3 ms·

Right on. When do you expect a productized AI that can replace your average skilled programmer?

ben_w 4y ago
I'm not sure what average looks like. Possibly last August? Possibly some time around 2035? It'll be a moving target though, as anyone worse than the AI isn't likely to stay in the role for long.
carapace 4y ago
Here's me almost exactly six years ago, predicting "most coding and design tasks will be automated within three to five years." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11718300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11718300 If we count GitHub Copilot as the tip of the spear then I was too optimistic. > GitHub Copilot ... was first announced by GitHub on 29 June 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot
- ajafari1 4y ago
  Nice! You were very close. With any exponential curve, it takes forever to get to point A, but once there, it's an immediate job to point Z.
  - carapace 4y ago
    Cheers! I'm going to try to work up a decent reply to your article, but it might take me a day or two. Have you read Wendell Berry's "What are People For?" (that essay not the whole eponymous book)? - - - - The (open) secret at the heart of AI is that no AI can answer: "What is good?" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720621 ) AKA "Lucky for whom?" Teela Brown, fictional character in Larry Niven novels Spoiler alert! This link gives details of the character that are spoilers: https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Teela_Brown https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Teela_Brown Unfortunately those details are the point I'm trying to make, and I'm a huge Niven fan so I'm not going to spoil Ringworld, but it ties in with the (ultimately metaphysical) question, "What is good?"
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  You were too pessimistic! Automatic programming, a.k.a. program synthesis, has been a thing since the early days of AI and computer science, for example the idea of deductive program synthesis, where a program is generated wholesale from a complete specification in a formal language that is not a computer language goes at least as back as Alonzo Church himself, in 1957: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_synthesis#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_synthesis#Origin Much work has been done since then and inductive program synthesis from incomplete specifications consisting of input/output examples (a form of machine learning) has been possible for quite some time. This is the second time this week I point to the report by Gulwani et al for a modern overview (of both kinds): Program Synthesis https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Program-Synthesis-Gulwani-Polozov/f0a79cb16c3e53e9c536b65ec7b2157db1d352f1 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Program-Synthesis-Gulw... Rather than Copilot being the "tip of the spear", it is really a step back, a system that can only generate code but not check its correctness, unlike pretty much every program synthesis system since forever. Although this may actually be an advantage for its commercial application (since it makes it easier to match expectations of the system's performance) it is not really any indication of progress, in any way, shape or form. In truth, Copilot is famous today because it is supported by a large company like Microsoft and because earlier work is not well-known by most people who get their AI knews from blogs and podcasts, who are also not very well aware of the history of the field. But, "tip of the spear"? Oh, no. Unless it's a very blunt, toy spear, more like a tech demo of a spear. And this is by no means restricted to program synthesis, and Copilot. For example, the first self-driving car to drive on a stretch of real road, with real traffic, without human intervention, was Ernst Dickmann's 1995 robot car: https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/robotcars.html https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/robotcars.html Again: 1995. And yet, fully autonomous self-driving cars are still not here. The revolution hasn't happened and progress has only crawled marginally forward.
  - carapace 4y ago
    That's right, this is your field isn't it? Cheers! Gosh, the robot car work was incredible, I can't believe I've never heard of it before! - - - - Copilot isn't cutting edge but it's significance is just that it's a mass market tool. It will be interesting to see how well it does, and whether users find it worthwhile overall after a couple of years. Will it be improved to the point where it starts to compete with its users? I've asked other programmers before, if you could write a program that replaced you would you do it? (One of the reasons I like Schmidhuber is that his goal, since early on, is to "Create an automatic scientist, and then retire.") To me the ultimate effect of programming is to obviate the programmer.
- dougabug 4y ago
  A wise old inventor told me, early in my career, that “people always significantly overestimate the rate of progress in the short run, and greatly underestimate it in the long run.” Text conditional image generation is still a fairly new thing, we don’t know what its upper limits will prove to be. Also, it seems likely that, whatever level of capability they reach, humans will learn how to use them effectively as tools for their own purposes. Some people might use them for quickly preflighting ideas, others to create boilerplate, some people may use them to speed up their workflow or scale up productivity. People didn’t know what all the use cases for personal computers would be when they were introduced in the mid-70’s, or what capabilities they would possess decades later.
mr_toad 4y ago
AI vs average programmer, maybe 10 years. Commercially viable AI vs skilled engineers, that’s going to take longer. I wouldn’t be surprised if we could replace the average BA with an AI right now.
krageon 4y ago
The average is so bad it barely even has to produce code that works, so that's not really a bar I'm interested in seeing cleared.

I'm not sure what average looks like. Possibly last August? Possibly some time around 2035? It'll be a moving target though, as anyone worse than the AI isn't likely to stay in the role for long.

carapace 4y ago

Here's me almost exactly six years ago, predicting "most coding and design tasks will be automated within three to five years." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11718300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11718300 If we count GitHub Copilot as the tip of the spear then I was too optimistic. > GitHub Copilot ... was first announced by GitHub on 29 June 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot

ajafari1 4y ago
Nice! You were very close. With any exponential curve, it takes forever to get to point A, but once there, it's an immediate job to point Z.
- carapace 4y ago
  Cheers! I'm going to try to work up a decent reply to your article, but it might take me a day or two. Have you read Wendell Berry's "What are People For?" (that essay not the whole eponymous book)? - - - - The (open) secret at the heart of AI is that no AI can answer: "What is good?" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720621 ) AKA "Lucky for whom?" Teela Brown, fictional character in Larry Niven novels Spoiler alert! This link gives details of the character that are spoilers: https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Teela_Brown https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Teela_Brown Unfortunately those details are the point I'm trying to make, and I'm a huge Niven fan so I'm not going to spoil Ringworld, but it ties in with the (ultimately metaphysical) question, "What is good?"
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
You were too pessimistic! Automatic programming, a.k.a. program synthesis, has been a thing since the early days of AI and computer science, for example the idea of deductive program synthesis, where a program is generated wholesale from a complete specification in a formal language that is not a computer language goes at least as back as Alonzo Church himself, in 1957: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_synthesis#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_synthesis#Origin Much work has been done since then and inductive program synthesis from incomplete specifications consisting of input/output examples (a form of machine learning) has been possible for quite some time. This is the second time this week I point to the report by Gulwani et al for a modern overview (of both kinds): Program Synthesis https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Program-Synthesis-Gulwani-Polozov/f0a79cb16c3e53e9c536b65ec7b2157db1d352f1 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Program-Synthesis-Gulw... Rather than Copilot being the "tip of the spear", it is really a step back, a system that can only generate code but not check its correctness, unlike pretty much every program synthesis system since forever. Although this may actually be an advantage for its commercial application (since it makes it easier to match expectations of the system's performance) it is not really any indication of progress, in any way, shape or form. In truth, Copilot is famous today because it is supported by a large company like Microsoft and because earlier work is not well-known by most people who get their AI knews from blogs and podcasts, who are also not very well aware of the history of the field. But, "tip of the spear"? Oh, no. Unless it's a very blunt, toy spear, more like a tech demo of a spear. And this is by no means restricted to program synthesis, and Copilot. For example, the first self-driving car to drive on a stretch of real road, with real traffic, without human intervention, was Ernst Dickmann's 1995 robot car: https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/robotcars.html https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/robotcars.html Again: 1995. And yet, fully autonomous self-driving cars are still not here. The revolution hasn't happened and progress has only crawled marginally forward.
- carapace 4y ago
  That's right, this is your field isn't it? Cheers! Gosh, the robot car work was incredible, I can't believe I've never heard of it before! - - - - Copilot isn't cutting edge but it's significance is just that it's a mass market tool. It will be interesting to see how well it does, and whether users find it worthwhile overall after a couple of years. Will it be improved to the point where it starts to compete with its users? I've asked other programmers before, if you could write a program that replaced you would you do it? (One of the reasons I like Schmidhuber is that his goal, since early on, is to "Create an automatic scientist, and then retire.") To me the ultimate effect of programming is to obviate the programmer.
dougabug 4y ago
A wise old inventor told me, early in my career, that “people always significantly overestimate the rate of progress in the short run, and greatly underestimate it in the long run.” Text conditional image generation is still a fairly new thing, we don’t know what its upper limits will prove to be. Also, it seems likely that, whatever level of capability they reach, humans will learn how to use them effectively as tools for their own purposes. Some people might use them for quickly preflighting ideas, others to create boilerplate, some people may use them to speed up their workflow or scale up productivity. People didn’t know what all the use cases for personal computers would be when they were introduced in the mid-70’s, or what capabilities they would possess decades later.

mr_toad 4y ago

AI vs average programmer, maybe 10 years. Commercially viable AI vs skilled engineers, that’s going to take longer. I wouldn’t be surprised if we could replace the average BA with an AI right now.

krageon 4y ago

The average is so bad it barely even has to produce code that works, so that's not really a bar I'm interested in seeing cleared.