We’ve started to lean into it at work and I am not exaggerating when I say that I’m probably doing three people’s job right now by utilizing it.
It’s terrifying and amazing and I’m just not sure how far this is going to go.
Now these jobs were not scheduled for anybody. It’s not like jobs were lost. But they are jobs that are never going to be taken by new people. Because those openings don’t exist anymore.
Honestly, this whole “AI software development will make code less maintainable” stance is not an AI problem, it’s a human problem. When you use agents to generate code, you still need to review it, test it and so on. Granted, some devs let their agents manage every step in the pipeline without supervision, but this is as dumb as letting a team of 4 juniors work without supervision. If you have real experience in software development, you will take the time required to validate the code created by your agents and still be able to deploy 5-10 times faster.
I don’t use it but my wife uses it for spreadsheet equations. She has to verifiy and test every answer but then so would anything written by an intern.
So yeah, AI is killing jobs, not in an individual sense, but in aggregate like spreadsheet software did 50 years ago when before that all work was done by hand.
Let’s say for a moment that AI really is as capable as AI bros want you to believe it is. Having used some AI models at my work (network engineer), I’m not so convinced, but I’ll put that aside for a moment.
The pinch of the AI vise is going to be the cost. All the AI companies are running at loss to try and capture the market, and they’ll need to charge a lot more for access to AI once a winner is determined.
Are you willing to pay 10x what you pay right now for access to an AI agent? Because that’s looking like what they’ll have to do in order to turn these companies profitable.
I pay zero, not even electricity because it’s being generated in this building, for my agent. It’s running entirely on my computer and it’s decent enough. The LLM subscription companies are eventually going to fail because everyone and their dog is going to be able to run their own models.
Our company built an “AI” system that literally only searches our other shitty system and gives a usable interface. It is not AI and im sick of every database interface being called AI.
LLM at least makes sense from a nomenclature perspective.
10 years ago it was “smart thermostats” “smart x” just because they could connect to the internet.
This is the same gilded bullshit these companies always spin.
Are you willing to pay 10x what you pay right now for access
That’s really the crux of the matter. Regardless of if it’s fit for purpose to replace paid labour, is it actually financially viable in any way to replace humans with an AI model that works but costs several times more than a human work force while not being able to be held legally accountable.
That only makes sense if money is made on the output. What you’re basically saying is X Toy Company will make more money if they make more toys. What you’re forgetting is that there has to be a demand for those toys. So X Toy Company can’t replace workers with AI unless there’s more demand for the toys than there is currently able to be fulfilled and there’s no evidence for that across all sectors of the economy.
I’ve already seen it replace people in various roles successfully. It’s getting better – will it replace everyone? No, but it will be disruptive and it seems foolish to not acknowledge what is obvious - jobs will be affected.
They’ve been shown to be a mathematical inevitability, and that means everything they ever make must be fully reviewed.
And that’s antithetical to everything I’ve known about computers in my career.
The entire reason why computers are so useful and reliable is because, until now, they always produce the same outputs given the same inputs.
One of the AI agents I’ve interacted with was in a GPS monitoring system for fleet vehicles. I was a supervisor of technicians, and I got a report that a company truck with license plate [X] ran a stop sign.
They replaced their standard search function with an AI bot, so I asked it which vehicle in the fleet had license plate [X]. And it confidently responded with a vehicle that didn’t have that license plate.
A standard search function, comparing an input to database values for vehicles wouldn’t have that problem. And that’s why I’m so sure this is a bubble and not a major technological market disruption.
There is quite a difference from an investor standpoint in a product that replaces all human labor vs coworking space.
Lmao replaces all human labor? ChatGPT can’t change my tires. It can’t even write decent code without direct supervision
It doesn’t matter if it works, if investors think it does that is enough for them to throw money at it.
It’s a lot better at writing code than most people think.
I use it everyday. It needs oversight every single time I use it… It isn’t replacing developers any time soon. Code monkeys maybe.
That’s says more about how bad the average developer is tbh.
I still have yet to see it adequately replace any human labor
We’ve started to lean into it at work and I am not exaggerating when I say that I’m probably doing three people’s job right now by utilizing it.
It’s terrifying and amazing and I’m just not sure how far this is going to go.
Now these jobs were not scheduled for anybody. It’s not like jobs were lost. But they are jobs that are never going to be taken by new people. Because those openings don’t exist anymore.
Sad as it is.
But your job hasn’t been replaced
Good luck debugging when something goes bad down the line.
I mean that seriously, I wish you luck.
Honestly, this whole “AI software development will make code less maintainable” stance is not an AI problem, it’s a human problem. When you use agents to generate code, you still need to review it, test it and so on. Granted, some devs let their agents manage every step in the pipeline without supervision, but this is as dumb as letting a team of 4 juniors work without supervision. If you have real experience in software development, you will take the time required to validate the code created by your agents and still be able to deploy 5-10 times faster.
I don’t use it but my wife uses it for spreadsheet equations. She has to verifiy and test every answer but then so would anything written by an intern.
So yeah, AI is killing jobs, not in an individual sense, but in aggregate like spreadsheet software did 50 years ago when before that all work was done by hand.
That’s just making one person do the job of more than one. I call bs.
Capitalism has been doing that long before LLM’S.
How do you call bs on one person doing the work that used to take two? It was one person and an intern.
Every company had a secretary pool 60 years ago before word processors allowed people to type by themselves without an extra support person.
aka ‘Productivity increase’
Productivity has increased for decades without much of it going to wage increases. Instead, it’s gone to the companies/shareholders
Then you haven’t been using the right models or trying.
“come on bro you’re just holding it wrong”
Let’s say for a moment that AI really is as capable as AI bros want you to believe it is. Having used some AI models at my work (network engineer), I’m not so convinced, but I’ll put that aside for a moment.
The pinch of the AI vise is going to be the cost. All the AI companies are running at loss to try and capture the market, and they’ll need to charge a lot more for access to AI once a winner is determined.
Are you willing to pay 10x what you pay right now for access to an AI agent? Because that’s looking like what they’ll have to do in order to turn these companies profitable.
I pay zero, not even electricity because it’s being generated in this building, for my agent. It’s running entirely on my computer and it’s decent enough. The LLM subscription companies are eventually going to fail because everyone and their dog is going to be able to run their own models.
That is if you include training. Look at deepseek for an idea of inference costs. At that level AI coding is sustainable (but not worth $2tn).
Our company built an “AI” system that literally only searches our other shitty system and gives a usable interface. It is not AI and im sick of every database interface being called AI.
LLM at least makes sense from a nomenclature perspective.
10 years ago it was “smart thermostats” “smart x” just because they could connect to the internet.
This is the same gilded bullshit these companies always spin.
That’s really the crux of the matter. Regardless of if it’s fit for purpose to replace paid labour, is it actually financially viable in any way to replace humans with an AI model that works but costs several times more than a human work force while not being able to be held legally accountable.
If this future AI agent solves the task at a fraction of the time, it can still be financially viable at several times the cost.
That only makes sense if money is made on the output. What you’re basically saying is X Toy Company will make more money if they make more toys. What you’re forgetting is that there has to be a demand for those toys. So X Toy Company can’t replace workers with AI unless there’s more demand for the toys than there is currently able to be fulfilled and there’s no evidence for that across all sectors of the economy.
exactly, depending on the case it’s a possibility and not a guarantee, which is why I also wrote it can be, not it will be.
Riiiiight…
even better is the open weight, free models you can tailor to specific needs, which directly undercuts these massive “ai” companies.
So if/when those hikes happen, those self hosted models are going to look a lot more appetizing too
Inference keeps getting cheaper. “Good enough” is a pretty low bar.
I’ve already seen it replace people in various roles successfully. It’s getting better – will it replace everyone? No, but it will be disruptive and it seems foolish to not acknowledge what is obvious - jobs will be affected.
My honest problem with AI is the hallucinations.
They’ve been shown to be a mathematical inevitability, and that means everything they ever make must be fully reviewed.
And that’s antithetical to everything I’ve known about computers in my career.
The entire reason why computers are so useful and reliable is because, until now, they always produce the same outputs given the same inputs.
One of the AI agents I’ve interacted with was in a GPS monitoring system for fleet vehicles. I was a supervisor of technicians, and I got a report that a company truck with license plate [X] ran a stop sign.
They replaced their standard search function with an AI bot, so I asked it which vehicle in the fleet had license plate [X]. And it confidently responded with a vehicle that didn’t have that license plate.
A standard search function, comparing an input to database values for vehicles wouldn’t have that problem. And that’s why I’m so sure this is a bubble and not a major technological market disruption.
You literally said “replace all human labor” though.
Haha I’m not a AI Stan. I am the only one it seems truly worried about never having a job again.
Their investor pitch is this technology replaces all human labor. That’s their framing not mine.
Jobs have already been affected, yes. Not “adequately” done in lieu of a human, though.
And it still takes a human to steer the things.
They lost $20B on $50B revenue. That means they only need to double the price to make up the loss and have a profit.
That’s still a ton when you consider how much professional users are spending.
Get help.
you’re in too deep in the tech bros’ propaganda dude, wake up
I read that as the sales pitch, not their actual opinion.