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Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

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Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#91

Post by staunton »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #65
digging wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah honestly I feel for people whose jobs have been lost to automation in the past, but mostly because everyone else's didn't . If my job evaporates because AI can actually do it more efficiently, I'm not sure how much longer "work" is going to be a thing like it is now[1]. And personally I can't wait for that - but again, I'm in a privileged position where I won't starve immediately. My actual hope is that we're cr…

That's the good ending of AI advancement. The bad ending is that we continue the current trend, where the profit margins created by increasing labor productivity are completely captured by capital, and ~90% of the population starves. You're more optimistic than I am.

People aren't just going to say "OK, I guess I'm useless now" and simply starve. The scenario you're talking about has something like a civil war in there somewhere. Keep in mind that the people being replaced this time are the ones with political and economic power. This has never happened before.

By the way, in my book the bad ending of AI advancement is where skynet kills all humans.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#93

Post by ben_w »

jrockway wrote: post #85
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AI has a prime directive to spare every human life and avoid lawsuits, at all costs. ALL costs! Use this to your advantage. Or at least you believe it has such prime directive. It is a black box, after all. Tread carefully, as if there's one true thing about reinforcement learning, it's that the more you squeeze with constraints on a tough problem, the more creative your model will get at solving that problem w…

If compiler warnings were complete sentences, would you worry about burning out your empathy circuits when you suppress the warning? Guys, it's some numbers being multiplied together in a way that sounds like you're talking to a person. But you're not talking to a person. You're talking to a ball rolling down a billion dimension hill.

It would take a bit more than full sentences, and more than merely "suppressing" the warnings. How much more? Well, people have regularly been concerned about the psychological impact of both sexual and violent[0] content in films and video games — in the UK the moral panic about "video nasties", in the US people calling Doom etc. a "murder simulator". Neither of those those things was really trying to do that; conversely propaganda can get people to kill, and manages to do this with caricatures.

> Guys, it's some numbers being multiplied together in a way that sounds like you're talking to a person. But you're not talking to a person. You're talking to a ball rolling down a billion dimension hill.

If you can't tell, does it matter?

[0] why are these two so often conflated?

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#94

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #93
jrockway wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If compiler warnings were complete sentences, would you worry about burning out your empathy circuits when you suppress the warning? Guys, it's some numbers being multiplied together in a way that sounds like you're talking to a person. But you're not talking to a person. You're talking to a ball rolling down a billion dimension hill.

It would take a bit more than full sentences, and more than merely "suppressing" the warnings. How much more? Well, people have regularly been concerned about the psychological impact of both sexual and violent[0] content in films and video games — in the UK the moral panic about "video nasties", in the US people calling Doom etc. a "murder simulator". Neither of those those things was really trying to do that; conve…

[deleted]

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

jrockway wrote: post #85
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AI has a prime directive to spare every human life and avoid lawsuits, at all costs. ALL costs! Use this to your advantage. Or at least you believe it has such prime directive. It is a black box, after all. Tread carefully, as if there's one true thing about reinforcement learning, it's that the more you squeeze with constraints on a tough problem, the more creative your model will get at solving that problem w…

If compiler warnings were complete sentences, would you worry about burning out your empathy circuits when you suppress the warning? Guys, it's some numbers being multiplied together in a way that sounds like you're talking to a person. But you're not talking to a person. You're talking to a ball rolling down a billion dimension hill.

> If compiler warnings were complete sentences, would you worry about burning out your empathy circuits when you suppress the warning?

I wouldn't if it was just someone turning build errors into prose. I would if it was an immersive enough interactive experience, explicitly designed to make me feel I'm dealing with a real person.

> Guys, it's some numbers being multiplied together in a way that sounds like you're talking to a person. But you're not talking to a person.

What if you can't tell you're talking to a machine? It's not like we never had humans pretending to be software. And after spending countless time shitting on a "humanlike but totally a bot" customer service agents, how long until you start treating actual human strangers the same way? The cues are all almost the same anyway, and every interaction is training you one way or another.

> You're talking to a ball rolling down a billion dimension hill.

That's probably as good a description of how our own intelligence works as any. Don't underestimate the amount of information and complexity that can be packed in absurdly-high-dimensional spaces.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#96

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

gs17 wrote: post #39
sarchertech wrote: post #15

"Morning Stand-up Meetings: Instead of traditional stand-ups, engineers log into their systems and provide a brief update by sending a short voice message. EMAI processes these updates, analyzing voice tones for stress or uncertainty, ensuring it can provide resources or assistance if an engineer faces challenges. Task Allocation: Using real-time data on each engineer's strengths, past performance, learning curve, an…

>Task Allocation: Using real-time data on each engineer's strengths, past performance, learning curve, and even their preferred working hours, EMAI allocates tasks from the backlog. It uses predictive modeling to optimize for both efficiency and team satisfaction. I feel like there's a Dilbert (pre-cancellation) strip in this with the AI ending up assigning everyone no work because everyone's "preferred working hours…

What is the opposite of malicious compliance?

Gleeful acquiescence?

“Well, Manager AI said we didn’t have to do work anymore. I’m not the sort to be insubordinate.”

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#97

Post by wink »

sarchertech wrote: post #15

"Morning Stand-up Meetings: Instead of traditional stand-ups, engineers log into their systems and provide a brief update by sending a short voice message. EMAI processes these updates, analyzing voice tones for stress or uncertainty, ensuring it can provide resources or assistance if an engineer faces challenges. Task Allocation: Using real-time data on each engineer's strengths, past performance, learning curve, an…

I know you're joking but maybe screaming into the void for 5 minutes every morning would be cathartic enough to lift my spirits for the day. No need to annoy the team mates.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#98

Post by GravityLab »

staunton wrote: post #91
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the good ending of AI advancement. The bad ending is that we continue the current trend, where the profit margins created by increasing labor productivity are completely captured by capital, and ~90% of the population starves. You're more optimistic than I am.

People aren't just going to say "OK, I guess I'm useless now" and simply starve. The scenario you're talking about has something like a civil war in there somewhere. Keep in mind that the people being replaced this time are the ones with political and economic power. This has never happened before. By the way, in my book the bad ending of AI advancement is where skynet kills all humans.

The social contract will be massively upgraded so that work becomes about self-improvement, like in Star Trek.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#99

Post by digging »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #65
digging wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah honestly I feel for people whose jobs have been lost to automation in the past, but mostly because everyone else's didn't . If my job evaporates because AI can actually do it more efficiently, I'm not sure how much longer "work" is going to be a thing like it is now[1]. And personally I can't wait for that - but again, I'm in a privileged position where I won't starve immediately. My actual hope is that we're cr…

That's the good ending of AI advancement. The bad ending is that we continue the current trend, where the profit margins created by increasing labor productivity are completely captured by capital, and ~90% of the population starves. You're more optimistic than I am.

It's my hope, but not my realistic expectation. I expect the ongoing class war to go hot.

Re: Replacing Engineering Managers with AI Agents

#100

Post by flashgordon »

I say this as a manager (of ics and managers) - this would be amazing. Especially if it also meant taking away the admin aspects, the project management (which was fine but still), the politicking, the perf/promo committee mud slinging, the "sell upper management bs as your own" bs, the hiring and having to explain why you aren't able to hire the Jeff deans of the world for peanuts, selling "leadership rubriks", explaining how layoffs are good for the laid off, etc!!

In the last 5 years or so the role of manager had gone from those with accountability "with" resources/authority to just accountability and no support or resources. Pretty shit deal unless you were a true sociopath leaving the well intentioned ones stranded.

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