5 ms·

btw thinking this threat excludes engineers and programmers is delusional

wyldfire 9y ago
I guess. But it strikes me as engineers and coders will just gain more power to work in higher-level abstractions.
vog 9y ago
I think this happens all the time. Since good programmers can automate practically everything, they tend to automate as much as makes economically sense for them. So programming, almost by definition, always involved all tasks that are not automated yet. Programming gets easier and harder that way at the same time: Previous tasks (e.g. taking care for memory management) become easier or automated way, while harder tasks remain (larger, more complex applications, higher abstraction levels). So I'd rephrase it that way: Engineers and programmers are effected every day by this "threat", but so far worked quite well for to their benefit, they just operate mostly on higher and higher levels, while still having to keep in mind (and having to fix) the lower levels. Kind of full stack, with a growing stack, thinner and thinner on lower levels, but overall higher and higher.
y_hn_blocks2 9y ago
The other day we trained almost human life forms to do our job - they were supplied by one of the many bodyshops from the indian subcontinent.
shaggerty 9y ago
I disagree. Programming is the act of interacting with AI (the compiler) in language (code) detailed enough to specify what we want it to build for us. As tasks become abstracted to a single click or line of code, the programmer is free to work at higher levels of abstraction.
- maushu 9y ago
  It will reach the point that there are no more layers. Only idea => implementation.
  - cmdrfred 9y ago
    At that point just get your last few dollars together, give it to an AI and let it manage everything from there.
  - shaggerty 9y ago
    This can't happen unless the system makes a lot of assumptions about how to impliment the idea, which will ultimately result a in suboptimal implementation.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    That requires the AI has a superhuman comprehension of natural language, and even then the answer may be "nope". For example, someone I worked with kept asking for a button to be "wider", yet rejecting everything the programmer did to the button. Eventually the programer asked them to draw what they meant, and it turned out they meant "taller".
    - dsp1234 9y ago
      And yet if this was automated away, the "someone" would have just themselves drawn a taller button, and there would have been no problem (which is what the person above is saying by idea -> implementation).
      - olewhalehunter 9y ago
        not only that but it highlights the costs associated with human cognition, automated systems don't need to spend time making the buttons they click visually pleasing or ergonomic
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jameslk 9y ago
Most (e.g. [1]) don't think of their job as being automated because most don't understand how it will happen. The issue is we only have the present way to think about how the future will work. The future will likely eliminate a lot of mundane engineering jobs (e.g. CRUD apps) with tools that provide automation (learned or programmed) and more intuitive interfaces for the layman. Not all work can be automated, but those are the edge cases. The focus is to eliminate most work, by building smarter and more niche services. For example, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, et al have reduced the number of jobs for CMS and ecommerce developers. Zapier and IFTTT have reduced the number of integration jobs. The Grid was an experiment in creating whole websites automatically (most regard it as a failure, but the tech will likely catch up). There's research into using ML to identify and correct bugs in code. These are the low hanging fruit that will erode away at the jobs easiest to automate, leaving behind more niche work. It's hard to imagine less work for engineers in the future because there's so much work to go around right now. That's likely the case presently because there's so many industries where manual labor can be eliminated, creating lots of new labor for engineers. Whole industries may be disrupted until corporations with automation emerge and take over. We'll likely see engineering work keep rising until there isn't as much left to automate and engineering supply catches up, at which point we'll hit "peak software engineering." There will be engineers in the future just like there will be medical professionals in the future, but they'll probably be doing a different job and there will be a lot less work to go around. I like to think of that line of work as "escalation jobs," where when the machine fails, it goes to the human. Other work will likely get more and more scientific, theoretical and research-oriented. 1. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/americans-think-robots-will-take-everyone-elses-jobs-but-not-theirs.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/americans-think-robots-will-t...
- LrnByTeach 9y ago
  I agree with you, with time old IT jobs are dying and new ones are created. I like the concepts "peak software engineering" and "escalation jobs," where when the machine fails, the job goes to the human In Year 2000 , I worked at a startup , we are 70 employees total out of which 50 are Engineers. We have - one dedicated MS Exchange Mail sever admin - 5 employee team, for running production servers and helping employee PC boxes etc. - one Release engineer, whose job is to make Builds and ready for 15 day production release cycle of the code base That is 7 employees which is 10% of 70. All of it today Replaced by the Self-service Cloud Infrastructure software a) Github b) AWS c) Gmail Enterprise mail hosting/others 1/ Cloud Infrastructure software 2/ Saas Applications These are two areas where most of the Job elimination happened in the last decade. Then we got disruption ( more automation ) started at every Industry level, that created more jobs than lost software engineer productivity doubled/tripled in the last decade as we developed more higher level Abstractions. More than 1000 people are working on Amazon Alexa, so do at many other companies in the areas of ML and Deep learning AI . These are brand new jobs never heard of 10 years ago. ------ > For example, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, et al have reduced the number of jobs for CMS and ecommerce developers. > Zapier and IFTTT have reduced the number of integration jobs

I guess. But it strikes me as engineers and coders will just gain more power to work in higher-level abstractions.

vog 9y ago

I think this happens all the time. Since good programmers can automate practically everything, they tend to automate as much as makes economically sense for them. So programming, almost by definition, always involved all tasks that are not automated yet. Programming gets easier and harder that way at the same time: Previous tasks (e.g. taking care for memory management) become easier or automated way, while harder tasks remain (larger, more complex applications, higher abstraction levels). So I'd rephrase it that way: Engineers and programmers are effected every day by this "threat", but so far worked quite well for to their benefit, they just operate mostly on higher and higher levels, while still having to keep in mind (and having to fix) the lower levels. Kind of full stack, with a growing stack, thinner and thinner on lower levels, but overall higher and higher.

y_hn_blocks2 9y ago

The other day we trained almost human life forms to do our job - they were supplied by one of the many bodyshops from the indian subcontinent.

shaggerty 9y ago

I disagree. Programming is the act of interacting with AI (the compiler) in language (code) detailed enough to specify what we want it to build for us. As tasks become abstracted to a single click or line of code, the programmer is free to work at higher levels of abstraction.

maushu 9y ago
It will reach the point that there are no more layers. Only idea => implementation.
- cmdrfred 9y ago
  At that point just get your last few dollars together, give it to an AI and let it manage everything from there.
- shaggerty 9y ago
  This can't happen unless the system makes a lot of assumptions about how to impliment the idea, which will ultimately result a in suboptimal implementation.
- ben_w 9y ago
  That requires the AI has a superhuman comprehension of natural language, and even then the answer may be "nope". For example, someone I worked with kept asking for a button to be "wider", yet rejecting everything the programmer did to the button. Eventually the programer asked them to draw what they meant, and it turned out they meant "taller".
  - dsp1234 9y ago
    And yet if this was automated away, the "someone" would have just themselves drawn a taller button, and there would have been no problem (which is what the person above is saying by idea -> implementation).
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      not only that but it highlights the costs associated with human cognition, automated systems don't need to spend time making the buttons they click visually pleasing or ergonomic

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jameslk 9y ago

Most (e.g. [1]) don't think of their job as being automated because most don't understand how it will happen. The issue is we only have the present way to think about how the future will work. The future will likely eliminate a lot of mundane engineering jobs (e.g. CRUD apps) with tools that provide automation (learned or programmed) and more intuitive interfaces for the layman. Not all work can be automated, but those are the edge cases. The focus is to eliminate most work, by building smarter and more niche services. For example, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, et al have reduced the number of jobs for CMS and ecommerce developers. Zapier and IFTTT have reduced the number of integration jobs. The Grid was an experiment in creating whole websites automatically (most regard it as a failure, but the tech will likely catch up). There's research into using ML to identify and correct bugs in code. These are the low hanging fruit that will erode away at the jobs easiest to automate, leaving behind more niche work. It's hard to imagine less work for engineers in the future because there's so much work to go around right now. That's likely the case presently because there's so many industries where manual labor can be eliminated, creating lots of new labor for engineers. Whole industries may be disrupted until corporations with automation emerge and take over. We'll likely see engineering work keep rising until there isn't as much left to automate and engineering supply catches up, at which point we'll hit "peak software engineering." There will be engineers in the future just like there will be medical professionals in the future, but they'll probably be doing a different job and there will be a lot less work to go around. I like to think of that line of work as "escalation jobs," where when the machine fails, it goes to the human. Other work will likely get more and more scientific, theoretical and research-oriented. 1. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/americans-think-robots-will-take-everyone-elses-jobs-but-not-theirs.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/americans-think-robots-will-t...

LrnByTeach 9y ago
I agree with you, with time old IT jobs are dying and new ones are created. I like the concepts "peak software engineering" and "escalation jobs," where when the machine fails, the job goes to the human In Year 2000 , I worked at a startup , we are 70 employees total out of which 50 are Engineers. We have - one dedicated MS Exchange Mail sever admin - 5 employee team, for running production servers and helping employee PC boxes etc. - one Release engineer, whose job is to make Builds and ready for 15 day production release cycle of the code base That is 7 employees which is 10% of 70. All of it today Replaced by the Self-service Cloud Infrastructure software a) Github b) AWS c) Gmail Enterprise mail hosting/others 1/ Cloud Infrastructure software 2/ Saas Applications These are two areas where most of the Job elimination happened in the last decade. Then we got disruption ( more automation ) started at every Industry level, that created more jobs than lost software engineer productivity doubled/tripled in the last decade as we developed more higher level Abstractions. More than 1000 people are working on Amazon Alexa, so do at many other companies in the areas of ML and Deep learning AI . These are brand new jobs never heard of 10 years ago. ------ > For example, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, et al have reduced the number of jobs for CMS and ecommerce developers. > Zapier and IFTTT have reduced the number of integration jobs