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I fear the most for the hybrid, and that’s happening/coming fast as we speak; - programmers getting hired and selected by ‘ai’ (resume, interview) - programme

I fear the most for the hybrid, and that’s happening/coming fast as we speak; - programmers getting hired and selected by ‘ai’ (resume, interview) - programmers (their PRs) being checked/reviewed by ‘ai’ - kafkaesque standups where features/bugs are explained by ‘ai’ in a painful loop - tasks being cut into tiny tasks with time limits by ‘ai’ for human programmers where the ‘ai’ monitors and punishes/awards the human performance - parts of those tasks being written by the ‘ai’, resulting in alien code being pushed into the project - ‘ai’ being introduced willy-nilly because it’s cheaper (read; faster to market) than real computer science; why build a parser for formulas? Just put a llm! Why design a robust dsl? Just put a llm! - etc This is part of the reality now in places I see already and it will get worse. When LLMs get faster and cheaper, there will be no reason to not add LLMs everywhere and give them some sort of power.

starbugs 3y ago
> - kafkaesque standups where features/bugs are explained by ‘ai’ in a painful loop Could you elaborate on that one? It sounds "interesting".
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  One of our clients uses jira with gpt4 turbo api assistants; one of the features is that when the ‘implementation team’ (mostly cheap offshore hires in this case) is doing ‘sprint planning’ or standups (in this company’s mismanaged version of agile), the right people are not there, they ‘talk’ to jira and the ai assistant to clear up stuff. From what I have seen, the tasks in jira are written out quite well and gpt does do a (much) better job at one shot ‘understanding’ of the tasks than the team does, however, when the questions go deeper or more technically specific (to their internal systems), it basically loops aka repeats itself every other answer. And so the team will make up something, which is generally not correct, and implement it. Then the next week it will be a bug instead of a feature (for instance) and explained in terms of what to fix instead what to build, which both ai and humans seem to be better at. However the initial ‘loop’ is a nightmare and very dehumanising imho.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    Wow. I was afraid there would be substance to this. But this is on another level. Thank you for the explanation. That's really sad.
chii 3y ago
I think you're just imagining that the AI takes on the role of an assembly line manager, and the programmers turn into assembly workers doing line/item work. I dont think this is the case, nor will it be. It is more likely that an ai makes it possible to hire low cost personnel and yet have them be _almost_ as productive as someone skilled (at mediocre tasks, but those do make up the bulk of work in tech imho). The high skilled personnel will need to compete on this front. Some will relent and give up to become those mediocre task doers. Others will strike out and take risk - perhaps even incorporate AI into their own toolbox - and produce software with higher proficiency as an ISV.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  It already looks like that on places driven by Kaban boards, one task one ticket, doing it "agile".
hnben 3y ago
I think all these things are happening today, but with micro managers instead of ai. And to be honest: letting AI do the micromanagement would be an improvement in a lot of places. The main problem I see here, is that management may use ai as an opportunity to push for more micro management. And if that happens, the consequences will be similar to regular non-ai micromanagement (e.g. higher perceived productivity, less actual productivity, developers leaving).
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  But with programming (at least I haven't seen many programmer cases to the contrary, I have seen in other (gig) jobs) you can escalate to a human; this is going towards not being able to do that. So you have - remote workers - strict scoring (score <= 0 -> fired) - no human to contact So when you are stuck in a loop (like my other response to asking what I have seen in practice) and you cannot reach another human to resolve your issue, your score will sink (because you are not delivering) and you get fired. All automated, all LLM, no humans. It'll first happen in other professions (I know at least one multi national that does this with data entry people as a trial now), but programming won't be far behind.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > I know at least one multi national that does this with data entry people as a trial now Do you have a reference? Just asking because I'd be interested in learning more.
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      One of the biggest car rentals is experimenting with this to cut costs. And this is more efficient than actually solving their systems integrating problem which is the only reason they actually need these drones to copy/paste.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
The name escapes me but there's a short story describing this. computers don't do the work but instead tell humans what to do in very minute steps, following them around all day. The short story itself is set in a food place similar to a McDonalds IIRC>
- GeoAtreides 3y ago
  Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future by Marshall Brain https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
- Teever 3y ago
  https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
advael 3y ago
And to be more explicit, people already are, and the results are fucking terrible in some places. But we're already in an economic context where terrible products and services up to and including things that are explicitly scams go on for years with little recourse for users affected. From that perspective the AI just makes it cheaper to do

starbugs 3y ago

> - kafkaesque standups where features/bugs are explained by ‘ai’ in a painful loop Could you elaborate on that one? It sounds "interesting".

anonzzzies 3y ago
One of our clients uses jira with gpt4 turbo api assistants; one of the features is that when the ‘implementation team’ (mostly cheap offshore hires in this case) is doing ‘sprint planning’ or standups (in this company’s mismanaged version of agile), the right people are not there, they ‘talk’ to jira and the ai assistant to clear up stuff. From what I have seen, the tasks in jira are written out quite well and gpt does do a (much) better job at one shot ‘understanding’ of the tasks than the team does, however, when the questions go deeper or more technically specific (to their internal systems), it basically loops aka repeats itself every other answer. And so the team will make up something, which is generally not correct, and implement it. Then the next week it will be a bug instead of a feature (for instance) and explained in terms of what to fix instead what to build, which both ai and humans seem to be better at. However the initial ‘loop’ is a nightmare and very dehumanising imho.
- starbugs 3y ago
  Wow. I was afraid there would be substance to this. But this is on another level. Thank you for the explanation. That's really sad.

chii 3y ago

I think you're just imagining that the AI takes on the role of an assembly line manager, and the programmers turn into assembly workers doing line/item work. I dont think this is the case, nor will it be. It is more likely that an ai makes it possible to hire low cost personnel and yet have them be _almost_ as productive as someone skilled (at mediocre tasks, but those do make up the bulk of work in tech imho). The high skilled personnel will need to compete on this front. Some will relent and give up to become those mediocre task doers. Others will strike out and take risk - perhaps even incorporate AI into their own toolbox - and produce software with higher proficiency as an ISV.

pjmlp 3y ago
It already looks like that on places driven by Kaban boards, one task one ticket, doing it "agile".

hnben 3y ago

I think all these things are happening today, but with micro managers instead of ai. And to be honest: letting AI do the micromanagement would be an improvement in a lot of places. The main problem I see here, is that management may use ai as an opportunity to push for more micro management. And if that happens, the consequences will be similar to regular non-ai micromanagement (e.g. higher perceived productivity, less actual productivity, developers leaving).

anonzzzies 3y ago
But with programming (at least I haven't seen many programmer cases to the contrary, I have seen in other (gig) jobs) you can escalate to a human; this is going towards not being able to do that. So you have - remote workers - strict scoring (score <= 0 -> fired) - no human to contact So when you are stuck in a loop (like my other response to asking what I have seen in practice) and you cannot reach another human to resolve your issue, your score will sink (because you are not delivering) and you get fired. All automated, all LLM, no humans. It'll first happen in other professions (I know at least one multi national that does this with data entry people as a trial now), but programming won't be far behind.
- starbugs 3y ago
  > I know at least one multi national that does this with data entry people as a trial now Do you have a reference? Just asking because I'd be interested in learning more.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    One of the biggest car rentals is experimenting with this to cut costs. And this is more efficient than actually solving their systems integrating problem which is the only reason they actually need these drones to copy/paste.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

The name escapes me but there's a short story describing this. computers don't do the work but instead tell humans what to do in very minute steps, following them around all day. The short story itself is set in a food place similar to a McDonalds IIRC>

GeoAtreides 3y ago
Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future by Marshall Brain https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
Teever 3y ago
https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

advael 3y ago

And to be more explicit, people already are, and the results are fucking terrible in some places. But we're already in an economic context where terrible products and services up to and including things that are explicitly scams go on for years with little recourse for users affected. From that perspective the AI just makes it cheaper to do