5 ms·

making people in an industry more efficient at their jobs == job losses for that industry. if one programmer can now do the work of 5 with the help of an AI, c

making people in an industry more efficient at their jobs == job losses for that industry. if one programmer can now do the work of 5 with the help of an AI, companies will quickly be hiring less developers. yet everytime i mention this, im told that "software developers are the one job that will never be at risk of automation"

rorykoehler 10y ago
All jobs are at risk of automation. Jobs by themselves are a pointless construct. It is the living that they provide us that is of value. I'm looking forward to the day this is accepted in mainstream political thought.
kk_cz 10y ago
I would argue that every year programmers ARE more efficient at their jobs with adoption of new tools, frameworks and methodologies. Yet there is still not enough good developers.
- unprepare 10y ago
  yes and each new tool or helpful framework reduces the total number of developers needed. Just because we have yet to meet the demand for developers, doesn't mean that that demand is not decreasing over time. software development is quite a young industry, so its growth can easily outpace the efficiency gains resulting in more developers, until it doesnt. Development as an industry will need to maintain stronger growth than efficiency gains through innovation, and i just dont see that happening long term. edit: in my first paragraph i should have said " Just because we have yet to meet the demand for developers, doesn't mean that growth of that demand is not decreasing over time."
  - collyw 10y ago
    And every 6 months you need to learn the latest and greatest new framework if you live in JS land.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    You start out with n amount of programmer time demanded from projects a b and c, given that you can do x with y number of programmer hours. So imagine that increased efficiency means you can now do 2x as much fantastic now you only need n/2 right! Not so fast now that you can do more with less d, e, and f are worth doing and n+ are now demanded. Basically simple economics says that decreasing price, the price for a given unit of work going down increases the demand for such. This is not realistically infinite however most of the world has a long way to go to catch up with the developed world and the developed world itself seems to have no end in sight as far as demand for automation and tech. It would strongly look like until it doesn't is so far out on the time horizon that it is hard to predict anything at all on that scale.
    - unprepare 10y ago
      >economics says that decreasing price, the price for a given unit of work going down increases the demand for such an AI costs nothing in the long term, so you are agreeing here that demand for AI produced software will rise more sharply than demand for human developers, because they are more expensive. So if you accept that basic law of economics, then you must arrive at the conclusion that human labor will inevitably be outpaced by cheaper labor. the fact that that labor is coding seems to be where people get really stuck here. I dont really understand why this is where people get stuck. the population of the world, and thus its demand for food has very much grown over time, and is still growing. Yet we have fewer people producing food than ever before. The reason for this is that the augmentation of technology outpaced the increase in demand. So we had fewer farmers making more food than ever. similarly with software development, the demand for software will continue to increase over time, but the demand for human developers will inevitably fall, due to augmentations of technology enabling fewer workers to produce vastly more output. So we will have fewer developers working than we have, say, today[1], but those fewer developers will be producing orders of magnitude more[2] software [1]im not actually trying to predict the inflection point of this growth curve as today, i meant this only as an example to make my point easy to understand [2] where more could mean more complex, more efficient, etc.
      - michaelmrose 10y ago
cabalamat 10y ago
> im told that "software developers are the one job that will never be at risk of automation" The AI is itself a program. If the AI can write programs, it can write a better version of itself. A few iterations of this, and it will have far surpassed human intelligence. So it would be more accurate to say that writing programs is the last job that will be automated.
- unprepare 10y ago
  I think things like psychology/psychiatry, social work, child protective services, and other jobs that rely on a lot of interpersonal communication will be around longer than development; at least at any scale worth talking about.
- falcolas 10y ago
  This makes the assumption that every program it writes is somehow guaranteed to be better than the original. Why would it not run into the Multiplicity problem, where each subsequent copy is a bit dumber than the original? I would think it would be much more likely follow a normal evolutionary model - improve itself to a local maxima, then just stall while the random mutations fail to make the huge leap required to hit the next maxima. We can't even properly model the human mind in computers yet - not enough processing power - so it follows that an AI which is "better" than humans would require even more processing power than that required to ape humans.
  - adangert 10y ago
    The difference here is the "intelligence" of an AI can be described as a loss function, so if an AI can build and then train another AI which can achieve a better overall score from many examples in its loss function, then that AI, with perhaps a deep neural network will start to "understand" or the components that make a successful neural network. Thus it could use intelligence rather than random mutations to evolve.
- thinkpad20 10y ago
  > The AI is itself a program. If the AI can write programs, it can write a better version of itself. Not necessarily (or even likely). There's a huge difference between being able to write "programs" (for example the ones described here are ~5 lines) and being able to write a large and very complex piece of software, which such an AI would undoubtedly be. There's also the question of what constitutes "better." Improvements in e.g. speed or memory efficiency (hard enough as it is, but conceivable for an AI) are a quite different thing than improvements in capabilities or understanding.
williamdclt 10y ago
Automation is always a good thing. Should we stop progress to allow humans to do some inefficient work? Society will have to change so that work is something done by machines, not humans.
- unprepare 10y ago
  I'm not making an argument that it is bad by any means, im only countering a common thread in development circles that 'development will never be at risk of automation' for an example, see kapv89's response to my comment. Its a seemingly very prevalent view that somehow development will not suffer job losses from the efficiency gains innovation is able to create.
kapv89 10y ago
Here's my 2 cents on why software developers will never be at the risk of automation: https://medium.com/@kapv89/code-will-always-be-written-207d3cdfe145#.hmic6qrls https://medium.com/@kapv89/code-will-always-be-written-207d3...
- unprepare 10y ago
  Immediately i see you have this line: >And until we develop an AI powerful enough to write clear, step by step instructions for any random task, code will be written. so its "will never be at risk of automation UNTIL" which is vastly different from "will never be at risk of automation" The article we are commenting on is about an AI writing code, so im not sure im seeing a convincing argument here. secondly, automation isnt about some industry disappearing overnight, its about an ever decreasing amount of jobs in that industry. You cant imagine a system/tool/framework that allows such greater efficiency that a single developer can now reach the output of 5 or 10 developers?
syrrim 10y ago
You're making the assumption that companies need to accomplish a constant amount of work, and that they only hire enough developer to perform this work. I would argue that many companies have a limited budget, and will continue hiring developers to expend this budget. Once hired, there is effectively indefinite work that can be done, and which will better the position of the company. If each developer can do 5x more, then the company will accomplish 5x more, not spend 5x less.
senior_james 10y ago
Open source has already started doing this to some degree. At my last few companies, we used open source projects as a base for many of our software. Instead of having to hire multiple senior level developers, all they needed to do was hire one project manager (me) and a bunch of junior developers (which are much cheaper). This is because all of the engineering-level software was given out for free and the company only needs to make changes, which takes much less experienced employees.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Were you complying with the licenses?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mk89 10y ago
I actually think that together with psychologists we are the only two categories of people killing their own job :) we really strive to automate and to use the component there etc. to make our life easier and write less code. However, as someone else said above, software engineering is not coding, this is just a subset. Our job eventually will also evolve, it's inevitable :) it has already, it will not stop certainly now.
naikrovek 10y ago
You're right. This could happen tomorrow, if even a small percentage of Excel users suddenly knew how to use it properly. We'd be at 50% unemployment if everyone who uses Excel knew how to take advantage of it.

rorykoehler 10y ago

All jobs are at risk of automation. Jobs by themselves are a pointless construct. It is the living that they provide us that is of value. I'm looking forward to the day this is accepted in mainstream political thought.

kk_cz 10y ago

I would argue that every year programmers ARE more efficient at their jobs with adoption of new tools, frameworks and methodologies. Yet there is still not enough good developers.

unprepare 10y ago
yes and each new tool or helpful framework reduces the total number of developers needed. Just because we have yet to meet the demand for developers, doesn't mean that that demand is not decreasing over time. software development is quite a young industry, so its growth can easily outpace the efficiency gains resulting in more developers, until it doesnt. Development as an industry will need to maintain stronger growth than efficiency gains through innovation, and i just dont see that happening long term. edit: in my first paragraph i should have said " Just because we have yet to meet the demand for developers, doesn't mean that growth of that demand is not decreasing over time."
- collyw 10y ago
  And every 6 months you need to learn the latest and greatest new framework if you live in JS land.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  You start out with n amount of programmer time demanded from projects a b and c, given that you can do x with y number of programmer hours. So imagine that increased efficiency means you can now do 2x as much fantastic now you only need n/2 right! Not so fast now that you can do more with less d, e, and f are worth doing and n+ are now demanded. Basically simple economics says that decreasing price, the price for a given unit of work going down increases the demand for such. This is not realistically infinite however most of the world has a long way to go to catch up with the developed world and the developed world itself seems to have no end in sight as far as demand for automation and tech. It would strongly look like until it doesn't is so far out on the time horizon that it is hard to predict anything at all on that scale.
  - unprepare 10y ago
    >economics says that decreasing price, the price for a given unit of work going down increases the demand for such an AI costs nothing in the long term, so you are agreeing here that demand for AI produced software will rise more sharply than demand for human developers, because they are more expensive. So if you accept that basic law of economics, then you must arrive at the conclusion that human labor will inevitably be outpaced by cheaper labor. the fact that that labor is coding seems to be where people get really stuck here. I dont really understand why this is where people get stuck. the population of the world, and thus its demand for food has very much grown over time, and is still growing. Yet we have fewer people producing food than ever before. The reason for this is that the augmentation of technology outpaced the increase in demand. So we had fewer farmers making more food than ever. similarly with software development, the demand for software will continue to increase over time, but the demand for human developers will inevitably fall, due to augmentations of technology enabling fewer workers to produce vastly more output. So we will have fewer developers working than we have, say, today[1], but those fewer developers will be producing orders of magnitude more[2] software [1]im not actually trying to predict the inflection point of this growth curve as today, i meant this only as an example to make my point easy to understand [2] where more could mean more complex, more efficient, etc.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago

cabalamat 10y ago

> im told that "software developers are the one job that will never be at risk of automation" The AI is itself a program. If the AI can write programs, it can write a better version of itself. A few iterations of this, and it will have far surpassed human intelligence. So it would be more accurate to say that writing programs is the last job that will be automated.

unprepare 10y ago
I think things like psychology/psychiatry, social work, child protective services, and other jobs that rely on a lot of interpersonal communication will be around longer than development; at least at any scale worth talking about.
falcolas 10y ago
This makes the assumption that every program it writes is somehow guaranteed to be better than the original. Why would it not run into the Multiplicity problem, where each subsequent copy is a bit dumber than the original? I would think it would be much more likely follow a normal evolutionary model - improve itself to a local maxima, then just stall while the random mutations fail to make the huge leap required to hit the next maxima. We can't even properly model the human mind in computers yet - not enough processing power - so it follows that an AI which is "better" than humans would require even more processing power than that required to ape humans.
- adangert 10y ago
  The difference here is the "intelligence" of an AI can be described as a loss function, so if an AI can build and then train another AI which can achieve a better overall score from many examples in its loss function, then that AI, with perhaps a deep neural network will start to "understand" or the components that make a successful neural network. Thus it could use intelligence rather than random mutations to evolve.
thinkpad20 10y ago
> The AI is itself a program. If the AI can write programs, it can write a better version of itself. Not necessarily (or even likely). There's a huge difference between being able to write "programs" (for example the ones described here are ~5 lines) and being able to write a large and very complex piece of software, which such an AI would undoubtedly be. There's also the question of what constitutes "better." Improvements in e.g. speed or memory efficiency (hard enough as it is, but conceivable for an AI) are a quite different thing than improvements in capabilities or understanding.

williamdclt 10y ago

Automation is always a good thing. Should we stop progress to allow humans to do some inefficient work? Society will have to change so that work is something done by machines, not humans.

unprepare 10y ago
I'm not making an argument that it is bad by any means, im only countering a common thread in development circles that 'development will never be at risk of automation' for an example, see kapv89's response to my comment. Its a seemingly very prevalent view that somehow development will not suffer job losses from the efficiency gains innovation is able to create.

kapv89 10y ago

Here's my 2 cents on why software developers will never be at the risk of automation: https://medium.com/@kapv89/code-will-always-be-written-207d3cdfe145#.hmic6qrls https://medium.com/@kapv89/code-will-always-be-written-207d3...

unprepare 10y ago
Immediately i see you have this line: >And until we develop an AI powerful enough to write clear, step by step instructions for any random task, code will be written. so its "will never be at risk of automation UNTIL" which is vastly different from "will never be at risk of automation" The article we are commenting on is about an AI writing code, so im not sure im seeing a convincing argument here. secondly, automation isnt about some industry disappearing overnight, its about an ever decreasing amount of jobs in that industry. You cant imagine a system/tool/framework that allows such greater efficiency that a single developer can now reach the output of 5 or 10 developers?

syrrim 10y ago

You're making the assumption that companies need to accomplish a constant amount of work, and that they only hire enough developer to perform this work. I would argue that many companies have a limited budget, and will continue hiring developers to expend this budget. Once hired, there is effectively indefinite work that can be done, and which will better the position of the company. If each developer can do 5x more, then the company will accomplish 5x more, not spend 5x less.

senior_james 10y ago

Open source has already started doing this to some degree. At my last few companies, we used open source projects as a base for many of our software. Instead of having to hire multiple senior level developers, all they needed to do was hire one project manager (me) and a bunch of junior developers (which are much cheaper). This is because all of the engineering-level software was given out for free and the company only needs to make changes, which takes much less experienced employees.

michaelmrose 10y ago
Were you complying with the licenses?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

mk89 10y ago

I actually think that together with psychologists we are the only two categories of people killing their own job :) we really strive to automate and to use the component there etc. to make our life easier and write less code. However, as someone else said above, software engineering is not coding, this is just a subset. Our job eventually will also evolve, it's inevitable :) it has already, it will not stop certainly now.

naikrovek 10y ago

You're right. This could happen tomorrow, if even a small percentage of Excel users suddenly knew how to use it properly. We'd be at 50% unemployment if everyone who uses Excel knew how to take advantage of it.