Read it all, as they say, but here is the conclusion:
I use AI tools every day. They write a majority of my code for me. This is what it’s good at: looking at the extremely formulaic structure of computer code and producing a plausible guess at what should come next. It guesses right, or close enough to right, often enough to save me a lot of effort. The phrase is becoming cliché already, but it’s true that these tools are glorified auto-complete. This isn’t an insult — autocomplete is a godsend, and LLM tech radically increases its utility. It lets me get a lot more done, and that’s a good thing.
But I’m also aware of what it’s not. It’s not a substitute for human judgement. It’s terrible at true originality and ideation, hopeless at analysis and design outside of well-worn patterns. It can’t experiment and iterate to save its life. It’s good at greenfield development, generating output from whole cloth, but remarkably bad at integrating what came before and expanding upon it.
Not only is Devin vaporware, the vibe coders larping as him via Cursor are creating world-class messes they don’t understand that the tool can’t fix for them. Like a novice programmer, their power to generate code far exceeds their ability to understand or maintain it as it grows.
None of this is to write off the obvious utility of AI tools. Knowledge workers will see a large boost to their productivity by using them, just as they did from adopting the word processor, the spreadsheet, photoshop, CAD, and Salesforce. The robots are wonderful servants, and in time we’ll wonder how we ever got by without them.
But knowledge workers won’t be replaced by our tools, or at least not by these ones. LLMs aren’t capable of true intelligence, reasoning or agency the way a human is. They’ll need their human benefactors to hold their hands and verify every little task, now and in the future. And we should be thankful they’re here to help, not fearful they’ll replace us.
Yeah, but the Word Processor made typist obsolete, and the Spreadsheet made those same clerks with calculators obsolete, CAD made draftsmen obsolete, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn fact the PC as a platform made them all obsolete, in just a decade.
AI will do the same, it will replace SOME people. Not to say that that is a Bad Thing, mind you, but it WILL replace some jobs.
The typist, clerk and draftsmen didn't disappear - at least not all of them, just those not willing to evolve. There will be disruption, but that's always the case with any new and high potential technologies. Those willing to put the effort into using the disruption as an opportunity will gain from it, but the others will of the way of the Dodo bird...
DeleteAI are helpers that can support with anything already created and used, but can't come with something new - they rely on the patterns they learned to solve the tasks assigned, but they are not capable of coming with new concepts, they just modify and adapt what there already is...
Another developer here. In a previous job, I worked with speech recognition tools which employ the same language modeling. At my current job, they are all about trying to incorporate AI. There are some useful functions that have been incorporated that take a typed sentence parses it and creates a database query to return results that were asked for. Good for an end user that can't formulate SQL, but it still takes weeks of development and tuning.
ReplyDeleteI have not bothered to try to get it to write anything for me. I'm closer to the end of my career than not. Some of the crap I work with is complex enough, I don't need any more spaggetti written for me.
This all kind of assumes that it won’t achieve some sort of consciousness… big leap but no one can say for sure it can’t happen. Not much of a concern for me at this point…
ReplyDeleteNo. Code is code, garbage in, garbage out. And has been proven, it can return the results desired from its author.
DeleteLLMs all rely on the same information science principles and the limits imposed by Gödel's incompleteness theorems as well as Alan Turing's solution for the halting problem, as Sir Roger Penrose explained. That makes the occurrence of some kind of consciousness in AI systems based on LLMs impossible.
DeleteIf and when someone comes with some kind of AI system based and running on quantum algorithms and computers, that's when I'll start worrying...
Fortunately my coding days are far behind. My first years were with assembler and Fortran. My last years were with supporting IBM Mainframe OS. I retired 23 years ago and feel like my dad must have felt when, as an adding machine mechanic, the hand-held calculator came along. I just got out sooner.
ReplyDeleteI had the same path, but moved to UNIX/Linux support a couple decades ago. Different tools to do the same job. Way past full retirement age but inertia keeps me going. AI is pretty good at providing hints on how to do something, but it's not going to replace competent people until it can read minds.
DeleteAI is like any other tool. It’s as good or bad as the person using it.
ReplyDelete...yet
ReplyDeleteDon't tell Glenn Beck any of this. He is ssooooo apoplectic and all skeeeeereed. So much so; I finally stopped listening to him and his doom/death cultlike show.
ReplyDeleteGlenn Beck has been selling the end of time/America since 2000.
DeleteAccording to him the world is always at the edge of destruction and everytime it doesn't happen it becomes prove that the next threat is even worse.
He is a fear monger that has nothing intelligent to say.
I run a software development company. AI will soon replace the entry level positions, but not the senior engineers (yet). Problem is, what will these entry level guys with their $200K+ student loans do now? "Would you like fries with that?"
ReplyDeleteToo many engineers don't know how to communicate or express their ideas clearly. Sure, they can code, but get them outside the binary box and they're lost. And frankly, useless beyond the code monkey level (that is now AI pressured).
It's to the point the liberal arts aren't useless any more. I used to tell the sharp kids I mentored to get an engineering degree and follow that up with a law degree (same mindset and intellectual rigor); those two skills set them for a senior/executive path. Now I tell them to take english composition/creative writing in addition to the core BS/CS/EE classes: learn to communicate. AI is eventually coming for their job, what are they going to do about it?
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DeleteYou know what they say about engineers and shepherd dogs: both have intelligent eyes but have trouble verbally expressing themselves...
DeleteJoke aside, the AIs will be much to attractive to replace the entry level positions, but the trouble will occur medium and long-term, in replacing the skilled positions with newer blood, since the entry level positions were the development environment for the next generation specialists... That's going to be a BIG problem.
"...the vibe coders larping..."
ReplyDeleteWhat do that mean?
I have been a professional (Paid) mechanic for over 45 years now and I could probably give a thousand examples off the top of my head why AI and robots will never replace a human.
ReplyDeleteAI can't replace your gunsmith!
ReplyDeleteAnyone who's ever used any piece of technology, hardware or software, already knows AI should be called AS, for Artificial Stupidity.
ReplyDeletePlease recall that The Jetsons was a documentary, decades ahead of its time.
Don't believe me, though: just tell the class about your last experience with text auto-correct.