[tills13]

> For me, something like this is the future of programming. Agents fiddling away and we pop in to see what's going on or work on things they aren't well suited for.

Honestly, this is depressing. Pop in from what? Our factory jobs?

[brainless]

I understand that we are slowly taking away our own jobs but I do not find it depressing. I do find it concerning since most people do not talk about this openly. We are not sure how we are restructure so many jobs. If we cannot find jobs, what is the financial future for a large number of people across the world. This needs more thinking, honest acceptance of the situation. It will happen, we should take a positive approach to finding a new future.

[seanhandley]

Read up on the Jevons Paradox

[freedomben]

> In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use (thereby reducing the amount needed for a single application); however, as the cost of using the resource drops, if the price is highly elastic, this results in overall demand increasing, causing total resource consumption to rise. Governments have typically expected efficiency gains to lower resource consumption, rather than anticipating possible increases due to the Jevons paradox.[1]

I do think there will be some Jevons effect going on with this, but I think it's important to recognize that software development as a resource is different than something like coal. For example, if the average iPhone-only teenager can now suddenly start cranking out apps, that may ultimately increase demand for apps and there may be more code than ever getting "written," but there won't necesarily be a need for your CS-grad software engineer anymore, so we could still be fucked. Why would you pay a high salary for a SWE when your business teams can just generate whatever app they need without having to know anything about how it actually works?

I think the arguments about "AI isn't good enough to replace senior engineers" will hold true for a few years, but not much beyond that. Jevon's Paradox will probably hold true for software as a resource, but not for SWEs as a resource. In the coal scenario, imagine that coal gets super cheap to procure because we invent robots that can do it from alpha to omega. Coal demand may go up, but the job for the coal miner is toast, and unless that coal miner has ownership stake, they will be out on their ass.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[mxkopy]

The coal miner would have to pivot to being someone who knows a lot about coal instead of someone that actually obtained it, they’d become more of a coal-advisor to the person making decisions about what type of or how much coal to get/what’s even possible with the coal they’re getting.

The future I’m seeing with AI is one where software (i.e. as a way to get hardware to do stuff) is basically a non-issue. The example I wanna work on soon is telling Siri I want my iPhone to work as a touchpad for my computer and have the necessary drivers for that to happen be built automatically because that’s a reasonable thing I could expect my hardware to do. That’s the sort of thing that seems pretty achievable by AI in a couple turns that would take a single dev a year or two. And the thing is, I can’t imagine a software dev that doesn’t have some set of skills that are still applicable in this future, either through general CS skills (knowing what’s within reasonable expectations of hardware, being able to effectively describe more specific behavior/choosing the right abstractions etc) or other more nebulous technical knowledge (e.g. what you want to do with hardware in the first place).

Another thing I will mention is that for things like the iPhone example from earlier, there are usually a lot of optimizations or decisions involved that are derived from the user’s experience as a human which the LLM can’t really use synthetically. As another example if I turned my phone into a second monitor the LLM might generate code that sends full resolution images to the phone when the phone’s screen is much lower, there’s no real point for it to optimize that away if it doesn’t know how eyes work and what screens are used for. So at some point it needs to involve a model of a human, at least for examples like these.

[freedomben]

> The coal miner would have to pivot to being someone who knows a lot about coal instead of someone that actually obtained it, they’d become more of a coal-advisor to the person making decisions about what type of or how much coal to get/what’s even possible with the coal they’re getting.

I definitely agree that there will be some jobs/roles like that, and it won't be 100% destruction of SWEs (and many other gigs that will be affected), but I can't imagine that more than a small percentage of consultants will be needed. The top 10% of engineers I think will be just fine for the reasons you've said, but at the lower levels it will be a blood bath (and realistically maybe it should as there are plenty of SWEs that probably shouldn't be writing code that matters, but that feels like a separate discussion). Your point about other skills/knowledge is good too, though I suspect most white collar jobs are on the chopping block too, just maybe shortly behind.

Your future is one that I'm dreaming about too (although I have a hard time believing Apple would allow you to do that, but on Android or some future 3rd option it might be possible). Especially as a Linux user there have been plenty of times I've thought of cool stuff that I'd love to have personally that would take me months of work to build (time I've accepted I'll never have until my kids are all out of the house at least haha). I'm also dreaming of a day when I can just ask the AI to produce more seasons of Star Trek TOS, Have Gun - Will Travel, The Lieutenant, and many other great shows that I'm hungry for more, and have it crank them out. That future would be incredible!

But that feels like the smooth side of the sword, and avoiding a deep cut from the sharp side feels increasingly important. Hopefully it will solve itself but seeing the impacts so far I'm getting worried.

I appreciate the discussion and optimism! There is too much AI doomerism out there and the upsides (like you've mentioned) don't get talked about enough I think.

[thermodynot]

Computers are not special. They are just a heat engine like everything else. We feed them concentrated energy that they dissipate to do work. They do work on data: we give it data (some of it is called code) and it gives us back data. It's all about the information content, how does that data communicate something and relate to the world?

"Training" is just upfront work. Why on Earth people expect to get from the machine that processes data some novel information that did not exist before?

This whole fantasy hinges on not understand the sheer amount of data these LLMs are being trained on, and some magical thinking about it producing some novel information ex nihilo somehow. I will never understand how intelligent people fall into this patterns of thought.

We can only get from computers what we put into them.

[elbear]

> Why would you pay a high salary for a SWE when your business teams can just generate whatever app they need without having to know anything about how it actually works?

It depends on how good the AI is. The advantage of an SWE is that they have a systems thinking mindset, so they can solve some problems more efficiently. With some apps in won't matter, but with others will.

One potential positive outcome is that we will be able to solve more and bigger problems, since our capacity for solving problems has been augmented with AI.

[pmarreck]

> Pop in from what? Our factory jobs?

Oh, you sweet summer child. ;)

You will pop in from the other 9 projects you are currently popping in on, of course! While running 10 agents at once!

[tills13]

And from which exactly am I earning an income to feed myself? Who's buying what I'm making? Where are they getting their money?

We're building a serfdom again.

[pmarreck]

LOL, what? Take on 10 projects at once, and start making way more money... if you're not an external-locus-of-control moron at least

You've literally been given an excavator when you currently have a shovel, and you're worried that other excavators will dig you out of a job. That is a literal analogy to your POV, here

[abrookewood]

Hopefully, from sitting by the pool drinking margaritas ... but I doubt we will get to keep our new found freedom.

[dkersten]

Never going to happen. More efficiency and automation won’t lead to more free time and money for the masses, it will lead to fewer people employed, and those that are will be working the same hours for the same money but outputting more. Only the rich people will benefit.

In the long term. In the short term, we get to do the same work but faster.

[freedomben]

Indeed, why would an employer pay us a high salary to sit by the pool? The benefits will go to the founders/investors and the customers. They'll benefit greatly from the increased output and lower costs, but the middlemen (SWEs) will be cut out. That's a great thing if you're a founder/investor or a customer, but not if you're the middleman. New opportunities may come around, but I don't think that's inevitable. It remains to be seen.

[neuderrek]

It will not be easier for founders/investor either. If couple prompts is all it takes to build your product, your potential customers will write those prompts themselves instead of buying your product.

[freedomben]

Hot damn, that's a great point! Although I fully expect the models at some point to say stuff like, "I'm sorry I can't generate a <whatever> because that would violate Apple's/Google's/Whatever IP" and then have them enforce it with the power of government (copyright/patent/regulation/etc). There's also lots of industries where compliance requirements create a moat that might be difficult to get past, though that's probably just a short/medium-term problem.

[dkersten]

True. But someone at the top will benefit. Either it’s the companies that can produce more of something that the end user can’t easily replicate themselves for whatever reason, or at least the LLM providers.

What I mean is, it will create value. Just not for the masses. And maybe not for the small businesses. If anything, it will let the big corporations do even more: a few big players doing everything and no little players at all.

[elbear]

Some people prefer to pay for others to handle things and take responsibility.

[scottrblock]

How about our software engineering jobs, which will now entail managing a team of agents?

[tills13]

wow that sounds fun /s

[colecut]

Sounds preferable to managing people tbh