[Animats]

I've been asking for years, if we have all these computers, why do we need so many people in offices? Now we seem to have passed "peak office", with much help from the pandemic.

If everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, be very afraid.

[waffletower]

From my vantage, short-term (3-5 year) fear seems unfounded. As a software engineer, I can clearly see what ChatGPT and its LLM ilk can and can't do that I can easily do myself. LLMs clearly accelerate my access to API documentation and provide excellent outline code. But hallucinations are omnipresent and can often necessitate additional iteration and rethinking of development approaches. I think the productivity boost due to LLM usage is smaller than many credit them for. The intensity of employment displacement fear comes from an illusion that LLMs have agency. AutoGPT is not much more than an experimental repo and there isn't a viable alternative yet. "WHEN YOU COMMAND AN LLM, YOU ARE THE AGENCY", LLMs are mere extensions. Don't sell yourself short, prompt crafting/engineering is where the agency lies and requires real knowledge and context to empower you effectively use them for successful software engineering.

[JohnFen]

> The intensity of employment displacement fear comes from an illusion that LLMs have agency.

I don't think so. My concerns have nothing to do with agency, anyway. Nor are my concerns limited to (or even primarily about) impact on software engineering specifically.

Even if LLMs perform worse, if using them will save companies money over employing people, then those people are gone.

[Animats]

LLMs have agency when given a goal and connected to an API that can do something. This is likely to be a problem now and then.