To me looks like, if we're not collectively careful, civilisation will soon be on a path to an evolutionary dead-end.
Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack, meaning that only the owners of capital will be left, and they too will soon fade as the economy falls off a cliff and money has no value, because the only value that money has is the value of a human backing that, with thought, with ideas, with human output.
Whether you like it or not, "Economic output" is just a different phrase for "Human output that is valuable". When all human output is valued at the fractions of a penny per month of work, there is no future.
the grandparent commentor predicts 'that which replaces a sweng can replace anything'. llms sure do replace certain language related tasks, sometimes, when correctly piloted. however the majority of the world do not work language related jobs. perhaps if robotics firms bridge the gap to reality using some novel architecture this prediction could come a bit more true? until then it does seem blinkered to assume a set of weights could build a house.
hard agree on the last statement. programming is language. if you're literate you can code.
Coding effectively is hard AND painful for the majority of folks. And I’d venture to guess they don’t want to be responsible for debugging LLM output either. Just like I don’t want to fix a car, or do my own plumbing.
I haven't seen an ounce of evidence that a LLM can replace a deeply experienced engineer. The harness turns coding into sculpting, which happens to be how I coded pre-LLM, but much slower, so I feel very much empowered by them. But I'm still definitely guiding the entire project. I haven't once felt like it wasn't required for me to be in the loop.
The people and companies leaning into fully autonomous agents are high on their own supply, in my opinion. They're kicking back in their beach chairs as their pipelines spit out Stüssy S after Stüssy S, with massive architectural flaws and attack surfaces, just lighting gobs of money on fire.
Yesterday, I created a fully functional POC for something really cool, it took me all day as I reshaped the agent's rough boilerplate ideas into usable components, and I never once hit a session limit on my $100 month Claude sub. I spent the majority of my time thinking about how I needed to prompt to turn what was in my head into working and secure code. You can't just give the agent a vague idea and expect anything less than a dumpster app.
It's probably enough to fool C Suite people into believing the AI apocalypse is coming, which is the crux of the problem, and what is fueling what is certainly a gigantic bubble — but when it comes down to it, shitty software is shitty software. To fix it, you have to know what good software looks and feels like under the hood, and why it's shitty or feels bad to use. It might start up, but mutability, staying up, remaining stable, and remaining secure are very different stories.
The clock is ticking on everything that has been developed by a LLM with a novice user behind the prompts.
That sounds more like a problem of close minded narrow focus on economic output instead of culture, virtue and spiritual traditions.
AI is fundamentally an equivalent to slave economy. Cheap, plentiful workforce. This time ethically neutral. You either get Greece or Rome. I’d prefer Greece but it will probably be Rome.
From the past we can predict the future.
> That sounds more like a problem of close minded narrow focus on economic output instead of culture, virtue and spiritual traditions.
I’m starting to be more sensitive to the argument that without god, people are unable to have a strong moral foundation. Not for the people expressing creativity in how they fuck, but as a check on those in power.
We created it for ourselves and at its core is our social nature and the ability to feel Empathy for other humans/creatures.
Now I lead with that because there are historical cases for both religious and non religious people committing horrific acts, both groups having whatever form of "morals" and still those acts happened.
Morals based on the idea of an all seeing eye are also questionable at the root, if you only do the "right" thing because you fear consequences then how is that better than the government, police etc acting as a your personal moral compass except to extend the potential punishment beyond the current perceived lifetime.
if somebody feeds the needy out of the belief that they are doing the right thing under an all seeing eye, in what way is that worse than a non all seeing eye believer not feeding the needy?
indeed you never said it was worse. i asked a counter question without answering yours. so to answer your question, the state is comprised of men. men are inevitably selfish creatures who do not perform a behaviour unless it is judged to be in their best interests given the context. lots of people have the behavioural pattern of community encoded with fuzzy logic above 0.5, that is to say the majority of the time men will probably act in ways that account for the needs of others. but the majority of the time is not an exhaustive sample space and plenty of people will all too happily give the downtrodden their moniker, unless kept in line by a set of community enforced morals. a state based legal framework is secular and does not account for any morals. conclusively, without a set of morality to keep them in check via community enforcement, a minority of the population is enabled to exploit their community.
im sure you have an opinion on that viewpoint, but im still curious as to whether you have an answer to my question.
To answer your first question (apologies should have done so in the first reply)
It isn't worse, objectively the end result is favourable even if the "driver" for it is not (to me).
I accept your counter point that at a macro level society requires a set of checks and reinforcement to bias individuals towards social good behaviour, community enforcement is obviously one and religion can be another.
But I would argue that while the state legal framework is secular it encodes some moral principles that society has agreed on such as murder, theft, harming other physically or otherwise etc.
I also hold no issue with others holding beliefs that shape their morality, I just reject the argument that people without a god cannot have innate morality or a secular morality (a common refrain).
part of me already knew you believed that, not sure why i had to push back. its a valid point that secular society does to a degree encode morality. i believe the morals encoded by religion were formed from trial by fire and are probably more likely to result in continued human existence as opposed to whatever anybody came up with in the last N years, but im sure we shall find out shortly just how well different schools of morality work out on that front. i dont think the common refrain is accurate, however it does point to the truth i alluded to (that a significant non-majority of humans will always behave deleteriously to those around them unless forced to behave differently). i do have an issue with holding beliefs that shape morality, however this is a seperate discussion and bringing up examples like 1 religion accounting for 95% of blasphemy related executions in the past 50 years is just going to get me muted, even with the intentions to demonstrate examples of beliefs shaping morality in ways i dont agree with personally.
I appreciate the measured discussion on what can be a thorny subject.
So extended clarification on the "belief shaping morality" point.
I hold no issue with it, until one person's belief driven morality impinges on another persons own autonomy, you're free to act on your own life and person based on your beliefs but using that belief system as a weapon to cause others harm or reduce their autonomy as a person is where I draw the line.
likewise. the vast majority of the time, broaching this topic is apparently an invitation to be lambasted from all sides, thank you for treating me respectfully. the next positions i see proceeding your point are either (widely) the paradox of tolerance, or (narrowly) analysing specific behavioural patterns and their wider impact on the community. im fairly certain we will agree on the former and could probably discuss at length various instantiations of the latter (eg. partner count is correlated with divorce rate, why should i be happy that everybody is encouraged to fuck everybody in the west when all i want is 1 wife and 1 family, being respectful of autonomy is nice but everybody fucking everybody actively goes against my autonomy so personally i dont feel particularly universally respectful regardless as to whether this belief was spurred religiously or secularly). however discussing various instantiations could go on forever so it is understood if the infinite loop is optimized out, preferably it could be factorized differently than 'paradox of tolerance' but i dont have the formula
>i’m starting to be more sensitive to the argument that without god, people are unable to have a strong moral foundation. Not for the people expressing creativity in how they fuck, but as a check on those in power.
If this were true, why did the medieval peasant have less rights and autonomy in society than we do now?
It takes a special kind of issues-riddled mind in very unhealthy place, for the lack of better words, to assume that people without strong faith have less morals.
In my own experience such people are often far from objectively moral or good people themselves, and overcompensate some deep issues.
> In my own experience such people are often far from objectively moral or good people themselves, and overcompensate some deep issues.
It is very true in my experience. It is also very not true in my experience.
FWIW I’m an atheist. Curious what you mean by issues-riddled mind. What issues? What’s the unhealthy place? There is no one person I’d accuse of lacking morality through godlessness, but I do see a trend. Most particularly in the people and communities who would have previously chosen godliness and replaced it with nothing, not those who previously would have chosen godlessness.
There has been said so much about it in the past and I always believed it to be true, as an atheist.
I like to think that one of the symptoms is politics becoming really absolutist, idealistic and cultish. You do not debate followers of a different religion. But many topics really becoming kind of a mini religions.
I don’t know for sure though, there are arguments against it too and other factors.
I think substantial amount of people really need some kind of subjective spiritual experience to their life and maybe ignoring that need breeds some maladaptive tendencies
maybe if people werent busy fucking around so creatively they could band together as families and follow agreed social practices to ensure distribution of labor and charitable action in their local communities, maybe then people would care more about their neighbours and less about consuming shit. no thanks ... everyone too busy creatively fucking around and consuming shit while ignoring reality (eg partner count directly correlates to divorce rate, fill the blanks what divorce correlates with).
maybe thats a reason that god was deleted from the western cultural lexicon, so that broken communities could be capitalized upon? no way, surely god is merely a deprecated irrelevant vestige. it's not like a fractured social fabric is a ripe substrate of raw suffering to mine profit from. surely a few hundred generations were enough for our morals to have been encoded into genetics, we don't have to bother consciously practicing morality any more. that's for the narrow minded.
<alt version of above paragraphs from ludicrous perspective of individual experiencing theocracy and its own form of propaganda>
..... this isn't intended to be aimed at anyone except those who delete god to make money, and those who use god to make money. there's plenty of negative aspects to religion. the argument is intended to focus on the sheer idiocy of expecting morality to spontaneously manifest in the absence of external motivation or any teaching of lessons already collectively learned the hard way.
I think that social justice replaced the religious preaching of values in many circles but it was well… it’s not a sort of thing that many find appealing to follow.
Concepts like "checking your privilege" or being "canceled" closely parallel religious ideas of original sin and repentance, where individuals must acknowledge their unearned moral failings to become "good".
Actions like using specific pronouns, displaying yard signs, or performing land acknowledgments function similarly to reciting a catechism; they signal allegiance to a shared belief system and reassure the in-group
Protests and social movements often evoke the communal, revival-like atmosphere of religious gatherings, providing participants with a sense of purpose and belonging.
But what’s most convincing is that many times it is hypocritical in the same way religions are. There is no room for questioning or doubt and yet the actions do not align with the performance. Which means it isn’t driven by dry results but fulfills a deeper human need.
>Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack
Well, except for roles where being human is an inherent part of the value for customers: bartender, prostitute, certain kinds of boutique sales, professional athlete, stage actor, etc. And for roles that have to be human for legal reasons.
Of course such roles make up a small part of the entire job market.
>> Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack
> Direct quote
And, in your (and GP's mind), that means the same thing as "LLMs can replace plumbers"?
After all, I said:
>>>> When all human output is valued at the fractions of a penny per month of work, there is no future.
I mean, I know it's fashionable to not read the article, but are we all really responding without even reading the comments? Are two paragraphs well beyond the attention span of the readers here?
Okay, lets go with that asinine comeback: What do you think happens when the only work left for humans to do involves 100% physical labour and 0% thought?
How many plumbers does a society need? Electricians? Even in construction, you can automate almost everything away with cranes and similar.
Now imagine that all the doctors, all the office workers, all the warehouse workers, all the bankers, lawyers, teachers, ... basically any job that requires thought ... all those people are now joining the legions of plumbers.
That sort of 1000x increase in supply will drive prices to pennies.
The LLM doesn't need to replace plumbers directly; all it needs to do is replace everyone else, and the value of plumbers approach zero anyway.
Are plumbers not "in the employment stack"? How about hairdressers? Are they in the employment stack?
I have zero doubt that half of humanity can all have jobs continuously expanding the mansions of the other half who don't do any work but receive all the benefits.
A new generation of AI companies is out there to take over blue collar jobs as well. Check recent YC batches.
Software engineering was a nice target because inputs and outputs are just data and you don't need to figure out robotics. But idk, 3 years ago it seemed illusory (at least for me) that LLMs could take over software engineering, but now here we are. They are still not 100% there yet (software engineers still have jobs), but we are getting ever closer.
Companies are in the process of figuring out robotics, and even if it's not figured out, then we might introduce a gig-ified blue collar economy where an unskilled, underpaid gig worker implements instructions by AI. Plus a lot of blue collar work already today involves robots (cranes, excavators, trucks, etc).
Robotics aren't new. The LLM robotics trend (half of which are complete scams and the other half are vaporware) might be an even stupider bubble than the LLM programming bubble, though it's also a smaller bubble.
At least LLM programming bubble is applying language models to language tasks, even if the results are mixed. The LLM robotics bubble is doing what exactly? They're making videos of remote-controlled skinsuits doing mundane tasks inefficiently in a way that impressed investors. They're trying to exploit the ELIZA effect for physical movement.
I saw one sorting packages to put the barcode label on top. Do you know what's a better way to do that? You put a camera on every side, including underneath, so the barcode can be read from any direction. This scanner can work at line speed instead of being the bottleneck. This isn't new. And you sort packages into different buckets by having pneumatically activated wedges that swing out and push the package onto a different line. The bottle return machine at my nearest supermarket does that, I'm sure wannabe billion dollar VC funded startups can manage it.
LLMs not but generalized multi-modal VLA models, yes.
Seems some on HN haven't been keeping up with progress in physical robotics. Unique physical work is lagging behind a bit, but not by much. Expect to see robots doing simple plumbing jobs within a few years, not a few decades.
Nope, just a specific kind. Those who developed and cultivated only a very specific skill set at the expense of all others.
I used to think being a generalist, and having persued technical roles with a people facing element was to my detriment, but it’s turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
Being a generalist was very useful to me 5 years ago. Now AI models have made everyone a generalist. That wide but not terribly deep skillset was immediately devalued by the AI models.
You can argue that the models fuck up 20 percent of the time, or that they make poor code but there is a massive part for the industry that is totally fine with that and I think people ignore it to their detriment.
For context: I came from hardware, Linux, networking, telecoms, and datacenter infrastructure, not software development. I always wanted to go deep, but in practice my brain dragged me across many instead, which unintentionally made me very broad. I kept ending up in organisations where I was pushed back into such roles because its apparently where my "value" is.
I give that context because unlike a lot of you, I’m not a world class FAANG engineer and never will be. It is from this context all of my thoughts on AI flow. I work with people who are trying to use AI to produce work involving entire markets, roles, skillsets and technologies they don't even know exist, let alone understand.
> I had the opposite thought.
Until I recently got pulled back deep into engineering despite not being hands on for close to a decade, so did I. I was pulled in not because of any pure technical capability but instead because it's been recognised the team requires more. The skills I thought served only to help me stay employed in any role in the most basic roles are increasingly turning out to be things other's do not have and are becoming increasingly important.
These are skills I always assumed crucial to “baseline competency” for everyone, but yet where a significant amount of them do not, and these individuals are now finding themselves in positions where they are less useful than me as a result. Many of them can not simply be acquired from AI either, and require years of active growth and practice.
> Being a generalist was very useful to me 5 years ago. Now AI models have made everyone a generalist.
I think they could, but have not. Not at a scale required for me to have significant concern.
AI works as well as the context you can provide, and you don't know what you don’t know. If the context is shallow, so to will be the output, even when it looks convincing and that “looks convincing” part I believe is the most dangerous part.
As an example; I've been (recently) attached to an engineering team, despite last holding that title pre-2015, after AI assisted work contributed to a multi million dollar contract loss. A customer experienced an outage, it was "fixed" and everyone moved on. A month later another outage occurred of a greater scale. A huge amount of time was wasted doubling down on the original AI finding, because the actual root cause had not been identified or understood, because it had been "fixed". Turns out AI had identified and "fixed" a symptom, not a root cause.
I was able to identify and resolve the real issue because I had wider operational and infrastructure context the team lacked, but the damage was done. Trust was gone, the client lost, and layoffs will follow. Those layoffs will be “because of AI,” but not any "10x'ing" of productivity. Instead it will be because plausible but wrong work made it into production and hid a very real problem as a result.
That’s the issue with AI as I see it now. It generates answers that survive initial scrutiny while completely missing wider context leading to cases where more impactful but hidden problems are introduced.
> That wide but not terribly deep skillset was immediately devalued by the AI models.
Perhaps “generalist” was the wrong word here.
Most "engineers" I have worked with are extremely deep in their area and surprisingly limited outside it. Even with AI, they struggle to move beyond their specialty because they lack broader foundations underneath not just modern infrastructure, but a range of areas equally important to the health of a business. My advantage has never been being the best engineer in the room, I knew early in my career I’d never compete with the engineer who can patch our kernel before upstream does, despite wishing I could.
What ended up mattering instead was becoming the "95% guy" across infrastructure, networking, systems, operations, business, customer success, and people management that allows me to work with people/organisations and ultimately connect dots in a way even the best engineers I have worked with can not. AI can help you develop skills in areas you don't have, but starting with most of it in areas in which people have exactly none, and where people seem extremely resistant to developing it with or without AI, has me significantly further ahead in the curve. Ironically, at least in my experience so far, AI has made that more valuable, not less.
> they make poor code
I consider this to be the least important part. We have testing, review, and process for that.
I believe (and have instructed juniors as such) that the real value of valuable technical people has never been producing rockstar code, or being a clone of Linus. It's in having a deep foundational understanding of the building blocks underpinning the now endless layers of abstraction, understanding consequences, tradeoffs, failure patterns, business impact, customer communication, customer wants and needs, and ultimately I guess to sum it up, organisational reality.
This feels more important than ever when they can generate plausible looking technical output instantly that they may be able to validate, but equally produce plausible output in a huge range of areas they absolutely can not, but for which their successes in code have led them to believe they can. Because they underestimate what they don't know and in fact often assume they know far more than they do with no real basis for such a belief.
On the whole, I think I would end my thoughts like this.
For years I lived with the stress that "rockstar" engineers would lead to me eventually becoming irrelevant, much in the same way I might fear AI. So far, being 95% across customers, leadership, sales, support, engineering, and business strategy without losing the technical depth underneath it has meant this fear was unfounded and in fact put me ahead of them. I believe I am not isolated in this, and that in fact we will see more of it.
All else aside, my roles as of the last decade often require me to be in the room and working with humans. AI has not changed this, and there is no current indication it will. The requirement will be that I continue to remain in the room, only now with AI. This is for many reasons including regulatory, because portions of what I do involve systems that if mishandled could lead to more than just a loss of profit. There may be less of these roles, but as it stands I see nothing to indicate they will not exist.
The major blocker for manual labor automation in that fashion is cheap energy. China is ahead of the pack with the States' weight behind aggressive expansion of solar tech, and still can't do that.
Anything that can replace a deeply experienced s/ware engineer can replace anyone in the employment stack, meaning that only the owners of capital will be left, and they too will soon fade as the economy falls off a cliff and money has no value, because the only value that money has is the value of a human backing that, with thought, with ideas, with human output.
Whether you like it or not, "Economic output" is just a different phrase for "Human output that is valuable". When all human output is valued at the fractions of a penny per month of work, there is no future.