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Please save this comment to refer to when an iteration of Copilot starts to make you truly worried for the future of your career. Thanks in advance.

orangecat 4y ago
Yeah, and we should really do something about those abominations like Excel and Python that let ordinary people create programs without hiring us to do it the right way.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  There is a big difference between "this is a tool that makes some things easier" and "this is definitely endangering the skill I spent a lifetime learning". You will know it when you see it.
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    There is no big difference. The steam engine put 90% of the world out of agricultural work. That is a big difference. Now you can buy strawberries all year round and drink coconut water in Alaska. Nobody will care where their art comes from any more than you care about how your food's field was plowed; and all their lives will be better for it.
    - egypturnash 4y ago
      There is a huge difference in how you will feel when the tool that might put you out of work shows up. Keep your comment somewhere. Come back to it when you look at a new tool that promises to merrily trample on your entire field’s income and provide an endless source of “usable, I guess” substitutes. Let it provide solace as you stare into a future with no room for the craft you’ve spent a lifetime honing.
yanderekko 4y ago
Yes, many of us will turn into cowards when automation starts to touch our work, but that would not prove this sentiment incorrect - only that we're cowards.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Dude. What the hell kind of anti-life philosophy are you subscribing to that calls "being unhappy about people trying to automate an entire field of human behavior" being a "coward". Geez.
  - yanderekko 4y ago
    Because automation is generally good, but making an exemption for specific cases of automation that personally inconvenience you is rooted is cowardice/selfishness. Similar to NIMBYism.
samatman 4y ago
I don't see this as a likely outcome for programming assistants. Software development is heavily labor-constrained, if copilot can make everyone a 10x developer, we'll get slightly less than 10x the features-per-year on an industry-wide basis after contributors shuffle around. The effect will be most pronounced in application development, where a team of 1-5 is about ideal for a coherent app made with taste, and that team could produce the output of 10-50 developers. Not such a bad thing. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be true for visiual art, I don't predict that making artists ten times as productive will meet a latent demand for ten times as much art. Could be wrong, but my sense is that about as much art is purchased as people want to buy.

orangecat 4y ago

Yeah, and we should really do something about those abominations like Excel and Python that let ordinary people create programs without hiring us to do it the right way.

egypturnash 4y ago
There is a big difference between "this is a tool that makes some things easier" and "this is definitely endangering the skill I spent a lifetime learning". You will know it when you see it.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  There is no big difference. The steam engine put 90% of the world out of agricultural work. That is a big difference. Now you can buy strawberries all year round and drink coconut water in Alaska. Nobody will care where their art comes from any more than you care about how your food's field was plowed; and all their lives will be better for it.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    There is a huge difference in how you will feel when the tool that might put you out of work shows up. Keep your comment somewhere. Come back to it when you look at a new tool that promises to merrily trample on your entire field’s income and provide an endless source of “usable, I guess” substitutes. Let it provide solace as you stare into a future with no room for the craft you’ve spent a lifetime honing.

yanderekko 4y ago

Yes, many of us will turn into cowards when automation starts to touch our work, but that would not prove this sentiment incorrect - only that we're cowards.

egypturnash 4y ago
Dude. What the hell kind of anti-life philosophy are you subscribing to that calls "being unhappy about people trying to automate an entire field of human behavior" being a "coward". Geez.
- yanderekko 4y ago
  Because automation is generally good, but making an exemption for specific cases of automation that personally inconvenience you is rooted is cowardice/selfishness. Similar to NIMBYism.

samatman 4y ago

I don't see this as a likely outcome for programming assistants. Software development is heavily labor-constrained, if copilot can make everyone a 10x developer, we'll get slightly less than 10x the features-per-year on an industry-wide basis after contributors shuffle around. The effect will be most pronounced in application development, where a team of 1-5 is about ideal for a coherent app made with taste, and that team could produce the output of 10-50 developers. Not such a bad thing. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be true for visiual art, I don't predict that making artists ten times as productive will meet a latent demand for ten times as much art. Could be wrong, but my sense is that about as much art is purchased as people want to buy.