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Dario Amodei gives of strong Adam Neumann vibes. He claimed "AI will replace 90% of developers within 6 months" about a year ago...

by Lionga 10mo ago

dkdcio 10mo ago
that’s not what he claimed, just to be clear. I’m too lazy to look up the full quote but not lazy enough to not comment this is A) out of context B) mis-phrased as to entirely misconstrue the already taken-out-of-context quote I think it was also back in March, not a year ago
- nerevarthelame 10mo ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-... (March 2025): >"I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code," Amodei said at a Council of Foreign Relations event on Monday. >Amodei said software developers would still have a role to play in the near term. This is because humans will have to feed the AI models with design features and conditions, he said. >"But on the other hand, I think that eventually all those little islands will get picked off by AI systems. And then, we will eventually reach the point where the AIs can do everything that humans can. And I think that will happen in every industry," Amodei said. I think it's a silly and poorly defined claim.
  - dkdcio 10mo ago
    you’re once again cutting the quote short — after “all of the code” he has more to say that’s very important for understanding the context and avoiding this rage-bait BS we all love to engage in edit: sorry you mostly included it paraphrased; it does a disservice (I understand it’s largely the media’s fault) to cut that full quote short though. I’m trying to specifically address someone claiming this person said 90% of developers would be replaced in a year over a year ago, which is beyond misleading edit to put the full quote higher: > "and in 12 months, we might be in a world where the ai is writing essentially all of the code. But the programmer still needs to specify what are the conditions of what you're doing. What is the overall design decision. How we collaborate with other code that has been written. How do we have some common sense with whether this is a secure design or an insecure design. So as long as there are these small pieces that a programmer has to do, then I think human productivity will actually be enhanced"
    - parapatelsukh 10mo ago
      can you post the full quote then? He has posted what the rest of us read
      - dkdcio 10mo ago
        I believe: > "and in 12 months, we might be in a world where the ai is writing essentially all of the code. But the programmer still needs to specify what are the conditions of what you're doing. What is the overall design decision. How we collaborate with other code that has been written. How do we have some common sense with whether this is a secure design or an insecure design. So as long as there are these small pieces that a programmer has to do, then I think human productivity will actually be enhanced" from https://www.youtube.com/live/esCSpbDPJik?si=kYt9oSD5bZxNE-Mn https://www.youtube.com/live/esCSpbDPJik?si=kYt9oSD5bZxNE-Mn (sorry have been responding quickly on my phone between things; misquotes like this annoy the fuck out of me)
        parapatelsukh 10mo ago
        [dead]
        dkdcio 10mo ago
        uh it proves the original comment I responded to is extremely misleading (which is my only point here); CEO did not say 90% of developers would be replaced, at all
baobabKoodaa 10mo ago
And 12 months later Anthropic is listing 200 open positions for humans: https://www.anthropic.com/jobs https://www.anthropic.com/jobs
- JimDabell 10mo ago
  Of course they are. The two things aren’t contradictory at all, in fact one strongly implies the other. If AI is writing 90% of your code, that means the total contribution of a developer is 10× the code they would write without AI. This means you get way more value per developer, so why wouldn’t you keep hiring developers? This idea that “AI writes 90% of our code” means you don’t need developers seems to spring from a belief that there is a fixed amount of software to produce, so if AI is doing 90% of it then you only need 10% of the developers. So far, the world’s appetite for software is insatiable and every time we get more productive, we use the same amount of effort to build more software than before. The point at which Anthropic will stop hiring developers is when AI meets or exceeds the capabilities of the best human developers. Then they can just buy more servers instead of hiring developers. But nobody is claiming AI is capable of that so far, so of course they are going to capitalise on their productivity gains by hiring more developers.
  - njdancer 10mo ago
    See Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - baobabKoodaa 10mo ago
      Here's the claim again for you: > AI will replace 90% of developers within 6 months
  - bayarearefugee 10mo ago
    If AI is making developers (inside Anthropic or out) 10x more productive... where's all the software? I'm not an LLM luddite, they are useful tools, but people with vested interests make a lot of claims that if they were true would result in a situation where we should already be seeing the signs of a giant software renaissance... and I just haven't seen that. Like, at all. I see a lot more blogging and influncer peddling about how AI is going to change everything than I do any actual signs of AI changing much of anything.
efsavage 10mo ago
It was "writing 90% of the code", which seems to be pretty accurate, if not conservative, for those keeping up with the latest tools.
- IncreasePosts 10mo ago
  Yes, those using the tools use the tools, but I don't really see those developers absolutely outpacing the rest of developers who do it the old fashioned way still.
  - efsavage 10mo ago
    I think you're definitely right, for the moment. I've been forcing myself to use/learn the tools almost exclusively for the past 3-4 months and I was definitely not seeing any big wins early on, but improvement (of my skills and the tools) has been steady and positive, and right now I'd say I'm ahead of where I was the old-fashioned way, but on an uneven basis. Some things I'm probably still behind on, others I'm way ahead. My workflow is also evolving and my output is of higher quality (especially tests/docs). A year from now I'll be shocked if doing nearly anything without some kind of augmented tooling doesn't feel tremendously slow and/or low-quality.
    - dkdcio 10mo ago
      it’s wild that engineers need months or years to properly learn programming languages but dismiss AI tooling after one bad interaction
      - dwaltrip 10mo ago
        Motivated reasoning combined with incomplete truths is the perfect recipe for this. I kind of get it, especially if you are stuck on some shitty enterprise AI offering from 2024. But overall it’s rather silly and immature.
      - tomjakubowski 10mo ago
        I think inertia and determinism play roles here. If you invest months in learning an established programming language, it's not likely to change much during that time, nor in the months (and years) that follow. Your hard-earned knowledge is durable and easy to keep up to date. In the AI coding and tooling space everything seems to be constantly changing: which models, what workflows, what tools are in favor are all in flux. My hesitancy to dive in and regularly include AI tooling in my own programming workflow is largely about that. I'd rather wait until the dust has settled some.
jimnotgym 10mo ago
Is this the new 'next year is the year of the Linux desktop'?

Dario Amodei gives of strong Adam Neumann vibes. He claimed "AI will replace 90% of developers within 6 months" about a year ago...

by Lionga 10mo ago

Dario Amodei gives of strong Adam Neumann vibes. He claimed "AI will replace 90% of developers within 6 months" about a year ago...

dkdcio 10mo ago

that’s not what he claimed, just to be clear. I’m too lazy to look up the full quote but not lazy enough to not comment this is A) out of context B) mis-phrased as to entirely misconstrue the already taken-out-of-context quote I think it was also back in March, not a year ago

nerevarthelame 10mo ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-... (March 2025): >"I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code," Amodei said at a Council of Foreign Relations event on Monday. >Amodei said software developers would still have a role to play in the near term. This is because humans will have to feed the AI models with design features and conditions, he said. >"But on the other hand, I think that eventually all those little islands will get picked off by AI systems. And then, we will eventually reach the point where the AIs can do everything that humans can. And I think that will happen in every industry," Amodei said. I think it's a silly and poorly defined claim.
- dkdcio 10mo ago
  you’re once again cutting the quote short — after “all of the code” he has more to say that’s very important for understanding the context and avoiding this rage-bait BS we all love to engage in edit: sorry you mostly included it paraphrased; it does a disservice (I understand it’s largely the media’s fault) to cut that full quote short though. I’m trying to specifically address someone claiming this person said 90% of developers would be replaced in a year over a year ago, which is beyond misleading edit to put the full quote higher: > "and in 12 months, we might be in a world where the ai is writing essentially all of the code. But the programmer still needs to specify what are the conditions of what you're doing. What is the overall design decision. How we collaborate with other code that has been written. How do we have some common sense with whether this is a secure design or an insecure design. So as long as there are these small pieces that a programmer has to do, then I think human productivity will actually be enhanced"
  - parapatelsukh 10mo ago
    can you post the full quote then? He has posted what the rest of us read
    - dkdcio 10mo ago
      I believe: > "and in 12 months, we might be in a world where the ai is writing essentially all of the code. But the programmer still needs to specify what are the conditions of what you're doing. What is the overall design decision. How we collaborate with other code that has been written. How do we have some common sense with whether this is a secure design or an insecure design. So as long as there are these small pieces that a programmer has to do, then I think human productivity will actually be enhanced" from https://www.youtube.com/live/esCSpbDPJik?si=kYt9oSD5bZxNE-Mn https://www.youtube.com/live/esCSpbDPJik?si=kYt9oSD5bZxNE-Mn (sorry have been responding quickly on my phone between things; misquotes like this annoy the fuck out of me)
      - parapatelsukh 10mo ago
        [dead]
        dkdcio 10mo ago
        uh it proves the original comment I responded to is extremely misleading (which is my only point here); CEO did not say 90% of developers would be replaced, at all

baobabKoodaa 10mo ago

And 12 months later Anthropic is listing 200 open positions for humans: https://www.anthropic.com/jobs https://www.anthropic.com/jobs

JimDabell 10mo ago
Of course they are. The two things aren’t contradictory at all, in fact one strongly implies the other. If AI is writing 90% of your code, that means the total contribution of a developer is 10× the code they would write without AI. This means you get way more value per developer, so why wouldn’t you keep hiring developers? This idea that “AI writes 90% of our code” means you don’t need developers seems to spring from a belief that there is a fixed amount of software to produce, so if AI is doing 90% of it then you only need 10% of the developers. So far, the world’s appetite for software is insatiable and every time we get more productive, we use the same amount of effort to build more software than before. The point at which Anthropic will stop hiring developers is when AI meets or exceeds the capabilities of the best human developers. Then they can just buy more servers instead of hiring developers. But nobody is claiming AI is capable of that so far, so of course they are going to capitalise on their productivity gains by hiring more developers.
- njdancer 10mo ago
  See Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - baobabKoodaa 10mo ago
    Here's the claim again for you: > AI will replace 90% of developers within 6 months
- bayarearefugee 10mo ago
  If AI is making developers (inside Anthropic or out) 10x more productive... where's all the software? I'm not an LLM luddite, they are useful tools, but people with vested interests make a lot of claims that if they were true would result in a situation where we should already be seeing the signs of a giant software renaissance... and I just haven't seen that. Like, at all. I see a lot more blogging and influncer peddling about how AI is going to change everything than I do any actual signs of AI changing much of anything.

efsavage 10mo ago

It was "writing 90% of the code", which seems to be pretty accurate, if not conservative, for those keeping up with the latest tools.

IncreasePosts 10mo ago
Yes, those using the tools use the tools, but I don't really see those developers absolutely outpacing the rest of developers who do it the old fashioned way still.
- efsavage 10mo ago
  I think you're definitely right, for the moment. I've been forcing myself to use/learn the tools almost exclusively for the past 3-4 months and I was definitely not seeing any big wins early on, but improvement (of my skills and the tools) has been steady and positive, and right now I'd say I'm ahead of where I was the old-fashioned way, but on an uneven basis. Some things I'm probably still behind on, others I'm way ahead. My workflow is also evolving and my output is of higher quality (especially tests/docs). A year from now I'll be shocked if doing nearly anything without some kind of augmented tooling doesn't feel tremendously slow and/or low-quality.
  - dkdcio 10mo ago
    it’s wild that engineers need months or years to properly learn programming languages but dismiss AI tooling after one bad interaction
    - dwaltrip 10mo ago
      Motivated reasoning combined with incomplete truths is the perfect recipe for this. I kind of get it, especially if you are stuck on some shitty enterprise AI offering from 2024. But overall it’s rather silly and immature.
    - tomjakubowski 10mo ago
      I think inertia and determinism play roles here. If you invest months in learning an established programming language, it's not likely to change much during that time, nor in the months (and years) that follow. Your hard-earned knowledge is durable and easy to keep up to date. In the AI coding and tooling space everything seems to be constantly changing: which models, what workflows, what tools are in favor are all in flux. My hesitancy to dive in and regularly include AI tooling in my own programming workflow is largely about that. I'd rather wait until the dust has settled some.

jimnotgym 10mo ago

Is this the new 'next year is the year of the Linux desktop'?