6 ms·

Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer

33 points by pongogogo 3y ago

vouaobrasil 3y ago
First it was tools to help humans code (Copilot) -- and no one complained because we still needed human coders. Now it's a near fully-functional teammate that needs a bit of supervision -- still no one complained because it needs human team members to instruct it Next it will be a full-functional teammate that is probably as good as a junior coder -- but no one will complain because senior coders will get paid more and companies will have to hire less Then, there will be the expert AI coder, but still no one will complain because we will need system architects to design the system that the AI codes. All along, no one will complain because those with jobs will still have them and those without will be too busy thinking about how to provide for their families. Get another job? Oh yeah, AI took that one too. All along, we are incrementally improving AI because it is an intellectual amusement -- we simply never take into account the social consequences. This path of destruction is so blindingly obvious, it's incredible that everyone is still working on AI instead of trying to destroy it. But wait, I get it, those who jump on earliest still have a chance at a bit of profit.... ...so it's all worth it in the end, right?
- pongogogo 3y ago
  We'll all be on the beach at that point collecting our universal basic income right?
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I don't know, that could happen. But that's not really a great life...hamsters and pet birds also "sit on the beach" and collect "universal basic income" with some limited form of entertainment (hamser wheels and bright toys), but I for one do NOT want to be in a cage. I want genuine autonomy over my life, not being a cog in a machine, maintaining some AI machine whose needs for humanity dwindle over the year.
    - optimalsolver 3y ago
      >I want genuine autonomy over my life, not being a cog in a machine So that's not the case for you now?
    - squigz 3y ago
      > I want genuine autonomy over my life, not being a cog in a machine I have some news for you about life for the vast majority of people right now... Including yourself, most likely
      - supriyo-biswas 3y ago
        What a terrible misreading of parent's comments, that's completely not in the spirit of HN and its guidelines[1]. You may feel like a cog in society, and at present, this is often not the case, compared to the situation which I talked about in a sibling comment[2]. If you disagree, try this: find a new job and put in your resignation and say that you're leaving effective immediately (or with a very short notice). Most likely, you'll have your manager and HR scrambling to get a proper handover, and sometimes followed with private comments berating you for your "lack of professionalism" and other comments like "why are you doing this to us" and "can we keep you for a little longer, please" (in violation of HR policy for the maximum notice period). In an age where AI has replaced most humans, people would lose all leverage, and would be forced into zero-sum games (killing and maiming other people to steal their wealth) as they would not have any other mechanism to prove their worth and improve their standing in society. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39743566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39743566
        squigz 3y ago
        > In an age where AI has replaced most humans, people would lose all leverage, and would be forced into zero-sum games (killing and maiming other people to steal their wealth) as they would not have any other mechanism to prove their worth and improve their standing in society. I don't know about you but maybe the fact so many people determine their entire worth from their job is more problematic than inventing technology that will enable people to pursue more worthwhile objectives of their own choosing.
  - jimberlage 3y ago
    It feels like this might be sarcastic? But if not Based on how the US currently rolls out universal programs, UBI probably looks a lot more like the current Section 8 housing program. They’re gonna guarantee something minimally livable, not beachfront property.
    - pzo 3y ago
      and only if you are US citizen/resident. There will be only few country/winners in this game for now most likely: US, China, France.
    - throwuwu 3y ago
      UBI won’t happen but the price of most goods and services will fall to a tiny fraction of what they are now. There will still be people who are considered impoverished but they’ll likely have a higher standard of living than you do.
  - Cloudef 3y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
- rocgf 3y ago
  There were plenty of people 'complaining' about Copilot and there are plenty 'complaining' about Devin. However, what can you really complain about? Technological progress? We can't just decide to ignore AI. Just to play devil's advocate, if there really were clear signs of this impending distruction, there could be some sort of international agreement to halt progress. Realistically, this will never happen. > All along, we are incrementally improving AI because it is an intellectual amusement You're contradicting yourself here. Is it just 'intellectual amusement' if this technology is as disruptive as you claim?
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    > You're contradicting yourself here. Is it just 'intellectual amusement' if this technology is as disruptive as you claim? Let me be more clear: individual programmers are improving AI for its intellectual amusement, but organizations use it for its disruptive powers. Two different groups of people, with a bit of an intersection. MOreover: > Just to play devil's advocate, if there really were clear signs of this impending distruction, there could be some sort of international agreement to halt progress. Realistically, this will never happen. Of course not, are you joking? There are clear signs of climate destruction as well with CO2 levels rising. Did international agreements work there? Nope, no flattening in the CO2 curve yet. We are fundamentally destructive species, who cannot see long-term problems if there is short-term gain. The only mechanism we have on a global scale to decide what to do is capitalistic motivations.
    - kevmo314 3y ago
      > We are fundamentally destructive species, who cannot see long-term problems if there is short-term gain. The only mechanism we have on a global scale to decide what to do is capitalistic motivations. So if AI destroys us as a species and... > There are clear signs of climate destruction as well with CO2 levels rising. Did international agreements work there? Nope, no flattening in the CO2 curve yet. Seems like we're in good shape? If the end game is destroying ourselves, looks like our long term "problems" are solved.
    - rocgf 3y ago
- piva00 3y ago
  The biggest triumph of neoliberalism for the capitalist elite class was to achieve a high enough level of society atomisation to where the hyperindividualism pushed by this ideology fuels the erosion of solidarity in the working class to the point we are today. It doesn't help that people are constantly kept on their toes about their jobs, companies have no responsibility to their workers anymore (all of the perks is simply as a market force to incentivise workers to choose company X over Y) requiring workers to see each other as competitors, fight amongst themselves while peddling the bullshit those elites want such as "I don't need unionisation because I want to be free to negotiate my own contracts". It created this myopic view of labour relations where some workers think they will do better on their own against the powers-that-be, completely blind that they only have a tiny modicum of power while the elites look for any opportunity to strip that power away, be it through automation, collusion in cartel-like behaviour in the job market to push wages down, etc. It's pretty obvious on HN how far this has come, in any topic discussing unions there will be quite a few of these illuded workers thinking they can do better on their own rather than show some solidarity to fellow workers, not too dissimilar than the American feeling of being just temporarily embarassed millionaires.
- DebtDeflation 3y ago
  Even better, the AI was trained on code and answers that you contributed to Stack Exchange, Quora, etc., along with textbooks for which the authors did not grant permission and received no compensation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- christkv 3y ago
  Next was the human who inherited the generated source and cursed every entity in existence.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    That is already the case when inheriting from humans. I think the big advantage is that you don't have curse to as you won't even read it; you'll throw it into the black hole and ask for the improvements you require. Until that also is no longer needed.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  Don't fret - there will still be plenty of jobs for non-execs and seniors: meat packer, gravedigger, wastewater treatment plant worker. Remember, the social consequences of technological innovation are irrelevant in the Church of Modernity (no complainin' - what are you, some kinda heckin' Luddite!?). You will lose your way of life and you will be happy.
- ozgung 3y ago
  > This path of destruction is so blindingly obvious, it's incredible that everyone is still working on AI instead of trying to destroy it. Obvious but also inevitable. Most of the discussions in this topic are short-sighted. We should look from a broader time perspective of human history. We're about to close the first quarter of 21th century with some initial advancements in AI. The second quarter will be all about transformation of the industries with the very possible introduction of AGI/ASI. This means the second half of the century must be a totally different world. With a totally different set of social constructs and different definitions for job, work, economy etc. I don't think we (humans, governments) are capable of changing the course of the history at the moment. We can only be cautious about the consequences.
- preommr 3y ago
  > we are incrementally improving AI because it is an intellectual amusement People aren't developping AI because it's a hobby; people are doing it because it's an advancement in technology in the same way we developped electronics, computers, etc.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    But why do programmers themselves develop AI? I'm talking about individual motivations here. For example, I can say I just got into technical work because it's intellectually interesting, not because I wanted to further technological development. And those individual motivations add up to a collective force that is shaped via actions that persist with differential survivability based on capitalistic forces, which still have nothing to do with improving society. And they only reason why we have those is because at one time, free markets and trading were a good proxy for societal improvement on a small scale. On a large scale, they have become completely pathological.
- dabeeeenster 3y ago
  First it was the cotton mills, and noone complained Then it was the steam trains, and noone complained Next it was the systems of electricity production, and noone complained
- seydor 3y ago
  holding on to jobs is not the meaningful goal. what matters is who owns those new means of production, and how we make them socialized instead of concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Yes that’s definitely happening here /s
  - techdragon 3y ago
    It’s why I am focused on how this kind of technology gets “offline” and into locally run models. If I can buy a top of the line MAC in a few years time with something in the vicinity of half a terabyte of unified ram, and run this kind of model on my own hardware, it would be a powerful force multiplier, an a genuinely empowering tool… as opposed to having to rent it from someone in order to remain competitive with everyone else forced to rent it.
    - Cloudef 3y ago
      Even then you actually lack the computing power and data to create these models in the first place. When this power is centralized it can essentially control what goes into the models output.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    Yes because the greedy capitalists will obviously keep this valuable technology all to themselves, hoarding it away so they alone can revel in its delights. Give me a break, this isn’t 1924, we know how things actually play out. The capitalists want to sell you a product and that is fundamentally at odds with hoarding beneficial technology. They will deliver those benefits straight to your door faster, cheaper and better than any socialized pipedream ever could. If you somehow seize these means I have no doubt they’ll only be available to top party members due to their great expense and the considered opinion that the average worker has no need for such tools in their assigned role.
- slibhb 3y ago
  If we develop the technology to replace certain jobs, then we should do it -- even if they're our jobs. Who even wants a career that only exists due to special interest lobbying to protect it from disruption?
- baobabKoodaa 3y ago
  > Now it's a near fully-functional teammate that needs a bit of supervision It's not. It's a tech demo. Try replacing your teammates with it...
- kypro 3y ago
  I say it in every AI thread, but the only solution here is humanity declaring war on AI and the sooner people wake up to this the better. AI at it's limit is practical guaranteed to destroy advance human society by concentrating mass power either to a single or small group of individuals, to itself or to everyone. Whichever happens the ultimate outcome is probably the same. Whether you open source or regulate, it really doesn't matter in the end. These are not solutions. If a small group of individuals have access to AI they in effect become gods, that power will corrupt. If AI itself develops agency then it becomes our god. And if we all have the power of gods then it's just a matter of time before someone decides they want to use this power for destruction. What we're building here is fundamentally destabilising and that's not even factoring in all the near-term risks of AI like mass job loses. And I think it's frankly disgusting how so many people dismiss this. I was checking out the VFX subreddit post the Sora announcement and many people there were literally suicidal at the prospect of their passion and economic value become obsolete in perhaps just a matter of years. It's heartbreaking. And who even wants this future? We act like we have no choice the matter and maybe long-term that's true, but right now at the very least we have the chance to slow this rate of progress down and reduce near-term risk. I know I sound like lunatic in all these AI doomer threads, but I continue to feel the need to normalise the obvious radical position that we need a UN agreement prohibiting the construction of AI data centers. And where data centers are built that exceed thresholds can and should be destroyed. As a global community we must also encourage anyone working in secret AI teams to become whistle blowers so that we can reduce the risk of governments or corporations building advance AI systems in secret. And who knows, this might only buy as 3 or 4 decades, but at the very least we will give ourselves more time to improve our biological intelligence and equip ourselves with ways to deal with the risks AI presents.
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    Sorry but this is a cold take. Open models will massively empower humanity once we can bring the power/compute for a given performance level in line, and regulation can absolutely curtail the concentration of power if we can just summon the political will to create real ones. The problem is that nearly half the population in America wants to give their freedom away and create a dictator to stick it to the "elites" so moving away from a concentration of power is probably not in the cards.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  If you really want to make more work, blow up budgets and create positions for masses of developers and assistants then you should demand we go back to punch cards and doing all the planning and algorithm design on paper before we translate it to instructions and hand it off to computer operators.
- wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  This kind of take is just, let’s put it mildly, shallow. We never complained about CAD systems replacing people who were drafting blueprints manually, not to mention all kinds of automation tools that replaced factory workers. Why should AI coders be the same? If you can automate it, humans shouldn’t really be wasting their times on it. There is nothing intellectual in pulling someone’s code from github to piece together some software by copy-pasting snippets.
- navane 3y ago
  Well first there was a human programmer who made a lot of non-programmer jobs obsolete -- plenty of people complained but they just had to re-school themselves.
mercurialsolo 3y ago
The ultimate goal of an organization (and society) is to disrupt itself. Then the new order becomes an evolution of the old and thus it becomes a continuity.
- olivierduval 3y ago
  ??? The ultimate goal of an organization (and society) is to stay alive, with minimum changes. It will evolve if it needs to, but it won't if it's not necessary. Disrupting happens in a really really competitive enironment, and is only ONE of the different possible strategies to survive. Most of the time, disruption happens to the whole domain, not to the organization. Others might be to "buy" the competitor, to build "regulatory barrier"...
pringk02 3y ago
Yes, but when can Devin SSH onto production to diagnose and fix the system outage at 3am while managers complain on the phone?
- rvnx 3y ago
  Probably end of the year already
- singularity2001 3y ago
  Shortly after it got access to production and caused the giant mess in the first place.
camgunz 3y ago
I full on don't understand why we're building this stuff, whether it's autonomous driving to put truckers out of work, AI teaching assistants to put teachers/tutors/professors out of work, coding assistants to put programmers out of work, AI article writers to put journalists out of work, AI image generators to put artists out of work, AI video generators to put the film industry on ice, AI accountants, marketers, ad nauseum. Is the idea "well sure we'll put 90% of people out of work, but the very-well-known-to-be-well-functioning-government will do... something to fix it, something that definitely isn't tax away the millions I earned putting everyone else out of work to support everyone I put out of work"? This is a total reshaping of society at worst, and a huge transfer of wealth with almost no steps at best. How does anyone working on this justify causing unemployment on a mass scale while collecting a huge check? Is it just "progress gonna progress?" Do you really believe that justifies all the consequences? Is it, "if not me/us then someone else (worse)"? Then why aren't you giving control of these tools to the workers? Why are you profiting so handsomely? This is nuts. Normally I don't go full communist rant, but a few hundred people (presumably some of whom read HN) are about to destroy our society without asking a single one of us, and with absolutely no regard for the consequences.
- oliviabenson 3y ago
  We jumped the shark long ago, we (technologists) have been contributing to this for decades: we’ve benefited handsomely from the consequences with our big salaries and hero worship. I don’t disagree with your broad point but you’ve had your head buried in the sand for a long, long time if you think society is “about to” be destroyed.
- nerdawson 3y ago
  How can you stop it? If company A refuses to build it on moral grounds, company B will. It is reshaping society in much the same way the industrial revolution did. Luddites resisted change, for precisely the same reason people aren't happy about AI, and it's now a derogatory label. It's much better to adapt to a changing world but precisely what that entails is still up in the air.
  - arnold_palmur 3y ago
rmellow 3y ago
On the ethics ... Kentaro Toyama talks about technology as an amplifier for human intent. Just as you could tighten a nut with your hands, you can tighten it so much more with a wrench. Whether that nut is employed in a machine that will bring bounty for a village, or it's employed in a machine whose output by law belongs to its private owners is entirely up to the inhabitants. Will the villagers band together and build their own machine? Or will the authorities give the private creator of the machine exclusivity of the land the machine runs on and its output, leaving the villagers bereft? Whatever state our world is in is a result of our peers decision, not "good" or "bad" technology. Humans will legislate: "good" and "bad" uses are up to them, and later on up to the executive and judicial system. Pro-social (*not the same as socialist) cultures will share the wealth, others will hoard it, and you get the effects you dread: unemployment, poverty, etc. Now, a better question is: is a technology too powerful or misunderstood that it might be misused, regardless of the creator's intent?
- 1234letshaveatw 3y ago
  Should the builder of the machine not be rewarded? Does it really benefit the village to wrest the machine from the builder? The answer is no- that is inherently unjust and history has shown us that living in a village such the one you are proposing is oppressive
factibicongue 3y ago
Devin, build an AI Systems Analyst (Aisa) Aisa, build an AI Business Analyst (Aiba) Aiba, build an AI Financial Analyst (Aifa) Aifa, build an AI Market Analyst (Aima) Aima, find a lucrative market for a new app Aifa, determine the cost building the new app Aiba, create the business model for the new app Aisa, create the use case functional spec for the new app Devin, create the new app

33 points by pongogogo 3y ago

First it was tools to help humans code (Copilot) -- and no one complained because we still needed human coders. Now it's a near fully-functional teammate that needs a bit of supervision -- still no one complained because it needs human team members to instruct it Next it will be a full-functional teammate that is probably as good as a junior coder -- but no one will complain because senior coders will get paid more and companies will have to hire less Then, there will be the expert AI coder, but still no one will complain because we will need system architects to design the system that the AI codes. All along, no one will complain because those with jobs will still have them and those without will be too busy thinking about how to provide for their families. Get another job? Oh yeah, AI took that one too. All along, we are incrementally improving AI because it is an intellectual amusement -- we simply never take into account the social consequences. This path of destruction is so blindingly obvious, it's incredible that everyone is still working on AI instead of trying to destroy it. But wait, I get it, those who jump on earliest still have a chance at a bit of profit.... ...so it's all worth it in the end, right?

pongogogo 3y ago
We'll all be on the beach at that point collecting our universal basic income right?
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I don't know, that could happen. But that's not really a great life...hamsters and pet birds also "sit on the beach" and collect "universal basic income" with some limited form of entertainment (hamser wheels and bright toys), but I for one do NOT want to be in a cage. I want genuine autonomy over my life, not being a cog in a machine, maintaining some AI machine whose needs for humanity dwindle over the year.
  - optimalsolver 3y ago
    >I want genuine autonomy over my life, not being a cog in a machine So that's not the case for you now?
  - squigz 3y ago
    > I want genuine autonomy over my life, not being a cog in a machine I have some news for you about life for the vast majority of people right now... Including yourself, most likely
    - supriyo-biswas 3y ago
      What a terrible misreading of parent's comments, that's completely not in the spirit of HN and its guidelines[1]. You may feel like a cog in society, and at present, this is often not the case, compared to the situation which I talked about in a sibling comment[2]. If you disagree, try this: find a new job and put in your resignation and say that you're leaving effective immediately (or with a very short notice). Most likely, you'll have your manager and HR scrambling to get a proper handover, and sometimes followed with private comments berating you for your "lack of professionalism" and other comments like "why are you doing this to us" and "can we keep you for a little longer, please" (in violation of HR policy for the maximum notice period). In an age where AI has replaced most humans, people would lose all leverage, and would be forced into zero-sum games (killing and maiming other people to steal their wealth) as they would not have any other mechanism to prove their worth and improve their standing in society. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39743566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39743566
      - squigz 3y ago
        > In an age where AI has replaced most humans, people would lose all leverage, and would be forced into zero-sum games (killing and maiming other people to steal their wealth) as they would not have any other mechanism to prove their worth and improve their standing in society. I don't know about you but maybe the fact so many people determine their entire worth from their job is more problematic than inventing technology that will enable people to pursue more worthwhile objectives of their own choosing.
- jimberlage 3y ago
  It feels like this might be sarcastic? But if not Based on how the US currently rolls out universal programs, UBI probably looks a lot more like the current Section 8 housing program. They’re gonna guarantee something minimally livable, not beachfront property.
  - pzo 3y ago
    and only if you are US citizen/resident. There will be only few country/winners in this game for now most likely: US, China, France.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    UBI won’t happen but the price of most goods and services will fall to a tiny fraction of what they are now. There will still be people who are considered impoverished but they’ll likely have a higher standard of living than you do.
- Cloudef 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
rocgf 3y ago
There were plenty of people 'complaining' about Copilot and there are plenty 'complaining' about Devin. However, what can you really complain about? Technological progress? We can't just decide to ignore AI. Just to play devil's advocate, if there really were clear signs of this impending distruction, there could be some sort of international agreement to halt progress. Realistically, this will never happen. > All along, we are incrementally improving AI because it is an intellectual amusement You're contradicting yourself here. Is it just 'intellectual amusement' if this technology is as disruptive as you claim?
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  > You're contradicting yourself here. Is it just 'intellectual amusement' if this technology is as disruptive as you claim? Let me be more clear: individual programmers are improving AI for its intellectual amusement, but organizations use it for its disruptive powers. Two different groups of people, with a bit of an intersection. MOreover: > Just to play devil's advocate, if there really were clear signs of this impending distruction, there could be some sort of international agreement to halt progress. Realistically, this will never happen. Of course not, are you joking? There are clear signs of climate destruction as well with CO2 levels rising. Did international agreements work there? Nope, no flattening in the CO2 curve yet. We are fundamentally destructive species, who cannot see long-term problems if there is short-term gain. The only mechanism we have on a global scale to decide what to do is capitalistic motivations.
  - kevmo314 3y ago
    > We are fundamentally destructive species, who cannot see long-term problems if there is short-term gain. The only mechanism we have on a global scale to decide what to do is capitalistic motivations. So if AI destroys us as a species and... > There are clear signs of climate destruction as well with CO2 levels rising. Did international agreements work there? Nope, no flattening in the CO2 curve yet. Seems like we're in good shape? If the end game is destroying ourselves, looks like our long term "problems" are solved.
  - rocgf 3y ago
piva00 3y ago
The biggest triumph of neoliberalism for the capitalist elite class was to achieve a high enough level of society atomisation to where the hyperindividualism pushed by this ideology fuels the erosion of solidarity in the working class to the point we are today. It doesn't help that people are constantly kept on their toes about their jobs, companies have no responsibility to their workers anymore (all of the perks is simply as a market force to incentivise workers to choose company X over Y) requiring workers to see each other as competitors, fight amongst themselves while peddling the bullshit those elites want such as "I don't need unionisation because I want to be free to negotiate my own contracts". It created this myopic view of labour relations where some workers think they will do better on their own against the powers-that-be, completely blind that they only have a tiny modicum of power while the elites look for any opportunity to strip that power away, be it through automation, collusion in cartel-like behaviour in the job market to push wages down, etc. It's pretty obvious on HN how far this has come, in any topic discussing unions there will be quite a few of these illuded workers thinking they can do better on their own rather than show some solidarity to fellow workers, not too dissimilar than the American feeling of being just temporarily embarassed millionaires.
DebtDeflation 3y ago
Even better, the AI was trained on code and answers that you contributed to Stack Exchange, Quora, etc., along with textbooks for which the authors did not grant permission and received no compensation.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
christkv 3y ago
Next was the human who inherited the generated source and cursed every entity in existence.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  That is already the case when inheriting from humans. I think the big advantage is that you don't have curse to as you won't even read it; you'll throw it into the black hole and ask for the improvements you require. Until that also is no longer needed.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
Don't fret - there will still be plenty of jobs for non-execs and seniors: meat packer, gravedigger, wastewater treatment plant worker. Remember, the social consequences of technological innovation are irrelevant in the Church of Modernity (no complainin' - what are you, some kinda heckin' Luddite!?). You will lose your way of life and you will be happy.
ozgung 3y ago
> This path of destruction is so blindingly obvious, it's incredible that everyone is still working on AI instead of trying to destroy it. Obvious but also inevitable. Most of the discussions in this topic are short-sighted. We should look from a broader time perspective of human history. We're about to close the first quarter of 21th century with some initial advancements in AI. The second quarter will be all about transformation of the industries with the very possible introduction of AGI/ASI. This means the second half of the century must be a totally different world. With a totally different set of social constructs and different definitions for job, work, economy etc. I don't think we (humans, governments) are capable of changing the course of the history at the moment. We can only be cautious about the consequences.
preommr 3y ago
> we are incrementally improving AI because it is an intellectual amusement People aren't developping AI because it's a hobby; people are doing it because it's an advancement in technology in the same way we developped electronics, computers, etc.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  But why do programmers themselves develop AI? I'm talking about individual motivations here. For example, I can say I just got into technical work because it's intellectually interesting, not because I wanted to further technological development. And those individual motivations add up to a collective force that is shaped via actions that persist with differential survivability based on capitalistic forces, which still have nothing to do with improving society. And they only reason why we have those is because at one time, free markets and trading were a good proxy for societal improvement on a small scale. On a large scale, they have become completely pathological.
dabeeeenster 3y ago
First it was the cotton mills, and noone complained Then it was the steam trains, and noone complained Next it was the systems of electricity production, and noone complained
seydor 3y ago
holding on to jobs is not the meaningful goal. what matters is who owns those new means of production, and how we make them socialized instead of concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie
- azinman2 3y ago
  Yes that’s definitely happening here /s
- techdragon 3y ago
  It’s why I am focused on how this kind of technology gets “offline” and into locally run models. If I can buy a top of the line MAC in a few years time with something in the vicinity of half a terabyte of unified ram, and run this kind of model on my own hardware, it would be a powerful force multiplier, an a genuinely empowering tool… as opposed to having to rent it from someone in order to remain competitive with everyone else forced to rent it.
  - Cloudef 3y ago
    Even then you actually lack the computing power and data to create these models in the first place. When this power is centralized it can essentially control what goes into the models output.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  Yes because the greedy capitalists will obviously keep this valuable technology all to themselves, hoarding it away so they alone can revel in its delights. Give me a break, this isn’t 1924, we know how things actually play out. The capitalists want to sell you a product and that is fundamentally at odds with hoarding beneficial technology. They will deliver those benefits straight to your door faster, cheaper and better than any socialized pipedream ever could. If you somehow seize these means I have no doubt they’ll only be available to top party members due to their great expense and the considered opinion that the average worker has no need for such tools in their assigned role.
slibhb 3y ago
If we develop the technology to replace certain jobs, then we should do it -- even if they're our jobs. Who even wants a career that only exists due to special interest lobbying to protect it from disruption?
baobabKoodaa 3y ago
> Now it's a near fully-functional teammate that needs a bit of supervision It's not. It's a tech demo. Try replacing your teammates with it...
kypro 3y ago
I say it in every AI thread, but the only solution here is humanity declaring war on AI and the sooner people wake up to this the better. AI at it's limit is practical guaranteed to destroy advance human society by concentrating mass power either to a single or small group of individuals, to itself or to everyone. Whichever happens the ultimate outcome is probably the same. Whether you open source or regulate, it really doesn't matter in the end. These are not solutions. If a small group of individuals have access to AI they in effect become gods, that power will corrupt. If AI itself develops agency then it becomes our god. And if we all have the power of gods then it's just a matter of time before someone decides they want to use this power for destruction. What we're building here is fundamentally destabilising and that's not even factoring in all the near-term risks of AI like mass job loses. And I think it's frankly disgusting how so many people dismiss this. I was checking out the VFX subreddit post the Sora announcement and many people there were literally suicidal at the prospect of their passion and economic value become obsolete in perhaps just a matter of years. It's heartbreaking. And who even wants this future? We act like we have no choice the matter and maybe long-term that's true, but right now at the very least we have the chance to slow this rate of progress down and reduce near-term risk. I know I sound like lunatic in all these AI doomer threads, but I continue to feel the need to normalise the obvious radical position that we need a UN agreement prohibiting the construction of AI data centers. And where data centers are built that exceed thresholds can and should be destroyed. As a global community we must also encourage anyone working in secret AI teams to become whistle blowers so that we can reduce the risk of governments or corporations building advance AI systems in secret. And who knows, this might only buy as 3 or 4 decades, but at the very least we will give ourselves more time to improve our biological intelligence and equip ourselves with ways to deal with the risks AI presents.
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  Sorry but this is a cold take. Open models will massively empower humanity once we can bring the power/compute for a given performance level in line, and regulation can absolutely curtail the concentration of power if we can just summon the political will to create real ones. The problem is that nearly half the population in America wants to give their freedom away and create a dictator to stick it to the "elites" so moving away from a concentration of power is probably not in the cards.
throwuwu 3y ago
If you really want to make more work, blow up budgets and create positions for masses of developers and assistants then you should demand we go back to punch cards and doing all the planning and algorithm design on paper before we translate it to instructions and hand it off to computer operators.
wellthisisgreat 3y ago
This kind of take is just, let’s put it mildly, shallow. We never complained about CAD systems replacing people who were drafting blueprints manually, not to mention all kinds of automation tools that replaced factory workers. Why should AI coders be the same? If you can automate it, humans shouldn’t really be wasting their times on it. There is nothing intellectual in pulling someone’s code from github to piece together some software by copy-pasting snippets.
navane 3y ago
Well first there was a human programmer who made a lot of non-programmer jobs obsolete -- plenty of people complained but they just had to re-school themselves.

mercurialsolo 3y ago

The ultimate goal of an organization (and society) is to disrupt itself. Then the new order becomes an evolution of the old and thus it becomes a continuity.

olivierduval 3y ago
??? The ultimate goal of an organization (and society) is to stay alive, with minimum changes. It will evolve if it needs to, but it won't if it's not necessary. Disrupting happens in a really really competitive enironment, and is only ONE of the different possible strategies to survive. Most of the time, disruption happens to the whole domain, not to the organization. Others might be to "buy" the competitor, to build "regulatory barrier"...

pringk02 3y ago

Yes, but when can Devin SSH onto production to diagnose and fix the system outage at 3am while managers complain on the phone?

rvnx 3y ago
Probably end of the year already
singularity2001 3y ago
Shortly after it got access to production and caused the giant mess in the first place.

camgunz 3y ago

I full on don't understand why we're building this stuff, whether it's autonomous driving to put truckers out of work, AI teaching assistants to put teachers/tutors/professors out of work, coding assistants to put programmers out of work, AI article writers to put journalists out of work, AI image generators to put artists out of work, AI video generators to put the film industry on ice, AI accountants, marketers, ad nauseum. Is the idea "well sure we'll put 90% of people out of work, but the very-well-known-to-be-well-functioning-government will do... something to fix it, something that definitely isn't tax away the millions I earned putting everyone else out of work to support everyone I put out of work"? This is a total reshaping of society at worst, and a huge transfer of wealth with almost no steps at best. How does anyone working on this justify causing unemployment on a mass scale while collecting a huge check? Is it just "progress gonna progress?" Do you really believe that justifies all the consequences? Is it, "if not me/us then someone else (worse)"? Then why aren't you giving control of these tools to the workers? Why are you profiting so handsomely? This is nuts. Normally I don't go full communist rant, but a few hundred people (presumably some of whom read HN) are about to destroy our society without asking a single one of us, and with absolutely no regard for the consequences.

oliviabenson 3y ago
We jumped the shark long ago, we (technologists) have been contributing to this for decades: we’ve benefited handsomely from the consequences with our big salaries and hero worship. I don’t disagree with your broad point but you’ve had your head buried in the sand for a long, long time if you think society is “about to” be destroyed.
nerdawson 3y ago
How can you stop it? If company A refuses to build it on moral grounds, company B will. It is reshaping society in much the same way the industrial revolution did. Luddites resisted change, for precisely the same reason people aren't happy about AI, and it's now a derogatory label. It's much better to adapt to a changing world but precisely what that entails is still up in the air.
- arnold_palmur 3y ago

rmellow 3y ago

On the ethics ... Kentaro Toyama talks about technology as an amplifier for human intent. Just as you could tighten a nut with your hands, you can tighten it so much more with a wrench. Whether that nut is employed in a machine that will bring bounty for a village, or it's employed in a machine whose output by law belongs to its private owners is entirely up to the inhabitants. Will the villagers band together and build their own machine? Or will the authorities give the private creator of the machine exclusivity of the land the machine runs on and its output, leaving the villagers bereft? Whatever state our world is in is a result of our peers decision, not "good" or "bad" technology. Humans will legislate: "good" and "bad" uses are up to them, and later on up to the executive and judicial system. Pro-social (*not the same as socialist) cultures will share the wealth, others will hoard it, and you get the effects you dread: unemployment, poverty, etc. Now, a better question is: is a technology too powerful or misunderstood that it might be misused, regardless of the creator's intent?

1234letshaveatw 3y ago
Should the builder of the machine not be rewarded? Does it really benefit the village to wrest the machine from the builder? The answer is no- that is inherently unjust and history has shown us that living in a village such the one you are proposing is oppressive

factibicongue 3y ago

Devin, build an AI Systems Analyst (Aisa) Aisa, build an AI Business Analyst (Aiba) Aiba, build an AI Financial Analyst (Aifa) Aifa, build an AI Market Analyst (Aima) Aima, find a lucrative market for a new app Aifa, determine the cost building the new app Aiba, create the business model for the new app Aisa, create the use case functional spec for the new app Devin, create the new app