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Again: I’m only made redundant if there is no more work that my employer needs me to do. Why should I be scared of technology that makes me more productive?
by snowwrestler 2y ago
Again: I’m only made redundant if there is no more work that my employer needs me to do.
Why should I be scared of technology that makes me more productive?
- physicsguy 2y agoThis assumes that the bottleneck to profitability is the limit of software engineers they can afford to hire. If they’re happy with current rate of progress (and in many companies that is the case), then a productivity increase of 100% means they need half the current number of engineers.
- flimsypremise 2y agowhat company have you ever worked for that was happy with the current rate of progress in software development?
- snowwrestler 2y agoNone, of course. And the “current rate” is competitively defined. So if AI can make software developers twice as productive, then the acceptable minimum “current rate” will become 2x faster than it is today.
- physicsguy 2y agoIs the reason for development on features going slow usually the number of developers though? Nowhere I’ve worked has that really been the case, it’s usually fumbled strategic decision making and pivots.
- kzzzznot 2y agoSure that means they need half the number of engineers to stand still. Most companies aim to grow not stand still.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoWhy would there be more work left for you to do if AI can do it in seconds? Ai is trending towards a point where it makes your employers productive such that they don’t need you.
- snowwrestler 2y agoA computer already does in seconds what it used to take many people to do. In fact the word “computer” was a job title; now it describes the machine that replaced those jobs. Yet people are still employed today. They are doing the many new jobs that the productivity boost of digital computing created. Productivity creates jobs.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoI don't know why people think analogies from the past predict or prove anything in the future. It's as if a different situation applies completely to the current situation via analogy EVEN though both situations are DIFFERENT. The computer created jobs because it takes human skills to talk to the computer. It takes very little skill to talk to an LLM. Why would your manager ask you to prompt an LLM to do something for you when he can do it himself? You going to answer this question with another analogy? Just think reasonably and logically. Why would I pay you a 300k annual salary when a chatGPT can do it for nothing? It's pretty straightforward. If you can't justify something with a straightforward answer, likely you're not being honest with yourself. Why don't we use actually evidence based logic to prove things rather then justify things by leaping over some unreasonable gap with some analogy. Think about the current situation, don't base your hope on a past situation and hope that the current situation will be the same because of analogy.
- snowwrestler 2y agoMy job is not to do a certain fixed set of tasks, my job is to do whatever my employer needs me to do. If an LLM can do part of the tasks I complete now, then I will leave those tasks to the LLM and move on to the rest of what my employer needs done. Now you might say AI means that I will run out of things that my employer needs me to do. And I'll repeat what I said above: you've got to prove that. I'm not going to take it on faith that you have sussed out the complete future of business.
- croes 2y agoIt makes cheaper people also more productive and