6 ms·

I’ve been using Github copilot daily for two years and ChatGPT for 1 year now. And I think the tide lifts all the boats. I’ve seen a (perceived) 2-3x productivi

I’ve been using Github copilot daily for two years and ChatGPT for 1 year now. And I think the tide lifts all the boats. I’ve seen a (perceived) 2-3x productivity increase. I think these tools slightly favor people in front of the learning curve of a particular field. I’ve been dabbling in all sorts of things so if you’re a focused expert (who doesn’t need to explore but just exploit) you probably get less than a 2x boost from using LLMs. I can see LLMs eating into the expert regime IF they get another 5-10x better. But even in that case human (expert) knowledge will be required to know what is possible and hence what to ask (kind of like reward function design in reinforcement learning)

margorczynski 3y ago
But how many experts do you need? Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing and those might disappear very fast because 1 dev + LLM >= 5 devs without. So what we'll see is an increase in company margins and an elimination of a large swathe of the middle class. The alternative theory is that if everyone can now quickly create systems multiple companies and competing products will pop off which will drive down the margins instead but creating a compelling product requires much more than just software engineering skills. Either way this doesn't look great for devs, especially the ones that are entering the workforce now or will be in the nearest future.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- osigurdson 3y ago
  >> Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing Those jobs should go away. Basically, the elimination of anything boring is ultimately a net good for humanity.
  - ardaoweo 3y ago
    Only if you provide an alternative way for the newly unemployed to earn a living. Otherwise you just get crime, hunger and eventually war.
    - maroonblazer 3y ago
      When you consider how early we are in the evolution of software and the role it can play in our professional and personal lives, this seems like one of the easier problems to solve though.
      - minkzilla 3y ago
        Political problems are much harder to solve than technical ones.
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      It doesn't follow that reducing efficiency helps in the long run. If producing a good or service takes 10X less work than it used to, that good or service will become cheaper. The only force that can stop this is regulation.
    - throwuwu 3y ago
      Jobs aren’t distributed out of some cookie jar. They are needs and wants and obligations that other people will pay to have fulfilled or taken off their hands. Figure out how to solve those problems and you’ll have all the work you could ever ask for.
  - polycaster 3y ago
    Hey over there. I’m very much grateful for the privilege of this boring job, which is not 100% of my job, but a huge part of it. Grateful because it allows me to feed a family of four. I’m sure in your Musk’esque utopia without boring work is place enough for all mankind. But please, don’t forget to draft a bridge that will bring us all over there and not just a bunch of filthy rich Silicon Valley assholes. Because that wouldn’t be a utopia. Thank you.
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      That is a fair assessment. I am probably parroting Musk here a little. However, your main issue is access to food and resources, not boring work. I can't see why the price of everything goes to zero if there is no cost to make it.
      - blinkyfish 3y ago
        [dead]
      - margorczynski 3y ago
        Because there's a finite amount of resources so almost always you'll run into scarcity? Very well the wages might fall much quicker than the costs so for a handful it will be beneficial, for the rest not so much.
        osigurdson 3y ago
        It might become way easier to start companies, as there won't be a need to nearly as many people. It might end up being more of a equalizing force in the end.
  - Sindisil 3y ago
    Neat idea. That solves everything. Oh, one quick thing. I'm sure it's nothing, but I'm a bit slow. How do you get new experts if no one gets to do the junior work that gives them the experience to become an expert?
    - reaperman 3y ago
      Unions and apprenticeships?
    - weebull 3y ago
      Firat it was people pushing plows, then horses pulled them, and now machines do the work a hundred people used to do. This technology is no different.
      - shotnothing 3y ago
        but the ability to get horses to pull carts is not tied to expert knowledge of hand-pushing plows, neither is machinery to horse-pulling. This is not really the case for AI
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      I guess in the ideal world, everyone just does what they want, since everything will be so cheap. Enjoy chess? Study it and play against other humans. AI will of course crush you in any game. Enjoy accounting, radiology or programming? Same thing.
    - throwuwu 3y ago
      Move to a higher level of abstraction and architecture. We’re leaving the era of hand wiring data structures and program logic the same way we left behind the era of hand wiring ICs and discrete components. Different skills will be needed.
      - osigurdson 3y ago
        UML rises again! Maybe we will even have a unified process one day for creating software - a rational one no less.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  People are conflating Copilot with evaporating demand. Why pay for a CRUD interface when the chat interface does everything for you? It’s App Store 2009 out there. Few are taking Assistants and “GPTs” seriously. Programmers who do front end work can adapt. All that CRUD stuff hardly makes sense in isolation - it’s meant to make other people productive, usually admins. If the chatbot can do the admin’s job, which is a lot easier and more tenuous than the programmer’s, well that’s what’s going to happen.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  I’d rather be in the textile industry post industrial revolution than before it. The fortunes made during the age of mechanization make all of history’s kings and merchants paupers by comparison.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Everyone thinks they'd be the king and not the pauper. The luddites starved on the street because they were kicked from their properties with nowhere to live and no way to earn a living. The next generation of kids worked on the textile machines and commonly got turned to hamburger, all while the robber barons made obscene wealth. It mostly worked out over time because the populace fought things like unions and social safety nets. But hey, don't worry, the modern day tech barons are telling us we don't need those pesky 'expensive' social safety nets, I'm sure out of the kindness of their blackened hearts they'll provide for us all when robots replace our jobs.
nopinsight 3y ago
Humans will likely be able to contribute until full AGI, that is. I believe that for pure cognitive tasks, it's plausible the history of centaur chess/Go might be repeated on a much grander scale. A key requirement is the AGI will need the autonomy, like a human expert, to collect data and perform experiments it needs; but it seems several companies are set on doing precisely that. My advice and personal strategy is to broaden one's scope beyond pure cognitive tasks. "if you value intelligence above all other human qualities, you’re gonna have a bad time" -- Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, Oct 7, 2023. ----- Exchanges in the link below seem informative: "I don't know about chess, but in the similar game Go, the very best centaur teams were at a similar or maybe even slightly higher level than engines until recently. This was due to cheese strategies, details of the rulesets and better extrapolation of intermediate results. However, this changed a few years ago, when engines learned many of the tricks that the human could contribute. Since then, I believe pure engines are stronger in all practical applications. Source: am national champion in centaur Go and worked on modern Go engines" " -- mafuy on May 18, 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27189283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27189283
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > A key requirement is the AGI will need the autonomy no, a key requirement for AGI is to change the definition such that impressive and non-responsive entities can claim to be it right now. source: US State Department Gladstone Report 2024
- bamboozled 3y ago
  While will AGI work for humans doing coding ? Will you pay it a wage to incentivise it to produce work for you ? lol
  - nopinsight 3y ago
    Are you saying that AGI won't be under human control or that it won't be achieved? If the latter, are you subscribing to the dogma of 'justism' (Scott Aaronson's term), e.g. LLMs are 'just' stochastic parrots? What are our minds, though? Are they not 'just' a collection of biochemical and physical processes? Please be clear and respond in a way that does not pollute the information scape that many of us take refuge in. Comment quality in some subreddits are better than above.

margorczynski 3y ago

But how many experts do you need? Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing and those might disappear very fast because 1 dev + LLM >= 5 devs without. So what we'll see is an increase in company margins and an elimination of a large swathe of the middle class. The alternative theory is that if everyone can now quickly create systems multiple companies and competing products will pop off which will drive down the margins instead but creating a compelling product requires much more than just software engineering skills. Either way this doesn't look great for devs, especially the ones that are entering the workforce now or will be in the nearest future.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
osigurdson 3y ago
>> Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing Those jobs should go away. Basically, the elimination of anything boring is ultimately a net good for humanity.
- ardaoweo 3y ago
  Only if you provide an alternative way for the newly unemployed to earn a living. Otherwise you just get crime, hunger and eventually war.
  - maroonblazer 3y ago
    When you consider how early we are in the evolution of software and the role it can play in our professional and personal lives, this seems like one of the easier problems to solve though.
    - minkzilla 3y ago
      Political problems are much harder to solve than technical ones.
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    It doesn't follow that reducing efficiency helps in the long run. If producing a good or service takes 10X less work than it used to, that good or service will become cheaper. The only force that can stop this is regulation.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    Jobs aren’t distributed out of some cookie jar. They are needs and wants and obligations that other people will pay to have fulfilled or taken off their hands. Figure out how to solve those problems and you’ll have all the work you could ever ask for.
- polycaster 3y ago
  Hey over there. I’m very much grateful for the privilege of this boring job, which is not 100% of my job, but a huge part of it. Grateful because it allows me to feed a family of four. I’m sure in your Musk’esque utopia without boring work is place enough for all mankind. But please, don’t forget to draft a bridge that will bring us all over there and not just a bunch of filthy rich Silicon Valley assholes. Because that wouldn’t be a utopia. Thank you.
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    That is a fair assessment. I am probably parroting Musk here a little. However, your main issue is access to food and resources, not boring work. I can't see why the price of everything goes to zero if there is no cost to make it.
    - blinkyfish 3y ago
      [dead]
    - margorczynski 3y ago
      Because there's a finite amount of resources so almost always you'll run into scarcity? Very well the wages might fall much quicker than the costs so for a handful it will be beneficial, for the rest not so much.
      - osigurdson 3y ago
        It might become way easier to start companies, as there won't be a need to nearly as many people. It might end up being more of a equalizing force in the end.
- Sindisil 3y ago
  Neat idea. That solves everything. Oh, one quick thing. I'm sure it's nothing, but I'm a bit slow. How do you get new experts if no one gets to do the junior work that gives them the experience to become an expert?
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Unions and apprenticeships?
  - weebull 3y ago
    Firat it was people pushing plows, then horses pulled them, and now machines do the work a hundred people used to do. This technology is no different.
    - shotnothing 3y ago
      but the ability to get horses to pull carts is not tied to expert knowledge of hand-pushing plows, neither is machinery to horse-pulling. This is not really the case for AI
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    I guess in the ideal world, everyone just does what they want, since everything will be so cheap. Enjoy chess? Study it and play against other humans. AI will of course crush you in any game. Enjoy accounting, radiology or programming? Same thing.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    Move to a higher level of abstraction and architecture. We’re leaving the era of hand wiring data structures and program logic the same way we left behind the era of hand wiring ICs and discrete components. Different skills will be needed.
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      UML rises again! Maybe we will even have a unified process one day for creating software - a rational one no less.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
People are conflating Copilot with evaporating demand. Why pay for a CRUD interface when the chat interface does everything for you? It’s App Store 2009 out there. Few are taking Assistants and “GPTs” seriously. Programmers who do front end work can adapt. All that CRUD stuff hardly makes sense in isolation - it’s meant to make other people productive, usually admins. If the chatbot can do the admin’s job, which is a lot easier and more tenuous than the programmer’s, well that’s what’s going to happen.
throwuwu 3y ago
I’d rather be in the textile industry post industrial revolution than before it. The fortunes made during the age of mechanization make all of history’s kings and merchants paupers by comparison.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Everyone thinks they'd be the king and not the pauper. The luddites starved on the street because they were kicked from their properties with nowhere to live and no way to earn a living. The next generation of kids worked on the textile machines and commonly got turned to hamburger, all while the robber barons made obscene wealth. It mostly worked out over time because the populace fought things like unions and social safety nets. But hey, don't worry, the modern day tech barons are telling us we don't need those pesky 'expensive' social safety nets, I'm sure out of the kindness of their blackened hearts they'll provide for us all when robots replace our jobs.

nopinsight 3y ago

Humans will likely be able to contribute until full AGI, that is. I believe that for pure cognitive tasks, it's plausible the history of centaur chess/Go might be repeated on a much grander scale. A key requirement is the AGI will need the autonomy, like a human expert, to collect data and perform experiments it needs; but it seems several companies are set on doing precisely that. My advice and personal strategy is to broaden one's scope beyond pure cognitive tasks. "if you value intelligence above all other human qualities, you’re gonna have a bad time" -- Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, Oct 7, 2023. ----- Exchanges in the link below seem informative: "I don't know about chess, but in the similar game Go, the very best centaur teams were at a similar or maybe even slightly higher level than engines until recently. This was due to cheese strategies, details of the rulesets and better extrapolation of intermediate results. However, this changed a few years ago, when engines learned many of the tricks that the human could contribute. Since then, I believe pure engines are stronger in all practical applications. Source: am national champion in centaur Go and worked on modern Go engines" " -- mafuy on May 18, 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27189283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27189283

mistrial9 3y ago
> A key requirement is the AGI will need the autonomy no, a key requirement for AGI is to change the definition such that impressive and non-responsive entities can claim to be it right now. source: US State Department Gladstone Report 2024
bamboozled 3y ago
While will AGI work for humans doing coding ? Will you pay it a wage to incentivise it to produce work for you ? lol
- nopinsight 3y ago
  Are you saying that AGI won't be under human control or that it won't be achieved? If the latter, are you subscribing to the dogma of 'justism' (Scott Aaronson's term), e.g. LLMs are 'just' stochastic parrots? What are our minds, though? Are they not 'just' a collection of biochemical and physical processes? Please be clear and respond in a way that does not pollute the information scape that many of us take refuge in. Comment quality in some subreddits are better than above.