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I understand from a technical POV how this could be considered great news. But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV. The last 15 or so

I understand from a technical POV how this could be considered great news. But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV. The last 15 or so years has seen an unprecedented rise in salaries for engineers, especially software engineers. This has brought an interest in the profession from people who would normally not have considered SW as a profession. I think this is both good and bad. It has brought new found wealth to more people, but it may have also diluted the quality of the talent pool. That said, I think it was mostly good. Now with this game-changing efficiency from these AI tools, I'm sure we've seen an end to the glory days in terms of salaries for the SW profession. With this gone, where else could relatively normal people achieve financial independence? Definitely not in the service industry. Very sad.

rocqua 1y ago
Sounds like there need to be measures to fix income inequality.
foldr 1y ago
Software engineers earning enough to achieve financial independence are generally employed by FAANG or (indirectly) by venture capitalists who have more money than they know what to do with. With all this money sloshing around, it takes only a little imagination to think of ways of channeling some of it to working people without employing them to write pointless (or in some cases actively harmful) software.
zkry 1y ago
Im curious why there's this sentiment in regarding advances in AI. High level programming languages didnt in the least bit take away the value of the SW profession, despite allowing a vast number more people to write software. The amount and complexity of software will expand to its very outer bounds for which specialists will be required.
- AbstractH24 1y ago
  A better comparison I think is low-code platforms. There are plenty of folks making a living using platforms like Salesforce and “clicks not code,” but it never led to an implosion of the SE job market. Just expanded the tech job pool. And it’s hard to imagine how that would have happened if everything needed to be coded. Like how a growth in medical-paraprofessionals didn’t negate the need for doctors and nurses.
thicTurtlLverXX 1y ago
I understand how, from a technical POV, electricity and electrification could be considered great news. But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV. Think about all the lamplighters who lost their jobs. Streetlights just turn on now? Lamplighting used to be considered a stable job! And what about the ice cutters… For real tho, it's not like there's nothing left to do — we still have potholes to fix, t-shirts to fold and illnesses to cure. Just the fact that many people continue to believe that wars are justified by resource scarcity shows we need technological progress.
- mykowebhn 1y ago
  From what I understand, prior to the 1980s/90s lamplighters, waiters, factory workers, etc. could live comfortable lives on decent wages. These days not so much.
  - christophilus 1y ago
    From what I understand, life was Dickensian hell for many people. Communism wouldn’t have had much of a chance if everyone was pretty much able to live a decent life as a lamp lighter.
- DHolzer 1y ago
  how is that technological progress not fueling resource scarcity?
- Winsaucerer 1y ago
  > we still have potholes to fix, t-shirts to fold and illnesses to cure Only one of these things interests me. The hype of AI is threatening to kill something I actually enjoy doing. If the hype actualises, I'll likely find myself having to do something I don't enjoy. That being said, if programming can be automated, then probably every white collar job is under serious threat.
user3939382 1y ago
I can’t reconcile statements like this with my experience trying to code with LLMs. As soon as there’s any real complexity they spit out nonsense broken code that in some cases could take a long time to debug. Then when you correct it “You’re totally right, I’ll change it so that x y z”. If you weren’t a senior dev with loads of experience you wouldn’t be able to debug or correct the code these tools produce.
- mykowebhn 1y ago
  If you were a new dev now learning the ropes, with these AI coding tools available, I highly doubt you would gain the same "loads of experience". Learning comes through struggle and it's too easy to bypass that struggle now. It's so much easier to get the answers from AI.
  - MonkeyClub 1y ago
    > Learning comes through struggle I often find myself repeating this, although one would think it's well-known or even self-evident. If there's no active struggle, there's no remaining knowledge, it's just fleeting information.
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
It's better for society to get much wealthier, much faster, by opening up the possibility for anyone to do advanced programming, than for a small class of anointed and studied elites to get rich via this exclusion. It's the opposite of sad. It's the best thing that ever happened for the productive use of a computer by a layperson since the invention of the search engine.
- eqvinox 1y ago
  Sure, but this isn't "anyone" doing advanced programming, it's the LLM doing it. The humans get skill in using LLM, not programming, and whether this new skill will make anyone wealthy is an open question. (Also, just by market logic, rare skills in demand are always paid more; I'm not sure why you're calling it an "exclusion". The education system in a lot of places might have that function, but that's a separate issue not helped by LLMs writing SQL?)
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    I contest that. A human using an LLM to program, is a human programming. Gaining skill with the LLM is gaining skill in programming. And the things most people are both able and willing to now create with LLMs are of vastly greater complexity than whatever they were doing before - so yes, it's advanced programming. I also contest your definition of wealth. Society absolutely and obviously becomes wealthier when many more people are able to use computers for more advanced things. Just because that wealth doesn't directly appear as zeros in your financial statements doesn't mean the wealth hasn't been created.
    - eqvinox 1y ago
      I'm happy to accept your contest, but you should be aware that both of our opinions are only beliefs at this point and science will have an answer at some point in the future when the effects of LLMs on humans are understood better. I do have to ask though, who do you think will pay the electricity bill for disenfranchised groups lacking wealth the most strongly to use LLMs? Some things might be free right now, but what do you think will happen when some of e.g. OpenAI's $300bn valuation is being collected?
lerp-io 1y ago
Aren't programmers supposed to build digital products for end users and this just makes it faster? more like POV from a person who got hired...EOD you need to think what you are doing for the bigger world and what the world can do for you because that is what your end user - your boss - is thinking. people just like to swim in their lane in their own little B2B world (i do X = i get Y) without ever stopping to think about anything except what is in front of them
a_imho 1y ago
I've not fully bought the hype yet but actually think LLMs democratizing technical solutions would be a fantastic opportunity for both established players and newcomers. The more LLMs improve, the less of a moat technology is in itself.
lodovic 1y ago
While AI can empower experts with strong prompt engineering skills, I don’t believe it enables the creation of truly complex solutions unless the user already possesses the necessary expertise. For seasoned developers, these tools are fantastic. For those without a software background, they appear almost magical. But people shouldn’t build solutions they don’t fully understand, it leads to a maintainability nightmare.

rocqua 1y ago

Sounds like there need to be measures to fix income inequality.

foldr 1y ago

Software engineers earning enough to achieve financial independence are generally employed by FAANG or (indirectly) by venture capitalists who have more money than they know what to do with. With all this money sloshing around, it takes only a little imagination to think of ways of channeling some of it to working people without employing them to write pointless (or in some cases actively harmful) software.

zkry 1y ago

Im curious why there's this sentiment in regarding advances in AI. High level programming languages didnt in the least bit take away the value of the SW profession, despite allowing a vast number more people to write software. The amount and complexity of software will expand to its very outer bounds for which specialists will be required.

AbstractH24 1y ago
A better comparison I think is low-code platforms. There are plenty of folks making a living using platforms like Salesforce and “clicks not code,” but it never led to an implosion of the SE job market. Just expanded the tech job pool. And it’s hard to imagine how that would have happened if everything needed to be coded. Like how a growth in medical-paraprofessionals didn’t negate the need for doctors and nurses.

thicTurtlLverXX 1y ago

I understand how, from a technical POV, electricity and electrification could be considered great news. But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV. Think about all the lamplighters who lost their jobs. Streetlights just turn on now? Lamplighting used to be considered a stable job! And what about the ice cutters… For real tho, it's not like there's nothing left to do — we still have potholes to fix, t-shirts to fold and illnesses to cure. Just the fact that many people continue to believe that wars are justified by resource scarcity shows we need technological progress.

mykowebhn 1y ago
From what I understand, prior to the 1980s/90s lamplighters, waiters, factory workers, etc. could live comfortable lives on decent wages. These days not so much.
- christophilus 1y ago
  From what I understand, life was Dickensian hell for many people. Communism wouldn’t have had much of a chance if everyone was pretty much able to live a decent life as a lamp lighter.
DHolzer 1y ago
how is that technological progress not fueling resource scarcity?
Winsaucerer 1y ago
> we still have potholes to fix, t-shirts to fold and illnesses to cure Only one of these things interests me. The hype of AI is threatening to kill something I actually enjoy doing. If the hype actualises, I'll likely find myself having to do something I don't enjoy. That being said, if programming can be automated, then probably every white collar job is under serious threat.

user3939382 1y ago

I can’t reconcile statements like this with my experience trying to code with LLMs. As soon as there’s any real complexity they spit out nonsense broken code that in some cases could take a long time to debug. Then when you correct it “You’re totally right, I’ll change it so that x y z”. If you weren’t a senior dev with loads of experience you wouldn’t be able to debug or correct the code these tools produce.

mykowebhn 1y ago
If you were a new dev now learning the ropes, with these AI coding tools available, I highly doubt you would gain the same "loads of experience". Learning comes through struggle and it's too easy to bypass that struggle now. It's so much easier to get the answers from AI.
- MonkeyClub 1y ago
  > Learning comes through struggle I often find myself repeating this, although one would think it's well-known or even self-evident. If there's no active struggle, there's no remaining knowledge, it's just fleeting information.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

It's better for society to get much wealthier, much faster, by opening up the possibility for anyone to do advanced programming, than for a small class of anointed and studied elites to get rich via this exclusion. It's the opposite of sad. It's the best thing that ever happened for the productive use of a computer by a layperson since the invention of the search engine.

eqvinox 1y ago
Sure, but this isn't "anyone" doing advanced programming, it's the LLM doing it. The humans get skill in using LLM, not programming, and whether this new skill will make anyone wealthy is an open question. (Also, just by market logic, rare skills in demand are always paid more; I'm not sure why you're calling it an "exclusion". The education system in a lot of places might have that function, but that's a separate issue not helped by LLMs writing SQL?)
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  I contest that. A human using an LLM to program, is a human programming. Gaining skill with the LLM is gaining skill in programming. And the things most people are both able and willing to now create with LLMs are of vastly greater complexity than whatever they were doing before - so yes, it's advanced programming. I also contest your definition of wealth. Society absolutely and obviously becomes wealthier when many more people are able to use computers for more advanced things. Just because that wealth doesn't directly appear as zeros in your financial statements doesn't mean the wealth hasn't been created.
  - eqvinox 1y ago
    I'm happy to accept your contest, but you should be aware that both of our opinions are only beliefs at this point and science will have an answer at some point in the future when the effects of LLMs on humans are understood better. I do have to ask though, who do you think will pay the electricity bill for disenfranchised groups lacking wealth the most strongly to use LLMs? Some things might be free right now, but what do you think will happen when some of e.g. OpenAI's $300bn valuation is being collected?

lerp-io 1y ago

Aren't programmers supposed to build digital products for end users and this just makes it faster? more like POV from a person who got hired...EOD you need to think what you are doing for the bigger world and what the world can do for you because that is what your end user - your boss - is thinking. people just like to swim in their lane in their own little B2B world (i do X = i get Y) without ever stopping to think about anything except what is in front of them

a_imho 1y ago

I've not fully bought the hype yet but actually think LLMs democratizing technical solutions would be a fantastic opportunity for both established players and newcomers. The more LLMs improve, the less of a moat technology is in itself.

lodovic 1y ago

While AI can empower experts with strong prompt engineering skills, I don’t believe it enables the creation of truly complex solutions unless the user already possesses the necessary expertise. For seasoned developers, these tools are fantastic. For those without a software background, they appear almost magical. But people shouldn’t build solutions they don’t fully understand, it leads to a maintainability nightmare.