AI is not an exoskeleton, it's a pretzel: It only tastes good if you douse it in lye.
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AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
91–100 of 608 posts
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#92In 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…
I don’t believe people who have dedicated their lives to open source will simply want to stop working on it, no matter how much is or is not written by AI. I also have to agree, I find myself more and more lately laughing about just how much resources we waste creating exactly the same things over and over in software. I don’t mean generally, like languages, I mean specifically. How many trillions of times has a form…
> I don’t believe people who have dedicated their lives to open source will simply want to stop working on it, no matter how much is or is not written by AI.
Yeah, hence my question can only be hypothetical.
> I wonder what all we might build instead, if all that time could be saved
If we subscribe to Economics' broken-window theory, then the investment into such repetitive work is not investment but waste. Once we stop such investment, we will have a lot more resources to work on something else, bring out a new chapter of the tech revolution. Or so I hope.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#93I like this analogy, and in fact in have used it for a totally different reason: why I don't like AI.
Imagine someone going to a local gym and using an exosqueleton to do the exercises without effort. Able to lift more? Yes. Run faster? Sure. Exercising and enjoying the gym? ... No, and probably not.
I like writing code, even if it's boilerplate. It's fun for me, and I want to keep doing it. Using AI to do that part for me is just...not fun.
Someone going to the gym isn't trying to lift more or run faster, but instead improving and enjoying. Not using AI for coding has the same outcome for me.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#94Earlier 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.
When computers came onto the market and could automate a large percentage of office jobs, what happened to the job market for office jobs?
They changed, significantly.
We lost the pneumatic tube [1] maintenance crew. Secretarial work nearly went away. A huge number of bookkeepers in the banking industry lost their jobs. The job a typist was eliminated/merged into everyone else's job. The job of a "computer" (someone that does computations) was eliminated.
What we ended up with was primarily a bunch of customer service, marketing, and sales workers.
There was never a "office worker" job. But there were a lot of jobs under the umbrella of "office work" that were fundamentally changed and, crucially, your experience in those fields didn't necessarily translate over to the new jobs created.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
When computers came onto the market and could automate a large percentage of office jobs, what happened to the job market for office jobs?
They changed, significantly. We lost the pneumatic tube [1] maintenance crew. Secretarial work nearly went away. A huge number of bookkeepers in the banking industry lost their jobs. The job a typist was eliminated/merged into everyone else's job. The job of a "computer" (someone that does computations) was eliminated. What we ended up with was primarily a bunch of customer service, marketing, and sales workers. Ther…
I expect something like this will happen to some degree, although not to the extent of what happened with computers.
But the point is that we didn't just lose all of those jobs.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#96An electric bicycle for the mind.
Owners intent is more like electric chair (for SWEs), but some people are trying to use it as office chair.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#97I'll guess we'll se a lot of analogies and have to get used to it, although most will be off.
AI can be an exoskeleton. It can be a co-worker and it can also replace you and your whole team.
The "Office Space"-question is what are you particularly within an organization and concretely when you'll become the bottleneck, preventing your "exoskeleton" for efficiently doing its job independently.
There's no other question that's relevant for any practical purposes for your employer and your well being as a person that presumably needs to earn a living based on their utility.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I like this game between grok-4.1-fast and maia-1100 (engine, not LLM).
https://chessbenchllm.onrender.com/game/37d0d260-d63b-4e41-9...
This exact game has been played 60 thousand times on lichess. The peace sacrifice Grok performed on move 6 has been played 5 million times on lichess. Every single move Grok made is also the top played move on lichess.
This reminds me of Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game where the protagonist survived Nazi torture by memorizing every game in a chess book his torturers dropped (excellent book btw. and I am aware I just committed Godwin’s law here; also aware of the irony here). The protagonist became “good” at chess, simply by memorizing a lot of games.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
They changed, significantly. We lost the pneumatic tube [1] maintenance crew. Secretarial work nearly went away. A huge number of bookkeepers in the banking industry lost their jobs. The job a typist was eliminated/merged into everyone else's job. The job of a "computer" (someone that does computations) was eliminated. What we ended up with was primarily a bunch of customer service, marketing, and sales workers. Ther…
I expect something like this will happen to some degree, although not to the extent of what happened with computers. But the point is that we didn't just lose all of those jobs.
Right, and my point is that specific jobs, like the job of a dev, were eliminate or significantly curtailed.
New jobs may be waiting for us on the other side of this, but my job, the job of a dev, is specifically under threat with no guarantee that the experience I gained as a dev will translate into a new market.
Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
#100Earlier 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…
Yeah, but 1800 FIDE players don't make illegal moves, and Gemini does.
That benchmark methodology isn't great, but regardless, LLMs can be trained to play Chess with a 99.8% legal move rate.