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Personally I think it's 99% hype. The current iteration and architecture of these systems means they will never be at the level where they can actually replace

Personally I think it's 99% hype. The current iteration and architecture of these systems means they will never be at the level where they can actually replace a programmer. The best they will ever get is barfing up snippets for a programmer (who still needs the industry-specific knowledge to VERIFY the snippets). Additionally, "the rate of increase in capabilities" is very much a false flag. Past performance (especially for second-order things like 'rate of improvement') is an absolute batshit insane metric for predicting future success. https://russellinvestments.com/us/blog/past-performance-no-guarantee-future-results https://russellinvestments.com/us/blog/past-performance-no-g... The advancements have eaten low hanging fruit. Once all the low hanging fruit is gone, we'll all realize GPT will never be tall enough to reach the good stuff.

jacobedawson 4y ago
That's why I said it was unpredictable, in both directions.
malborodog 4y ago
But obviously increasing avg and sr programmer productivity by many x implies many fewer jobs for programmers. That’s the point we’re interested in.
- mattnewport 4y ago
  Is that obvious? The history of programming has been full of things that have at least claimed to increase programmer productivity, everything from high level languages to smart refactoring IDEs, debuggers, PaaS, etc and in all that time the trend has been towards more jobs for programmers not fewer.
  - redox99 4y ago
    Productivity with modern tools (SPAs, microservices) is often a lot lower than oldschool stuff (django/rails, maybe even Visual Basic, Delphi)
- brookst 4y ago
  You seem to be saying that there is fixed demand for programmers and oversupply means less hiring. But the history of technology says that demand is recursive; the more tech produced, the more demand there is for producers. There may be a time when we hit the old “the whole world only needs 5 computers”[0] limit, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close. AI is providing leverage to create net more programming; it is not replacing programmers in a zero sum game. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing...
  - flippinburgers 4y ago
    Sounds a bit too much like a perpetual motion machine to me.
    - brookst 4y ago
      Isn’t that true of any economy? Think of how many people are employed in general. How could this number of people have been employed 200 years ago?
    - nmcfarl 4y ago
      I’ve got a computer in all of my light switches. There’s a limit to this, but I’m not quite sure where it is.
- thingification 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy > In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs.
  - dw_arthur 4y ago
    The lump of labor fallacy says nothing about a particular type of job. A category of jobs can become non-productive versus a technology and the workers within those jobs should get reallocated to more productive jobs.
zackees 4y ago
[dead]
woeirua 4y ago
The fact that we’re even having this conversation should concern you. Move the goalposts if you want, but the rate of progress should concern you.

jacobedawson 4y ago

That's why I said it was unpredictable, in both directions.

malborodog 4y ago

But obviously increasing avg and sr programmer productivity by many x implies many fewer jobs for programmers. That’s the point we’re interested in.

mattnewport 4y ago
Is that obvious? The history of programming has been full of things that have at least claimed to increase programmer productivity, everything from high level languages to smart refactoring IDEs, debuggers, PaaS, etc and in all that time the trend has been towards more jobs for programmers not fewer.
- redox99 4y ago
  Productivity with modern tools (SPAs, microservices) is often a lot lower than oldschool stuff (django/rails, maybe even Visual Basic, Delphi)
brookst 4y ago
You seem to be saying that there is fixed demand for programmers and oversupply means less hiring. But the history of technology says that demand is recursive; the more tech produced, the more demand there is for producers. There may be a time when we hit the old “the whole world only needs 5 computers”[0] limit, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close. AI is providing leverage to create net more programming; it is not replacing programmers in a zero sum game. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing...
- flippinburgers 4y ago
  Sounds a bit too much like a perpetual motion machine to me.
  - brookst 4y ago
    Isn’t that true of any economy? Think of how many people are employed in general. How could this number of people have been employed 200 years ago?
  - nmcfarl 4y ago
    I’ve got a computer in all of my light switches. There’s a limit to this, but I’m not quite sure where it is.
thingification 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy > In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs.
- dw_arthur 4y ago
  The lump of labor fallacy says nothing about a particular type of job. A category of jobs can become non-productive versus a technology and the workers within those jobs should get reallocated to more productive jobs.

zackees 4y ago

[dead]

woeirua 4y ago

The fact that we’re even having this conversation should concern you. Move the goalposts if you want, but the rate of progress should concern you.