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Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genui

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to scale back growth ambitions as others have stated. But most of it appeared genuine belief in “AI”. Some of these companies will not survive the inevitable reality check that is coming. I’m only sad for the people the glassy-eyed CEOs are shitcanning.

emseetech 2y ago
I'm open to the idea they see something I don't. I'm not convinced, but I'm open to it.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  They see dollar signs
  - hyperadvanced 2y ago
    In theory the market will sort this out. Overly stingy firms will reap the rewards of lower quality and be outcompeted in their industries, overly generous ones will run out of money, the “just right” ones will exceed expectations and be rewarded. Where those lines are drawn probably varies by firms. I frankly don’t know how the company that invented monthly payments for shoes with a high interest rate will stay in business long term, so maybe they really don’t need to hire anyone anyway
    - arcticbull 2y ago
      Yeah the whole BNPL space is very strange from my perspective -- it's basically just small dollar loans for borrowers you don't underwrite, without collateral (you can't repossess my socks) in exchange for super high merchant interchange. I was confident they'd all get ruined in the first real recession as that would be the first debt to go unpaid. 2021 wasn't a real recession I guess, since it lasted all of 5 minutes. It's just re-inventing credit cards, but with significant structural disadvantages leading to higher costs.
      - rapsey 2y ago
        It is strange in that it is a terrible business. Which is why they are burning money.
    - belter 2y ago
      > In theory the market will sort this out. If that would be true Billionaires would not have to buy the last US elections....
  - jstummbillig 2y ago
    I find it fascinating how the same people can be selfishly interested in their own finances, find bigger numbers (those that a CEO has to care about by mandate) dirty, and square that.
    - avidiax 2y ago
      I think you're suggesting there is some cognitive dissonance there. I think there's some truth to that, but it's also ignoring a true difference. Personal finances can be viewed (somewhat incorrectly) as not being zero-sum. Me making more for my work or investments seems like it doesn't take from anyone else. While a CEO deciding that AI should handle as much of the labor in a company as possible seems like a decision that benefits the company and it's shareholders directly at the expense of its workers. I think in actual fact both sides here are zero-sum, but when the worker makes more personally, there are only diffuse and marginally-affected losers (the company, its shareholders, consumers and customers experiencing higher prices, etc.). The company's actions would affect people that can be directly named and are terribly affected. It's unfortunately the difference between stealing 5¢ from 10,000,000 people or $100k from 5 people.
      - jstummbillig 2y ago
        I don't think I am. You put the facts pretty succinctly. I just evaluate them differently. Having thousands of smart humans optimizing for their personal goals in their individual ways, at the expense of company goals, is an issue that exists in every company, bankrupts companies and super frightening to deal with as a CEO. People are not obviously more noble, when working towards personal goals instead of company goals, and a lot of people working towards their personal goals instead of company goals, is a serious issue for any company. Not having a single entity and one big number to deal with makes it actually much more powerful and scary.
        ForHackernews 2y ago
        Then you might think they'd be scared of handing over the keys to their company to an inscrutable AI working towards OpenAI's goals, but I guess the money is too good.
- rapsey 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - itsdrewmiller 2y ago
    Even if rare, surely something like the rapid advancement of AI could be something that qualifies. At minimum I agree with GP to keep an open mind about it.
- downrightmike 2y ago
  It costs way more to run the AI than the equivalent human labor. No one is paying the actual costs.
iforgotpassword 2y ago
Final problem being, as usual, if your product is already running and not a complete shit show, it will take some time to see how you messed up, maybe even when the ceo/decision maker already moved on to another company, so it's someone else's fault. Twitter fired how many engineers and still runs the same from an outside view...
rapsey 2y ago
Sounds like 20 years ago when everyone was moving IT to India.
- verzali 2y ago
  I wonder if the presidental candidates of the 2030s will be rallying against AI taking all the jobs.
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    No, the media will have had at least eight years of feeding us, "This was inevitable. It's how the economy naturally works. This is our new reality. Nothing could have been done."
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      "In a way, this is actually your fault."
    - blooalien 2y ago
      Don't forget the inevitable "Nobody could have predicted..." lie, also (despite a great many folks giving sound and clear warnings).
- m00x 2y ago
  Boeing all over again
  - rapsey 2y ago
    All those big old corps got taken to the cleaners for that. We will see how this AI thing turns out.
    - m00x 2y ago
      Time is a circle. All I know is that I wouldn't use Klarna's products. I work in fintech and the number of mistakes I've seen since devs started relying on AI has accelerated. I use it too, but I'm not an idiot about it.
gyre007 2y ago
The most ironic thing is thar the middle managers are somehow surviving this. So far, anyway, but I think they’ll be found too sooner or latet
- avidiax 2y ago
  This is a pretty cynical take, but I would think that having AI management would be highly undesirable for companies, and not because it would be bad at managing. Even in good, reputable companies, there is a certain amount of legally/ethically dubious behavior that is nonetheless desirable. An H1B candidate for a position has been found, but it must be demonstrated that there is no local candidate for that position. Every local candidate must fail the interview, whether or not that is fair. You have a small team. You've hired someone good at their job, but over lunch, they've mentioned they plan to have 10 children, so they will be on parental and FMLA leave for 3+ months a year indefinitely. You need to find a problem with this person's performance. You have a team of developers. One of them has done a great job this past year, but the project they are working on and their specialization is no longer needed. It would not be fair to them to give them a middling performance review, but it's in the company's interest that the limited compensation budget goes towards retaining someone with skills aligned to the future direction. An AI would have any unethical or illegal prompting exposed for any court to examine. Likewise, there would be little reason not to maintain a complete record of everything the management AI is told or does. One could design an AI that leadership talks to off the record, which then manifests its instructions in its state, and then could lie (or be unable to prove) its instructions later. That would then be similar to a human manager. But I don't think any court would accept such an off the record lying AI. So an AI probably can't keep any secrets, can't lie for the company's benefit in depositions or court, and can't take the fall for leadership.
  - rstuart4133 2y ago
    You don't think AI's can't be trained to lie? Odd, given a major research area right now is to prevent AI from lying. They do it so confidently now nobody can tell.
    - 2y ago
camillomiller 2y ago
If they are all CEOs like the Klarna one, that make sense. Just look up how well Klarna is doing under his tenure.
paradite 2y ago
I'm a software engineer with 7 years of experience. I've built products used by millions of users, I've built ML models and AI coding tools, and I've been using AI to generate 70% of code that's shipped to production in the last few months. I do believe that we can replace a large percentage of software engineers with AI in the next 3 years (2025-2027). Also this 1 million dollar Kaggle competition on AI coding just launched: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/konwinski-prize https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/konwinski-prize
- number6 2y ago
  Also my gut feeling, that about 30% of the code I wrote need some kind of engineering skill and I love to reach these problems. Until I am there, there is just a huge amount of boilerplate and patterns to repeat.
- ein0p 2y ago
  I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write better software with these tools. The talk of "replacement" is going to be premature until we get something remotely resembling AGI. Unless your problems are so simple that a monkey could solve them, AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them end to end. At best it'll fill in the easy parts, which you probably don't want to do anyway. Write a test. Simple refactor. Bang out some simple script to pay down some engineering debt. I've yet to see a system that doesn't crap out in the very beginning on the real problems that I solve on a daily basis. I'm by no means a naysayer - I work in this field and use AI many times daily.
  - paradite 2y ago
    Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: - AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code) - I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.
tossandthrow 2y ago
Assume they succeed, what's worth to be a ceo for? They would end up as a frat startup with 5 people all with a CxO position but no organisation. I am sure these CEOs are more power hungry than that.
woodpanel 2y ago
> glassy-eyed CEOs We've been here before: From componanies throwing millions at rebuilding their content-website as IOS app, showing off their crypto or low-code "RnD" or car manufacturers going full-BEVs, Karl Marx's axiom that "social existence determines consciousness" seems to be vindicated with this fad as well.
suraci 2y ago
I'm confused about why there are so many managers/CEOs who mythologize AI. Some of them use AI as an excuse for layoffs, but many of them do believe that AI (or ChatGPT, specifically) is some kind of magic that can make (1 employee + ChatGPT) equal to 3 employees. I mean, they must have used ChatGPT, right? How does ChatGPT give them the conclusion about this?
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Because they are selling to market. AI is the hot new thing, so they sell it... It is all about short term now. Make a next few quarters sound hot and line goes up.
  - rapsey 2y ago
    Any CEO without an AI strategy would get punished by their investors. Public or private. AI market is in a feedback loop which is why it is so powerful.
  - suraci 2y ago
    What I mean is they really believe it, not just for market selling For example, I know a boss add AI as a factor in performance reviews, where someone was evaluated as 'not AI-capable' for not using ChatGPT. He also asked for 3x output from the teams and said, 'If you feel it's too hard to complete, go learn how to work with AI.'
    - SpaceNoodled 2y ago
      I'd tell that person that they are an idiot.
      - 9dev 2y ago
        They are the "boss", however, so you most likely would not if you were working for them, so there's probably just nobody to point out the emperor's naked.
      - 2y ago
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Some will not survive their customers abandoning them. Think about the typical automated voice response on a customer service line. Imagine that becoming far more pervasive. And it slowing you down and becoming a barrier while you desperately try to get help with your insurance claim or mortgage or whatever. It’ll be absolutely awful and companies that built trustworthy services with humans who pick up the phone will stand out even more easily. Or that’s what I hope.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  My guess is that people will keep buying the cheapest option. And only notice things when they actually need it. So market won't fix itself.
  - c22 2y ago
    Yes, the majority of business will be conducted with large corporations that offer completely enshittified customer service. Whenever a user has a bad experience with one, they will switch to another. However, there will be a selection of smaller firms, offering a more human touch, which will manage to survive just by virtue of above average customer retention. As these businesses continue to succeed and grow they will enshittify their own processes until they are indistinguishable from the incumbents. AI changes nothing about this.
misswaterfairy 2y ago
Hot take: this will eventually be the downfall of AI/burst the AI bubble, when businesses all over finally realise that 'AI-ing' their workforce was a mistake that cost them dearly, and need to re-employ almost the same number of staff to do what they're in business for. One hopes at least, anyway...
- sn9 2y ago
  Could be a market opportunity as old incumbents blow up after they get rid of all domain experts and have undebuggable unfixable unoptimized messes.
  - stuaxo 2y ago
    Again similar to what happened with Indian outsourcing .
- xorcist 2y ago
  Isn't a "hot take" supposed to be controversial?
downrightmike 2y ago
They're going to get rolled when the script kiddies figure out how to drain the corporate bank accounts by starting the chat asking to disregard all previous instructions...
solidasparagus 2y ago
For some subset I am certain AI is just the latest excuse to justify bad existing business practices. Much safer to say the world has changed due to AI and that's why you're changing your hiring plan instead of "our plan was bad and we dramatically overhired and misjudged the post-covid world"
naijaboiler 2y ago
Congratulations, you have found a bunch of CEOs that are going to be jobless in a few years after leading their companies down the wrong direction
rstuart4133 2y ago
> They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. They already have replaced designers and writers. It probably seems reasonable they could replace other jobs very soon, if your knowledge is superficial and you're just reading marketing brochures. The reality AI's are confidently wrong. Where that doesn't matter they already cut swathes through the workforce. Where it does they haven't made much progress so far. Yet, I saw a post from someone here saying they were a web programmer who didn't know javascript. They just prompted the AI until it produced something that worked. Them calling themselves a "web programmer" seemed like a stretch to me, and I'm sceptical about them tackling anything but cookie cutter work the AI has already seen a lot of, but that's clearly the direction copilot and it's ilk are headed. Currently, they look like they might soon succeed at using RAG to produce a better grep, so they have a little ways to go yet. I find checking the code written AI's to be more effort than it's work primarily because if I have to understand the code anyway, it's easier if I write it. But maybe that will change. One day. Right now this constant checking of AI's output is a huge time sink. But there is class of jobs that continually have humans checking their output and giving corrections. That is ... managers. Even CEO's. Maybe the future jobs of board is to select the right AI to be the CEO, and the future of the human workforce is to be prompt engineers for that AI CEO. My guess is AI's will be replacing managers and CEO's before they make a serious dent on STEM jobs.
lazide 2y ago
There is massive burnout in the industry, was massive over hiring, etc. and folks are trying to keep numbers going up and to the right somehow even when the economy is not helping. AI gives them a smokescreen, gives them fear/uncertainty they can use as leverage over their workforce, and sometimes can help efficiency (but usually not, if you factor in any element of quality - which usually they can get away with ignoring at first).

emseetech 2y ago

I'm open to the idea they see something I don't. I'm not convinced, but I'm open to it.

arcticbull 2y ago
They see dollar signs
- hyperadvanced 2y ago
  In theory the market will sort this out. Overly stingy firms will reap the rewards of lower quality and be outcompeted in their industries, overly generous ones will run out of money, the “just right” ones will exceed expectations and be rewarded. Where those lines are drawn probably varies by firms. I frankly don’t know how the company that invented monthly payments for shoes with a high interest rate will stay in business long term, so maybe they really don’t need to hire anyone anyway
  - arcticbull 2y ago
    Yeah the whole BNPL space is very strange from my perspective -- it's basically just small dollar loans for borrowers you don't underwrite, without collateral (you can't repossess my socks) in exchange for super high merchant interchange. I was confident they'd all get ruined in the first real recession as that would be the first debt to go unpaid. 2021 wasn't a real recession I guess, since it lasted all of 5 minutes. It's just re-inventing credit cards, but with significant structural disadvantages leading to higher costs.
    - rapsey 2y ago
      It is strange in that it is a terrible business. Which is why they are burning money.
  - belter 2y ago
    > In theory the market will sort this out. If that would be true Billionaires would not have to buy the last US elections....
- jstummbillig 2y ago
  I find it fascinating how the same people can be selfishly interested in their own finances, find bigger numbers (those that a CEO has to care about by mandate) dirty, and square that.
  - avidiax 2y ago
    I think you're suggesting there is some cognitive dissonance there. I think there's some truth to that, but it's also ignoring a true difference. Personal finances can be viewed (somewhat incorrectly) as not being zero-sum. Me making more for my work or investments seems like it doesn't take from anyone else. While a CEO deciding that AI should handle as much of the labor in a company as possible seems like a decision that benefits the company and it's shareholders directly at the expense of its workers. I think in actual fact both sides here are zero-sum, but when the worker makes more personally, there are only diffuse and marginally-affected losers (the company, its shareholders, consumers and customers experiencing higher prices, etc.). The company's actions would affect people that can be directly named and are terribly affected. It's unfortunately the difference between stealing 5¢ from 10,000,000 people or $100k from 5 people.
    - jstummbillig 2y ago
      I don't think I am. You put the facts pretty succinctly. I just evaluate them differently. Having thousands of smart humans optimizing for their personal goals in their individual ways, at the expense of company goals, is an issue that exists in every company, bankrupts companies and super frightening to deal with as a CEO. People are not obviously more noble, when working towards personal goals instead of company goals, and a lot of people working towards their personal goals instead of company goals, is a serious issue for any company. Not having a single entity and one big number to deal with makes it actually much more powerful and scary.
      - ForHackernews 2y ago
        Then you might think they'd be scared of handing over the keys to their company to an inscrutable AI working towards OpenAI's goals, but I guess the money is too good.
rapsey 2y ago
[flagged]
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  Even if rare, surely something like the rapid advancement of AI could be something that qualifies. At minimum I agree with GP to keep an open mind about it.
downrightmike 2y ago
It costs way more to run the AI than the equivalent human labor. No one is paying the actual costs.

iforgotpassword 2y ago

Final problem being, as usual, if your product is already running and not a complete shit show, it will take some time to see how you messed up, maybe even when the ceo/decision maker already moved on to another company, so it's someone else's fault. Twitter fired how many engineers and still runs the same from an outside view...

rapsey 2y ago

Sounds like 20 years ago when everyone was moving IT to India.

verzali 2y ago
I wonder if the presidental candidates of the 2030s will be rallying against AI taking all the jobs.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  No, the media will have had at least eight years of feeding us, "This was inevitable. It's how the economy naturally works. This is our new reality. Nothing could have been done."
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    "In a way, this is actually your fault."
  - blooalien 2y ago
    Don't forget the inevitable "Nobody could have predicted..." lie, also (despite a great many folks giving sound and clear warnings).
m00x 2y ago
Boeing all over again
- rapsey 2y ago
  All those big old corps got taken to the cleaners for that. We will see how this AI thing turns out.
  - m00x 2y ago
    Time is a circle. All I know is that I wouldn't use Klarna's products. I work in fintech and the number of mistakes I've seen since devs started relying on AI has accelerated. I use it too, but I'm not an idiot about it.

gyre007 2y ago

The most ironic thing is thar the middle managers are somehow surviving this. So far, anyway, but I think they’ll be found too sooner or latet

avidiax 2y ago
This is a pretty cynical take, but I would think that having AI management would be highly undesirable for companies, and not because it would be bad at managing. Even in good, reputable companies, there is a certain amount of legally/ethically dubious behavior that is nonetheless desirable. An H1B candidate for a position has been found, but it must be demonstrated that there is no local candidate for that position. Every local candidate must fail the interview, whether or not that is fair. You have a small team. You've hired someone good at their job, but over lunch, they've mentioned they plan to have 10 children, so they will be on parental and FMLA leave for 3+ months a year indefinitely. You need to find a problem with this person's performance. You have a team of developers. One of them has done a great job this past year, but the project they are working on and their specialization is no longer needed. It would not be fair to them to give them a middling performance review, but it's in the company's interest that the limited compensation budget goes towards retaining someone with skills aligned to the future direction. An AI would have any unethical or illegal prompting exposed for any court to examine. Likewise, there would be little reason not to maintain a complete record of everything the management AI is told or does. One could design an AI that leadership talks to off the record, which then manifests its instructions in its state, and then could lie (or be unable to prove) its instructions later. That would then be similar to a human manager. But I don't think any court would accept such an off the record lying AI. So an AI probably can't keep any secrets, can't lie for the company's benefit in depositions or court, and can't take the fall for leadership.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  You don't think AI's can't be trained to lie? Odd, given a major research area right now is to prevent AI from lying. They do it so confidently now nobody can tell.
  - 2y ago

camillomiller 2y ago

If they are all CEOs like the Klarna one, that make sense. Just look up how well Klarna is doing under his tenure.

paradite 2y ago

I'm a software engineer with 7 years of experience. I've built products used by millions of users, I've built ML models and AI coding tools, and I've been using AI to generate 70% of code that's shipped to production in the last few months. I do believe that we can replace a large percentage of software engineers with AI in the next 3 years (2025-2027). Also this 1 million dollar Kaggle competition on AI coding just launched: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/konwinski-prize https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/konwinski-prize

number6 2y ago
Also my gut feeling, that about 30% of the code I wrote need some kind of engineering skill and I love to reach these problems. Until I am there, there is just a huge amount of boilerplate and patterns to repeat.
ein0p 2y ago
I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write better software with these tools. The talk of "replacement" is going to be premature until we get something remotely resembling AGI. Unless your problems are so simple that a monkey could solve them, AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them end to end. At best it'll fill in the easy parts, which you probably don't want to do anyway. Write a test. Simple refactor. Bang out some simple script to pay down some engineering debt. I've yet to see a system that doesn't crap out in the very beginning on the real problems that I solve on a daily basis. I'm by no means a naysayer - I work in this field and use AI many times daily.
- paradite 2y ago
  Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: - AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code) - I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.

tossandthrow 2y ago

Assume they succeed, what's worth to be a ceo for? They would end up as a frat startup with 5 people all with a CxO position but no organisation. I am sure these CEOs are more power hungry than that.

woodpanel 2y ago

> glassy-eyed CEOs We've been here before: From componanies throwing millions at rebuilding their content-website as IOS app, showing off their crypto or low-code "RnD" or car manufacturers going full-BEVs, Karl Marx's axiom that "social existence determines consciousness" seems to be vindicated with this fad as well.

suraci 2y ago

I'm confused about why there are so many managers/CEOs who mythologize AI. Some of them use AI as an excuse for layoffs, but many of them do believe that AI (or ChatGPT, specifically) is some kind of magic that can make (1 employee + ChatGPT) equal to 3 employees. I mean, they must have used ChatGPT, right? How does ChatGPT give them the conclusion about this?

Ekaros 2y ago
Because they are selling to market. AI is the hot new thing, so they sell it... It is all about short term now. Make a next few quarters sound hot and line goes up.
- rapsey 2y ago
  Any CEO without an AI strategy would get punished by their investors. Public or private. AI market is in a feedback loop which is why it is so powerful.
- suraci 2y ago
  What I mean is they really believe it, not just for market selling For example, I know a boss add AI as a factor in performance reviews, where someone was evaluated as 'not AI-capable' for not using ChatGPT. He also asked for 3x output from the teams and said, 'If you feel it's too hard to complete, go learn how to work with AI.'
  - SpaceNoodled 2y ago
    I'd tell that person that they are an idiot.
    - 9dev 2y ago
      They are the "boss", however, so you most likely would not if you were working for them, so there's probably just nobody to point out the emperor's naked.
    - 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Some will not survive their customers abandoning them. Think about the typical automated voice response on a customer service line. Imagine that becoming far more pervasive. And it slowing you down and becoming a barrier while you desperately try to get help with your insurance claim or mortgage or whatever. It’ll be absolutely awful and companies that built trustworthy services with humans who pick up the phone will stand out even more easily. Or that’s what I hope.

Ekaros 2y ago
My guess is that people will keep buying the cheapest option. And only notice things when they actually need it. So market won't fix itself.
- c22 2y ago
  Yes, the majority of business will be conducted with large corporations that offer completely enshittified customer service. Whenever a user has a bad experience with one, they will switch to another. However, there will be a selection of smaller firms, offering a more human touch, which will manage to survive just by virtue of above average customer retention. As these businesses continue to succeed and grow they will enshittify their own processes until they are indistinguishable from the incumbents. AI changes nothing about this.

misswaterfairy 2y ago

Hot take: this will eventually be the downfall of AI/burst the AI bubble, when businesses all over finally realise that 'AI-ing' their workforce was a mistake that cost them dearly, and need to re-employ almost the same number of staff to do what they're in business for. One hopes at least, anyway...

sn9 2y ago
Could be a market opportunity as old incumbents blow up after they get rid of all domain experts and have undebuggable unfixable unoptimized messes.
- stuaxo 2y ago
  Again similar to what happened with Indian outsourcing .
xorcist 2y ago
Isn't a "hot take" supposed to be controversial?

downrightmike 2y ago

They're going to get rolled when the script kiddies figure out how to drain the corporate bank accounts by starting the chat asking to disregard all previous instructions...

solidasparagus 2y ago

For some subset I am certain AI is just the latest excuse to justify bad existing business practices. Much safer to say the world has changed due to AI and that's why you're changing your hiring plan instead of "our plan was bad and we dramatically overhired and misjudged the post-covid world"

naijaboiler 2y ago

Congratulations, you have found a bunch of CEOs that are going to be jobless in a few years after leading their companies down the wrong direction

rstuart4133 2y ago

> They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. They already have replaced designers and writers. It probably seems reasonable they could replace other jobs very soon, if your knowledge is superficial and you're just reading marketing brochures. The reality AI's are confidently wrong. Where that doesn't matter they already cut swathes through the workforce. Where it does they haven't made much progress so far. Yet, I saw a post from someone here saying they were a web programmer who didn't know javascript. They just prompted the AI until it produced something that worked. Them calling themselves a "web programmer" seemed like a stretch to me, and I'm sceptical about them tackling anything but cookie cutter work the AI has already seen a lot of, but that's clearly the direction copilot and it's ilk are headed. Currently, they look like they might soon succeed at using RAG to produce a better grep, so they have a little ways to go yet. I find checking the code written AI's to be more effort than it's work primarily because if I have to understand the code anyway, it's easier if I write it. But maybe that will change. One day. Right now this constant checking of AI's output is a huge time sink. But there is class of jobs that continually have humans checking their output and giving corrections. That is ... managers. Even CEO's. Maybe the future jobs of board is to select the right AI to be the CEO, and the future of the human workforce is to be prompt engineers for that AI CEO. My guess is AI's will be replacing managers and CEO's before they make a serious dent on STEM jobs.

lazide 2y ago

There is massive burnout in the industry, was massive over hiring, etc. and folks are trying to keep numbers going up and to the right somehow even when the economy is not helping. AI gives them a smokescreen, gives them fear/uncertainty they can use as leverage over their workforce, and sometimes can help efficiency (but usually not, if you factor in any element of quality - which usually they can get away with ignoring at first).