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I gave co-pilot a shot this weekend. Building a toy app for doing a bunch of text processing. Last time I tried, when this stuff was 'new' , I was thoroughly

I gave co-pilot a shot this weekend. Building a toy app for doing a bunch of text processing. Last time I tried, when this stuff was 'new' , I was thoroughly unimpressed. This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. Copilot worked _almost flawlessly. I cam away very impressed. I still wonder how well it would work against a large established repository where it isn't free to re-invent the wheel and doesn't know about established architecture and methods etc.. But it did change my perception overalll. They are getting better, and fast...

deleted 1y ago
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datadrivenangel 1y ago
The tools have gotten a lot better for sure. Still not good at scale, but for narrow things that are well solved, they crank it out.
lapcat 1y ago
> This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. How long until managers expect employees to do 4x as much work per week in the same amount of time, for no additional compensation?
- atonse 1y ago
  Are you trying to mix two payment models together though? To provide a counterpoint: With almost all traditional employment, people are paid for their time. Their output is more an expectation based on the time put in. So if you want to bill by output, that's always an option as a consultant (fixed price). But as a business owner, I would absolutely expect my employees (and vendors) to use these tools to go faster, just like laptops make them go faster than typewriters. It's not like it's causing the employee 4x more effort for that 4x output, is it? If you were digging ditches by hand, but now you have an excavator with you, are you expecting 10x payment just because you can now do it 10x faster? Nobody will pay for that. Instead, you would now charge by a different metric (say, length of the ditch, rather than hours). And you would now be able to handle more customers since you can provide the same outcome to more people in less time. I have no problem if someone wanted to charge by outcome. I think the concept of paying for "time" is going to go extinct in this new world. Think of lawyers who bill $500/hour. Now they can't say "I need 4 hours to have my team review this" and send you a $4k bill for their whole team to bill, because expectations have changed. But framing this as an "us vs. them" thing by comparing apples and oranges isn't going to get us anywhere.
  - tacitusarc 1y ago
    You’re going to pay almost 4x for an experienced excavator operator vs. a ditch digger. Not too unlikely the same thing happens with AI.
    - atonse 1y ago
      Maybe because of supply and demand, but not because they bill hourly, which is exactly my point. It won't be simply because the excavator can get it done 4x faster. I mean that the price multiplier isn't based on the productivity multiplier, as the parent was implying. Of course, the cost of the excavator is built into the price too. Also for smaller jobs (like with coding), I might now be able to hire a mini excavator (using AI as an analogy for the excavator) myself for a weekend and just do the job myself, and leave the bigger jobs to the pros. That's already happening (look at RR Buildings on YouTube, two guys build massive structures with the help of tools).
  - lapcat 1y ago
    > With almost all traditional employment, people are paid for their time. Their output is more an expectation based on the time put in. Yes and no. It's true that employees are rented for a limited amount of time rather than owned like tools. However, employees can earn vastly different sums of money for the same amount of time. Some make $7 per hour, while others (a privileged few) make $7000 per hour or more. > I would absolutely expect my employees (and vendors) to use these tools to go faster, just like laptops make them go faster than typewriters. It's not like it's causing the employee 4x more effort for that 4x output, is it? Ok, but are you going to let employees who use these "labor-saving" tools work 1/4 of the hours per week as before for the same compensation as before? I suspect not. > But as a business owner > But framing this as an "us vs. them" thing by comparing apples and oranges isn't going to get us anywhere. Of course that's what a business owner would tend to say. My point is that there's no inherent reason why the benefits of "increased productivity" would trickle down to employees. Individually, employees may look at A.I. and think it's great, but collectively, if all employees have access to the same tools, then employees don't benefit from A.I., because it doesn't fundamentally change their relationship with employers. Think about how students started using A.I. to cheat and get ahead. This turned out to be short-sighted, because everyone has the same access to ChatGPT, and thus A.I.-fueled cheating became ubiquitous in school, and the cheaters are back where they started, no longer ahead of their peers and no better off than before. Indeed, they may be worse off now, because potential employers have to expect that all college graduates are incompetent cheaters who didn't learn anything.
andrewstuart 1y ago
>> still wonder how well it would work against a large established repository where it isn't free to re-invent the wheel and doesn't know about established architecture and methods etc.. You’re missing the point of AI coding if you think that’s the measure of its capabilities.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

datadrivenangel 1y ago

The tools have gotten a lot better for sure. Still not good at scale, but for narrow things that are well solved, they crank it out.

lapcat 1y ago

> This weekend, I did about 8 hours work in 2 hours. How long until managers expect employees to do 4x as much work per week in the same amount of time, for no additional compensation?

atonse 1y ago
Are you trying to mix two payment models together though? To provide a counterpoint: With almost all traditional employment, people are paid for their time. Their output is more an expectation based on the time put in. So if you want to bill by output, that's always an option as a consultant (fixed price). But as a business owner, I would absolutely expect my employees (and vendors) to use these tools to go faster, just like laptops make them go faster than typewriters. It's not like it's causing the employee 4x more effort for that 4x output, is it? If you were digging ditches by hand, but now you have an excavator with you, are you expecting 10x payment just because you can now do it 10x faster? Nobody will pay for that. Instead, you would now charge by a different metric (say, length of the ditch, rather than hours). And you would now be able to handle more customers since you can provide the same outcome to more people in less time. I have no problem if someone wanted to charge by outcome. I think the concept of paying for "time" is going to go extinct in this new world. Think of lawyers who bill $500/hour. Now they can't say "I need 4 hours to have my team review this" and send you a $4k bill for their whole team to bill, because expectations have changed. But framing this as an "us vs. them" thing by comparing apples and oranges isn't going to get us anywhere.
- tacitusarc 1y ago
  You’re going to pay almost 4x for an experienced excavator operator vs. a ditch digger. Not too unlikely the same thing happens with AI.
  - atonse 1y ago
    Maybe because of supply and demand, but not because they bill hourly, which is exactly my point. It won't be simply because the excavator can get it done 4x faster. I mean that the price multiplier isn't based on the productivity multiplier, as the parent was implying. Of course, the cost of the excavator is built into the price too. Also for smaller jobs (like with coding), I might now be able to hire a mini excavator (using AI as an analogy for the excavator) myself for a weekend and just do the job myself, and leave the bigger jobs to the pros. That's already happening (look at RR Buildings on YouTube, two guys build massive structures with the help of tools).
- lapcat 1y ago
  > With almost all traditional employment, people are paid for their time. Their output is more an expectation based on the time put in. Yes and no. It's true that employees are rented for a limited amount of time rather than owned like tools. However, employees can earn vastly different sums of money for the same amount of time. Some make $7 per hour, while others (a privileged few) make $7000 per hour or more. > I would absolutely expect my employees (and vendors) to use these tools to go faster, just like laptops make them go faster than typewriters. It's not like it's causing the employee 4x more effort for that 4x output, is it? Ok, but are you going to let employees who use these "labor-saving" tools work 1/4 of the hours per week as before for the same compensation as before? I suspect not. > But as a business owner > But framing this as an "us vs. them" thing by comparing apples and oranges isn't going to get us anywhere. Of course that's what a business owner would tend to say. My point is that there's no inherent reason why the benefits of "increased productivity" would trickle down to employees. Individually, employees may look at A.I. and think it's great, but collectively, if all employees have access to the same tools, then employees don't benefit from A.I., because it doesn't fundamentally change their relationship with employers. Think about how students started using A.I. to cheat and get ahead. This turned out to be short-sighted, because everyone has the same access to ChatGPT, and thus A.I.-fueled cheating became ubiquitous in school, and the cheaters are back where they started, no longer ahead of their peers and no better off than before. Indeed, they may be worse off now, because potential employers have to expect that all college graduates are incompetent cheaters who didn't learn anything.

andrewstuart 1y ago

>> still wonder how well it would work against a large established repository where it isn't free to re-invent the wheel and doesn't know about established architecture and methods etc.. You’re missing the point of AI coding if you think that’s the measure of its capabilities.