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To be fair, in 15 years writing code, I have spent the vast majority of my time working on minor variations of problems already solved. I am not a fancy develo

To be fair, in 15 years writing code, I have spent the vast majority of my time working on minor variations of problems already solved. I am not a fancy developer coming up with new algorithms. I make sign up flows, on-boarding flows, paginated lists, integrations to other apis. And I definitely feel that my job might be threatened by LLMs.

steve_adams_86 4y ago
I think our jobs are threatened not because the LLMs will be much better than us, but because dirt cheap tooling will be developed on top of them that will make things which are “good enough” and are a fraction of the price. I think outstanding software will still require well-paid, competent people orchestrating and developing a lot of complex systems for a while yet… But there’s a ton of bad software out there that will be able to be maintained for far less, and I suspect a lot of companies will be drawn to creating cookie cutter products generated by LLMs. Just as people have turned to stores and blogs generated on templated systems, I think all of that and more will continue but with even more of it handled by LLM-based tooling. I don’t think it’ll be next week, but I suspect it’ll be less than 10 years. Some people expect that’ll lead to more software existing which will inevitably require more develops to oversee, but if that’s the case, I suspect they will be paid a lot less. I also expect that once AI tools are sophisticated enough to do this, they will largely make that level of oversight redundant. Soon they could potentially patch the bugs in the software they generate by watching Sentry or something. Just automatically start trying solutions and running fuzz tests. It would be way cheaper than a human being and it would never need to stop working.
vlovich123 4y ago
Whenever these kinds of comments are made, the short story “Profession” comes to mind by Isaac Asimov. In this story people’s aptitudes are evaluated and the relevant knowledge and skills are downloaded. The protagonist of the story however keeps being rejected for download and has to struggle to acquire the same skills his peers acquire instantly and magically. It’s a great read with a fantastic ending. The morale is that it’s always better to have unique hard won skill sets that others don’t. Double down on those. Think of LLMs as freeing you to do more interesting high level tasks. Rather than having to build those menial tasks, what if you focused on your creativity getting the AI to build new types of product or gain new insights that peers aren’t considering. What if you leveraged the AI to build prototypes of ideas you wouldn’t have to otherwise? Of course that’s easier said than done. For now, take comfort in the fact that no one is seriously trusting this as anything more than a glorified autocomplete (if that).
- s__s 4y ago
  The unique hard-won skills are what AI can do on the cheap. The more high-level interesting stuff is just creativity, and creativity is a universal human trait. It’s amazing but low value (monetarily). As you often hear on HN, ideas are a dime a dozen it’s all about execution. Well we’re rapidly approaching the time when the execution is essentially free, and done faster and better than humans. A small team of four, over an afternoon, can literally just speak with the computer to generate a new TV ad, or develop a new sass product. There is no longer any skill required, just imagination. The problem being of course that the skills and specialized knowledge are what people have been traditionally paid for. With all that “work” out of the way there’s not much value anyone can add . You’re probably not any smarter or creative than whoever’s manning the machine.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Care to place a wager where I give your mythical unskilled team the best AI available today against me without AI and we’ll see who can solve a difficult engineering problem? Heck, even a moderately skilled team. Sorry no. AI is impressive but I’ve given it very precise prompts where I describe exactly what I want it to do because I’ve already solved it and the solution it generates is complete and utter horseshit because it requires context that’s too difficult to communicate and a deep understanding of the business and technical aspects of that business. Similarly, novel ideas are not things it knows how to implement. If you have a counter example I’d love to see it because my experience seems to line up pretty well with other reporting of where the limits of it lies - ie it can regurgitate solutions to solve problems but struggles to provide solutions and correct implementation. In fact, trying to find the problems is itself even harder sometimes because the way it solves things is simultaneously not a good coder and the approach it takes isn’t one a human would and thus it takes extra effort to figure out what path it’s trying to take and where it made a mistake. As an example. Try to get ChatGPT to implement the server-side implementation of R2’s ListObjects (or heck - in any language / platform you choose, implement that). It’ll make really bad bugs like reading in the entire dataset into memory, not applying the delimiter properly in really subtle ways etc etc. basically, it can’t even do a usable first draft. Just don’t use go because I suspect it’ll cheat and just regurgitate minio
bawolff 4y ago
Tbf, most of my time as a programmer was neither spent solving old problems nor solving new problems. Most of it was spent either fiding the bug hidden somewhere in the huge code base, or trying to get the business people to be clear on what their requirements actually are.
saurik 4y ago
To the extent to which anything that makes you take less time doing the specific tasks you are doing today (and thereby, presumably, bill fewer hours or fail to defend such a high headcount on your team) threatens your job, we might also say that better programming languages and tooling threaten your job, better error messages and documentation threaten your job, or higher levels of abstraction and higher quality frameworks threaten your job... were you also fretting about the new version of TypeScript that just came out earlier today, or did you think "wow, that makes me more effective, I can't wait to use it"? I might go so far as to argue that the entire reason software developers exist is to threaten all jobs, including our own: at our best--when we are willing to put in a bit of thought into what we are doing--we don't just make things easier to do for a moment while we are employed (which is the best of what most professions can achieve): we make things persistently and permanently easier to do again and again... forever; and we don't just make other peoples' jobs easier: this same power we have applies to our own tasks, allowing us to automate and replace ourselves so we can move on to ever more rewarding pursuits. I'm not a fan of GPT for coding for a number of reasons (at least, in its current form, which is all we can ever have a true opinion about); but, it isn't because it will replace anything I've ever done: it would have just unlocked my ability to work on better things. There are so many things I wish I could get done before I die, and I know I'm going to be able to get to almost none of it... I have so many plans for ways to improve both the world and my life that will never happen as I just don't have the capability and bandwidth to do it all. If I had a God I could ask to do all the things I already do... I can only imagine what I'd do then.
shp0ngle 4y ago
Your job is already threatened by cheap outsourcing. However, the risk with cheap outsourcing is exactly the same as with LLMs - you get what you pay for, and you need to constantly check if it's really doing what it's supposed to be doing.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  This is the thing. You need to know what you're doing to know whether you got the thing you wanted. Thus it's still a tool, rather than an expert. By contrast, you don't know what your pilot or your surgeon is up to, you have to trust their decisions.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

I think our jobs are threatened not because the LLMs will be much better than us, but because dirt cheap tooling will be developed on top of them that will make things which are “good enough” and are a fraction of the price. I think outstanding software will still require well-paid, competent people orchestrating and developing a lot of complex systems for a while yet… But there’s a ton of bad software out there that will be able to be maintained for far less, and I suspect a lot of companies will be drawn to creating cookie cutter products generated by LLMs. Just as people have turned to stores and blogs generated on templated systems, I think all of that and more will continue but with even more of it handled by LLM-based tooling. I don’t think it’ll be next week, but I suspect it’ll be less than 10 years. Some people expect that’ll lead to more software existing which will inevitably require more develops to oversee, but if that’s the case, I suspect they will be paid a lot less. I also expect that once AI tools are sophisticated enough to do this, they will largely make that level of oversight redundant. Soon they could potentially patch the bugs in the software they generate by watching Sentry or something. Just automatically start trying solutions and running fuzz tests. It would be way cheaper than a human being and it would never need to stop working.

vlovich123 4y ago

Whenever these kinds of comments are made, the short story “Profession” comes to mind by Isaac Asimov. In this story people’s aptitudes are evaluated and the relevant knowledge and skills are downloaded. The protagonist of the story however keeps being rejected for download and has to struggle to acquire the same skills his peers acquire instantly and magically. It’s a great read with a fantastic ending. The morale is that it’s always better to have unique hard won skill sets that others don’t. Double down on those. Think of LLMs as freeing you to do more interesting high level tasks. Rather than having to build those menial tasks, what if you focused on your creativity getting the AI to build new types of product or gain new insights that peers aren’t considering. What if you leveraged the AI to build prototypes of ideas you wouldn’t have to otherwise? Of course that’s easier said than done. For now, take comfort in the fact that no one is seriously trusting this as anything more than a glorified autocomplete (if that).

s__s 4y ago
The unique hard-won skills are what AI can do on the cheap. The more high-level interesting stuff is just creativity, and creativity is a universal human trait. It’s amazing but low value (monetarily). As you often hear on HN, ideas are a dime a dozen it’s all about execution. Well we’re rapidly approaching the time when the execution is essentially free, and done faster and better than humans. A small team of four, over an afternoon, can literally just speak with the computer to generate a new TV ad, or develop a new sass product. There is no longer any skill required, just imagination. The problem being of course that the skills and specialized knowledge are what people have been traditionally paid for. With all that “work” out of the way there’s not much value anyone can add . You’re probably not any smarter or creative than whoever’s manning the machine.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Care to place a wager where I give your mythical unskilled team the best AI available today against me without AI and we’ll see who can solve a difficult engineering problem? Heck, even a moderately skilled team. Sorry no. AI is impressive but I’ve given it very precise prompts where I describe exactly what I want it to do because I’ve already solved it and the solution it generates is complete and utter horseshit because it requires context that’s too difficult to communicate and a deep understanding of the business and technical aspects of that business. Similarly, novel ideas are not things it knows how to implement. If you have a counter example I’d love to see it because my experience seems to line up pretty well with other reporting of where the limits of it lies - ie it can regurgitate solutions to solve problems but struggles to provide solutions and correct implementation. In fact, trying to find the problems is itself even harder sometimes because the way it solves things is simultaneously not a good coder and the approach it takes isn’t one a human would and thus it takes extra effort to figure out what path it’s trying to take and where it made a mistake. As an example. Try to get ChatGPT to implement the server-side implementation of R2’s ListObjects (or heck - in any language / platform you choose, implement that). It’ll make really bad bugs like reading in the entire dataset into memory, not applying the delimiter properly in really subtle ways etc etc. basically, it can’t even do a usable first draft. Just don’t use go because I suspect it’ll cheat and just regurgitate minio

bawolff 4y ago

Tbf, most of my time as a programmer was neither spent solving old problems nor solving new problems. Most of it was spent either fiding the bug hidden somewhere in the huge code base, or trying to get the business people to be clear on what their requirements actually are.

saurik 4y ago

To the extent to which anything that makes you take less time doing the specific tasks you are doing today (and thereby, presumably, bill fewer hours or fail to defend such a high headcount on your team) threatens your job, we might also say that better programming languages and tooling threaten your job, better error messages and documentation threaten your job, or higher levels of abstraction and higher quality frameworks threaten your job... were you also fretting about the new version of TypeScript that just came out earlier today, or did you think "wow, that makes me more effective, I can't wait to use it"? I might go so far as to argue that the entire reason software developers exist is to threaten all jobs, including our own: at our best--when we are willing to put in a bit of thought into what we are doing--we don't just make things easier to do for a moment while we are employed (which is the best of what most professions can achieve): we make things persistently and permanently easier to do again and again... forever; and we don't just make other peoples' jobs easier: this same power we have applies to our own tasks, allowing us to automate and replace ourselves so we can move on to ever more rewarding pursuits. I'm not a fan of GPT for coding for a number of reasons (at least, in its current form, which is all we can ever have a true opinion about); but, it isn't because it will replace anything I've ever done: it would have just unlocked my ability to work on better things. There are so many things I wish I could get done before I die, and I know I'm going to be able to get to almost none of it... I have so many plans for ways to improve both the world and my life that will never happen as I just don't have the capability and bandwidth to do it all. If I had a God I could ask to do all the things I already do... I can only imagine what I'd do then.

shp0ngle 4y ago

Your job is already threatened by cheap outsourcing. However, the risk with cheap outsourcing is exactly the same as with LLMs - you get what you pay for, and you need to constantly check if it's really doing what it's supposed to be doing.

lordnacho 4y ago
This is the thing. You need to know what you're doing to know whether you got the thing you wanted. Thus it's still a tool, rather than an expert. By contrast, you don't know what your pilot or your surgeon is up to, you have to trust their decisions.