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AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

kasava.dev

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Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#71

Post by oxag3n »

Galanwe wrote: post #52
oxag3n wrote: post #32

> We're thinking about AI wrong. And this write up is not an exception. Why even bother thinking about AI, when Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs openly tell us what they want (quote from recent Dwarkesh interview) - "Then further down the spectrum, there’s 90% less demand for SWEs, which I think will happen but this is a spectrum." So save thinking and listen to intent - replace 90% of SWEs in near future (6-12 months accor…

I don't think anyone serious believes this. Replacing developers with a less costly alternative is obviously a very market bullish dream, it has existed since as long as I've worked in the field. First it was supposed to be UML generated code by "architects", then it was supposed to be developers from developing countries, then no-code frameworks, etc. AI will be a tool, no more no less. Most likely a good one, but t…

Ah, don't take me wrong - I don't believe it's possible for LLMs to replace 90% or any number of SWEs with existing technology.

All I'm saying is - why to think what AI is (exoskeleton, co-worker, new life form), when its owners intent is to create SWE replacement?

If your neighbor is building a nuclear reactor in his shed from a pile of smoke detectors, you don't say "think about this as a science experiment" because it's impossible, just call police/NRC because of intent and actions.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#72

Post by cogman10 »

HPsquared wrote: post #67
cogman10 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more likely outcome is that fewer devs will be hired as fewer devs will be needed to accomplish the same amount of output.

The old shrinking markets aka lump of labour fallacy. It's a bit like dreaming of that mythical day, when all of the work will be done.

No it's not that.

Tell me, when was the last time you visited your shoe cobbler? How about your travel agent? Have you chatted with your phone operator recently?

The lump labour fallacy says it's a fallacy that automation reduces the net amount of human labor, importantly, across all industries. It does not say that automation won't eliminate or reduce jobs in specific industries.

It's an argument that jobs lost to automation aren't a big deal because there's always work somewhere else but not necessarily in the job that was automated away.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#73

Post by almostdeadguy »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #30
m_ke wrote: post #4

It's the new underpaid employee that you're training to replace you. People need to understand that we have the technology to train models to do anything that you can do on a computer, only thing that's missing is the data. If you can record a human doing anything on a computer, we'll soon have a way to automate it

Sure, but do you want abundance of software, or scarcity? The price of having "star trek computers" is that people who work with computers have to adapt to the changes. Seems worth it?

Both abundance and scarcity can be bad. If you can't imagine a world where abundance of software is a very bad thing, I'd suggest you have a limited imagination?

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#74

Post by biztos »

hintymad wrote: post #65

In the latest interview with Claude Code's author: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lennys-podcast-product... , Boris said that writing code is a solved problem. This brings me to a hypothetical question: what if engineers stop contributing to open source, in which case would AI still be powerful enough to learn the knowledge of software development in the future? Or is the field of computer science plateaued to…

Or does the field become plateaued because engineers treat "writing code" as a "solved problem?"

We could argue that writing poetry is a solved problem in much the same way, and while I don't think we especially need 50,000 people writing poems at Google, we do still need poets.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#75

Post by emp17344 »

runarberg wrote: post #49
dwohnitmok wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore. This benchmark is for LLM chess ability: https://github.com/lightnesscaster/Chess-LLM-Benchmark?tab=r... . LLMs are graded according to FIDE rules so e.g. two illegal moves in a game leads to an immediate loss. This benchmark doesn't have the latest models from the last two months, but Gemini 3 (with no tools) is already at 1750 - 1800 FIDE, which is approximately probably around 1900 - 2000 USCF (about…

Wait, I may be missing something here. These benchmarks are gathered by having models play each other, and the second illegal move forfeits the game. This seems like a flawed method as the models who are more prone to illegal moves are going to bump the ratings of the models who are less likely. Additionally, how do we know the model isn’t benchmaxxed to eliminate illegal moves. For example, here is the list of games…

That’s a devastating benchmark design flaw. Sick of these bullshit benchmarks designed solely to hype AI. AI boosters turn around and use them as ammo, despite not understanding them.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#76

Post by [deleted] »

13415 wrote: post #59
whyenot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs aren’t built around truth as a first-class primitive. neither are humans > They optimize for next-token probability and human approval, not factual verification. while there are outliers, most humans also tend to tell people what they want to hear and to fit in. > factuality is emergent and contingent, not enforced by architecture. like humans; as far as we know, there is no "factuality" gene, and we lie to ou…

Strangely, the GP replaced the ChatGPT-generated text you're commenting on by an even worse and more misleading ChatGPT-generated one. Perhaps in order to make a point.

[deleted]

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#77

Post by emp17344 »

BeetleB wrote: post #47
cesarvarela wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs have a large quantity of chess data and still can't play for shit.

Are you saying an LLM can't produce a chess engine that will easily beat you?

Plagiarizing Stockfish doesn’t make me good at chess. Same principle applies.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#78

Post by inglor_cz »

finnjohnsen2 wrote: post #56
DrewADesign wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amplified means more work done by fewer people. It doesn’t need to replace a single entire functional human being to do things like kill the demand for labor in dev, which in turn, will kill salaries.

I would disagree. Amplified meens me and you get more s** done. Unless there a limited amount of software we need to produce per year globally to keep everyone happy, then nobody wants more -- and we happen to be at that point right NOW this second. I think not. We can make more (in less time) and people will get more. This is the mental "glass half full" approach I think. Why not take this mental route instead? We d…

Hm. More of what? Functionality, security, performance?

Current software is often buggy because the pressure to ship is just too high. If AI can fix some loose threads within, the overall quality grows.

Personally, I would welcome a massive deployment of AI to root out various zero-days from widespread libraries.

But we may instead get a larger quantity of even more buggy software.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#79

Post by fhub »

hintymad wrote: post #65

In the latest interview with Claude Code's author: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lennys-podcast-product... , Boris said that writing code is a solved problem. This brings me to a hypothetical question: what if engineers stop contributing to open source, in which case would AI still be powerful enough to learn the knowledge of software development in the future? Or is the field of computer science plateaued to…

He is likely working on a very clean codebase where all the context is already reachable or indexed. There are probably strong feedback loops via tests. Some areas I contribute to have these characteristics, and the experience is very similar to his. But in areas where they don’t exist, writing code isn’t a solved problem until you can restructure the codebase to be more friendly to agents.

Even with full context, writing CSS in a project where vanilla CSS is scattered around and wasn’t well thought out originally is challenging. Coding agents struggle there too, just not as much as humans, even with feedback loops through browser automation.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#80

Post by hintymad »

biztos wrote: post #74
hintymad wrote: post #65

In the latest interview with Claude Code's author: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lennys-podcast-product... , Boris said that writing code is a solved problem. This brings me to a hypothetical question: what if engineers stop contributing to open source, in which case would AI still be powerful enough to learn the knowledge of software development in the future? Or is the field of computer science plateaued to…

Or does the field become plateaued because engineers treat "writing code" as a "solved problem?" We could argue that writing poetry is a solved problem in much the same way, and while I don't think we especially need 50,000 people writing poems at Google, we do still need poets.

> we especially need 50,000 people writing poems at Google, we do still need poets.

I'd assume that an implied concern of most engineers is how many software engineers the world will need in the future. If it's the situation like the world needing poets, then the field is only for the lucky few. Most people would be out of job.

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