that takes all the raw footage and different cuts to make a video. You prompt and the get the exact result you need. Assuming AI gets that good.
So the more we push into AI the greater than "gravity" here so to speak and the stronger the implosion. I just see an entire industry collapsing in on itself personally. If I'm believing all the FOMO logic out there.
If "we'll see our first one person billion dollar company." Whoever said that is a moron. You understand what that means, right? If anyone can do all that, then how could that even exist? Are we all going to become billionaires now? No, to say something as stupid as that is to say software is trivial and worthless. So how could anyone start a software business worth so much?