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It looks we are in this interesting cycle: millions of engineers contribute to open-source on github. The best of our minds use the code to develop powerful mod

It looks we are in this interesting cycle: millions of engineers contribute to open-source on github. The best of our minds use the code to develop powerful models to replace exactly these engineers. In fact, the more code a group contributes to github, the easier it is for the companies to replace this group. Case in point, frontend engineers are impacted most so far. Does this mean people will be less incentivized to contribute to open source as time goes by? P.S., I think the current trend is a wakeup call to us software engineers. We thought we were doing highly creative work, but in reality we spend a lot of time doing the basic job of knowledge workers: retrieving knowledge and interpolating some basic and highly predictable variations. Unfortunately, the current AI is really good at replacing this type of work. My optimistic view is that in long term we will have invent or expand into more interesting work, but I'm not sure how long we will have to wait. The current generation of software engineers may suffer high supply but low demand of our profession for years to come.

Daishiman 1y ago
> P.S., I think the current trend is a wakeup call to us software engineers. We thought we were doing highly creative work, but in reality we spend a lot of time doing the basic job of knowledge workers: retrieving knowledge and interpolating some basic and highly predictable variations. Unfortunately, the current AI is really good at replacing this type of work. Most of the waking hours of most creative work have this type of drudgery. Professional painters and designers spend most of their time replicating ideas that are well fleshed-out. Musicians spend most of their time rehearsing existing compositions. There is a point to be made that these repetitive tasks are a prerequisite to come up with creative ideas.
- rowanG077 1y ago
  I disagree. AI have shown to most capable in what we consider creative jobs. Music creation, voice acting, text/story writing, art creation, video creation and more.
  - roflyear 1y ago
    If you mean create as in literally, sure. But not in being creative. AI can't solve novel problems yet. The person you're replying to obviously means being creative not literally creating something.
    - crat3r 1y ago
      What is the qualifier for this? Didn't one of the models recently create a "novel" algorithm for a math problem? I'm not sure this holds water anymore.
      - roflyear 1y ago
        "After a couple of million suggestions and a few dozen repetitions of the overall process" How much of it is brute force?
        virgildotcodes 1y ago
        Are we maybe moving the goalposts here? How much of human creativity is brute force?
        genewitch 1y ago
        Marble sculptures, that's what I came up with.
        roflyear 1y ago
        No, we're trying to have a conversation.
    - rowanG077 1y ago
      You can't say AI is creating something new but that it isn't being creative with clearly explaining why you think that's the case. AI is creating novel solution to problems humans haven't cracked in centuries. I don't see anything more creative than this.
electrondood 1y ago
> doing the basic job of knowledge workers If you extrapolate and generalize further... what is at risk is any task that involves taking information input (text, audio, images, video, etc.), and applying it to create some information output or perform some action which is useful. That's basically the definition of work. It's not just knowledge work, it's literally any work.
lispisok 1y ago
As much as I support community developed software and "free as in freedom", "Open Source" got completely perverted into tricking people to work for free for huge financial benefits for others. Your comment is just one example of that. For that reason all my silly little side projects are now in private repos. I dont care the chance somebody builds a business around them is slim to none. Dont think putting a license will protect you either. You'd have to know somebody is violating your license before you can even think about doing anything and that's basically impossible if it gets ripped into a private codebase and isnt obvious externally.
- hintymad 1y ago
  > "Open Source" got completely perverted into tricking people to work for free for huge financial benefits for others I'm quite conflicted on this assessment. On one hand, I was wondering if we would get better job market if there were not much open-sourced systems. We may have had a much slower growth, but we would see our growth last for a lot more years, which mean we may enjoy our profession until our retirement and more. On the other hand, open source did create large cakes, right? Like the "big data" market, the ML market, the distributed system market, and etc. Like the millions of data scientists who could barely use Pandas and scipy, or hundreds of thousands of ML engineers who couldn't even bother to know what semi positive definite matrix is. Interesting times.
- brookst 1y ago
  Protect you from what? What harm is there to you if someone uses some of your code to build a business, as compared to not doing so? How are you worse off? I’ve never understood this mentality. It seems very zero sum and kind of anti social. I’ve built a couple of businesses, and there’s always economic or technical precedent. I honestly don’t mind paying it forward if someone can benefit from side projects I enjoyed doing anyways.
  - computerex 1y ago
    Exactly. If you are not actively going to compete in that space why not let someone else compete instead using your work?
blibble 1y ago
> Does this mean people will be less incentivized to contribute to open source as time goes by? personally, I completely stopped 2 years ago it's the same as the stack overflow problem: the incentive to contribute tends towards zero, at which point the plagiarism machine stops improving
- tom_m 1y ago
  Same. It'll be interesting to see when open source slows down enough and is maybe all but eliminated...how will things advance? Once everyone uses AI. How will anything new come about? AI could quite possibly slow down innovation and improvement.
SubiculumCode 1y ago
Now do open science. More generally, specialty knowledge is valuable. From now on, all employees will be monitored in order to replace them.
- popcorncowboy 1y ago
  > From now on, all employees will be monitored in order to replace them. This is going on a t-shirt.
username223 1y ago
> Does this mean people will be less incentivized to contribute to open source as time goes by? Yes. I certainly don't intend to put any free code online until I can legally bar AI bros from using it without payment. As Mike Monteiro put it long ago, "F** you, pay me" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)
- tom_m 1y ago
  People might also lace open source with Trojans and back doors. It's going to get interesting.
mikepurvis 1y ago
My pessimistic view is that we're liable to end up cutting off the pipeline into the industry. Similar to lawyers replacing clerks with bots, if senior engineers can now command bots rather than mentor new hires, where is the on-ramp? How does one actually gain enough experience to become a senior? Or is all this a nothing-burger, since the new hires will just be commanding bots of their own, but on lower level tasks that they are qualified to supervise?

Daishiman 1y ago

> P.S., I think the current trend is a wakeup call to us software engineers. We thought we were doing highly creative work, but in reality we spend a lot of time doing the basic job of knowledge workers: retrieving knowledge and interpolating some basic and highly predictable variations. Unfortunately, the current AI is really good at replacing this type of work. Most of the waking hours of most creative work have this type of drudgery. Professional painters and designers spend most of their time replicating ideas that are well fleshed-out. Musicians spend most of their time rehearsing existing compositions. There is a point to be made that these repetitive tasks are a prerequisite to come up with creative ideas.

rowanG077 1y ago
I disagree. AI have shown to most capable in what we consider creative jobs. Music creation, voice acting, text/story writing, art creation, video creation and more.
- roflyear 1y ago
  If you mean create as in literally, sure. But not in being creative. AI can't solve novel problems yet. The person you're replying to obviously means being creative not literally creating something.
  - crat3r 1y ago
    What is the qualifier for this? Didn't one of the models recently create a "novel" algorithm for a math problem? I'm not sure this holds water anymore.
    - roflyear 1y ago
      "After a couple of million suggestions and a few dozen repetitions of the overall process" How much of it is brute force?
      - virgildotcodes 1y ago
        Are we maybe moving the goalposts here? How much of human creativity is brute force?
        genewitch 1y ago
        Marble sculptures, that's what I came up with.
        roflyear 1y ago
        No, we're trying to have a conversation.
  - rowanG077 1y ago
    You can't say AI is creating something new but that it isn't being creative with clearly explaining why you think that's the case. AI is creating novel solution to problems humans haven't cracked in centuries. I don't see anything more creative than this.

electrondood 1y ago

> doing the basic job of knowledge workers If you extrapolate and generalize further... what is at risk is any task that involves taking information input (text, audio, images, video, etc.), and applying it to create some information output or perform some action which is useful. That's basically the definition of work. It's not just knowledge work, it's literally any work.

lispisok 1y ago

As much as I support community developed software and "free as in freedom", "Open Source" got completely perverted into tricking people to work for free for huge financial benefits for others. Your comment is just one example of that. For that reason all my silly little side projects are now in private repos. I dont care the chance somebody builds a business around them is slim to none. Dont think putting a license will protect you either. You'd have to know somebody is violating your license before you can even think about doing anything and that's basically impossible if it gets ripped into a private codebase and isnt obvious externally.

hintymad 1y ago
> "Open Source" got completely perverted into tricking people to work for free for huge financial benefits for others I'm quite conflicted on this assessment. On one hand, I was wondering if we would get better job market if there were not much open-sourced systems. We may have had a much slower growth, but we would see our growth last for a lot more years, which mean we may enjoy our profession until our retirement and more. On the other hand, open source did create large cakes, right? Like the "big data" market, the ML market, the distributed system market, and etc. Like the millions of data scientists who could barely use Pandas and scipy, or hundreds of thousands of ML engineers who couldn't even bother to know what semi positive definite matrix is. Interesting times.
brookst 1y ago
Protect you from what? What harm is there to you if someone uses some of your code to build a business, as compared to not doing so? How are you worse off? I’ve never understood this mentality. It seems very zero sum and kind of anti social. I’ve built a couple of businesses, and there’s always economic or technical precedent. I honestly don’t mind paying it forward if someone can benefit from side projects I enjoyed doing anyways.
- computerex 1y ago
  Exactly. If you are not actively going to compete in that space why not let someone else compete instead using your work?

blibble 1y ago

> Does this mean people will be less incentivized to contribute to open source as time goes by? personally, I completely stopped 2 years ago it's the same as the stack overflow problem: the incentive to contribute tends towards zero, at which point the plagiarism machine stops improving

tom_m 1y ago
Same. It'll be interesting to see when open source slows down enough and is maybe all but eliminated...how will things advance? Once everyone uses AI. How will anything new come about? AI could quite possibly slow down innovation and improvement.

SubiculumCode 1y ago

Now do open science. More generally, specialty knowledge is valuable. From now on, all employees will be monitored in order to replace them.

popcorncowboy 1y ago
> From now on, all employees will be monitored in order to replace them. This is going on a t-shirt.

username223 1y ago

> Does this mean people will be less incentivized to contribute to open source as time goes by? Yes. I certainly don't intend to put any free code online until I can legally bar AI bros from using it without payment. As Mike Monteiro put it long ago, "F** you, pay me" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)

tom_m 1y ago
People might also lace open source with Trojans and back doors. It's going to get interesting.

mikepurvis 1y ago

My pessimistic view is that we're liable to end up cutting off the pipeline into the industry. Similar to lawyers replacing clerks with bots, if senior engineers can now command bots rather than mentor new hires, where is the on-ramp? How does one actually gain enough experience to become a senior? Or is all this a nothing-burger, since the new hires will just be commanding bots of their own, but on lower level tasks that they are qualified to supervise?