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>10-15 years out AI will be good enough to wipe out at least half of all software developers on the planet (that is, people writing actual code). That's not a r

>10-15 years out AI will be good enough to wipe out at least half of all software developers on the planet (that is, people writing actual code). That's not a risky prediction, that's very easily going to be the case. How is this not a risky prediction? 1. Are you talking about AI (i.e. AGI) or LLMs? If you think we will have AGI in 10 - 15 years maybe you are right, but AGI is always just around the corner. 2. LLMs don't seem to be the magic multiplying force people are insinuating. GPT-3 has been around for almost 3 years, and while great (I was an early adopter) it's just another tool for me. Over the past 10 - 15 years software has gotten easier to develop. And make software easier to develop has just gone to serving greater and greater demand. The invention of C didn't reduce the number of engineers because it was simpler than ASM. The invention of Python didn't reduce the number of Java engineers. Every year CPUs get faster and faster (at an exponential rate almost), and yet software somehow manages to get slower and slower. No other tool in the short history of software development ever did anything close to "wipe out at least half of all software developers" despite newer tools because easier and easier.

adventured 3y ago
Absolutely not AGI. I'm talking about AI - made up of multiple modules that focus on different aspects - that can comprehensively build software products, with nothing more than human sign-offs to get from start to finish. Nothing even remotely close to the difficulty of building AGI (which I don't think will happen in the next 30 years at least). In this scenario the AI has human assistants that sign off on decisions before the AI can proceed further, before it can continue writing more code. The human developers that build this system will include a judgment for checkpoints, for the AI to judge when it thinks it's necessary to ask permission from a human to proceed (hey human, do you want me to go this way or that way?). The AI will occasionally present the human prompt clicker to choose from multiple viable development paths (for example overnight it'll build three different approaches to solving a problem after you leave work at 5pm; when you come in in the morning your task will be to pick the one you think is best, and the AI will proceed from there). I think a pattern of: AI development -> checkpoint approval by human -> continued AI development, will be the superior way to utilize AI to build software (rather than letting it get too far down the wrong path by trying to let it build without oversight most or all of the way). The human decision making process at checkpoints will become by far the slowest part of building software. The AI will spend most of its time waiting for someone to sign off on a path.

adventured 3y ago

Absolutely not AGI. I'm talking about AI - made up of multiple modules that focus on different aspects - that can comprehensively build software products, with nothing more than human sign-offs to get from start to finish. Nothing even remotely close to the difficulty of building AGI (which I don't think will happen in the next 30 years at least). In this scenario the AI has human assistants that sign off on decisions before the AI can proceed further, before it can continue writing more code. The human developers that build this system will include a judgment for checkpoints, for the AI to judge when it thinks it's necessary to ask permission from a human to proceed (hey human, do you want me to go this way or that way?). The AI will occasionally present the human prompt clicker to choose from multiple viable development paths (for example overnight it'll build three different approaches to solving a problem after you leave work at 5pm; when you come in in the morning your task will be to pick the one you think is best, and the AI will proceed from there). I think a pattern of: AI development -> checkpoint approval by human -> continued AI development, will be the superior way to utilize AI to build software (rather than letting it get too far down the wrong path by trying to let it build without oversight most or all of the way). The human decision making process at checkpoints will become by far the slowest part of building software. The AI will spend most of its time waiting for someone to sign off on a path.