There’s all these non-coding elements to a developer’s job that make me think AI replacing developers will take a lot longer than everyone thinks.
What portion of a job must be done by AI before the human loses their job? 80%? Even 98% (and we’re nowhere near that) will produce a ton of friction when applied to a team of developers.
The problem is that the narrative of imminent job displacement is the prevailing one and becomes self fulfilling.
sputknick•58m ago
My hot take is that as that percentage increases, salaries will go up asymptotically, until you get to 100%, then they crash to 0. If 80% of your job can be done by AI, I'm going to give you the work of 5 people. When is 99%, I will give you the work of 100 people
hresvelgr•38m ago
If you're okay with the work being done poorly and without review, then sure. Otherwise, it'll take the same amount of time and be done worse. I would not trust solely 1 person to review 5 people's work let alone 100.
coip•22m ago
If 80% is “done by the AI”, who is responsible for the certain failure on behalf of the AI? Given inference often is, >0%, wrong — in a word… hmm.
How many 9s until you’re comfortable? Even then, knowing 1000 tasks could likely have at least 1 foundational issue… how do you audit? “Pretty please do the needful” and have another “please ensure they do the needful”. Do you review the 1000 inputs/outputs processed? Don’t get me wrong, am familiar with the “send it” ethos all too well, but at-scale it seems like quite the pickle.
Genuinely curious how most people consider these angles… was tasked with building a model once to perform what literally could’ve otherwise been a SQL query… when I brought this up, it was met with “well we need to do it with AI” I don’t think a humans gonna want to find that needle in a haystack when 100,000 significant documents are originated… but I don’t have to worry about that one anymore thank goodness.
add-sub-mul-div•43m ago
We don't know if it will take the form of a net drop in headcount at all, or if white collar labor will be broadly replaced with the same headcount of low paid fungible AI operators.
But we can say that mass displacement of labor in one form or another is the goal because it's the only way to explain the amount of investment that's going into it.
JSR_FDED•1h ago
What portion of a job must be done by AI before the human loses their job? 80%? Even 98% (and we’re nowhere near that) will produce a ton of friction when applied to a team of developers.
The problem is that the narrative of imminent job displacement is the prevailing one and becomes self fulfilling.
sputknick•58m ago
hresvelgr•38m ago
coip•22m ago
How many 9s until you’re comfortable? Even then, knowing 1000 tasks could likely have at least 1 foundational issue… how do you audit? “Pretty please do the needful” and have another “please ensure they do the needful”. Do you review the 1000 inputs/outputs processed? Don’t get me wrong, am familiar with the “send it” ethos all too well, but at-scale it seems like quite the pickle.
Genuinely curious how most people consider these angles… was tasked with building a model once to perform what literally could’ve otherwise been a SQL query… when I brought this up, it was met with “well we need to do it with AI” I don’t think a humans gonna want to find that needle in a haystack when 100,000 significant documents are originated… but I don’t have to worry about that one anymore thank goodness.
add-sub-mul-div•43m ago
But we can say that mass displacement of labor in one form or another is the goal because it's the only way to explain the amount of investment that's going into it.