[haliyat]

I’m not at all worried about LLMs replacing even low-level engineers. We’ve been using Copilot and ChatGPT for awhile at work now and the most useful applications we’ve found are more analogous to a compiler than a developer. For example, we’ve had good luck using it to help port a bunch of code between large APIs. the process still involves a lot of human work to fix bugs from its output but a project we estimated at 6 months took three weeks.

On the other hand, as someone whose role gives me visibility into the way senior leaders at the company think about what AI will be able to do, I’m absolutely terrified that they’re going to detonate the company by massively over-investing in AI before it’s proven and by forcing everyone to distort their roadmaps around some truly unhinged claims about what AI is going to do in the future.

CEOs and senior corporate leaders don’t understand what this technology is and have always dreamed of a world where they didn’t need engineers (or anyone else who actually knows how to make stuff) but instead could turn the whole company into a big “Done” button that just pops out real versions of their buzzword filled fever dreams. This makes them the worst possible rubes for some the AI over-promising — and eager to make up their own!

Between this and the really crazy over-valuations we’re already seeing in companies like Nvidia, I’m seeing the risk of a truly catastrophic 2000- or 2008-style economic crash rising rapidly and am starting to prepare myself for that scenario in the next 2-5 years.