echoing Ronald Reagan: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Yes, very very much so. Undoubtedly and in nearly every way. And I work in one of the industries that’s been hit hard by the recent layoffs (info Tech).
The economy under Trump’s leadership was burning bright because he lit the candle on both ends and doused it in lighter fluid.
All the big tech companies do it. Google has their red badges—part of Google’s caste system. Meta has contractors (from what I hear they actually treat them really well, just not compensated like a Meta FTE for the same work).
Yeah I get it 100%. But that’s what I’m saying. I’m already working on and with models that have entire codebase level fine-tuning and understanding. The company I work at is not the first pioneer in this space. Problem understanding and interpretation— all of what you said is true— there are causal models being developed (I am aware of one team in my company doing exactly that) to address that side of software engineering.
So. I don’t think we are really disagreeing here. Yes, clearly AI models aren’t eliminating humans from software today; but I also really don’t think that day is all that far away. And there will always be need for humans to build systems that serve humans; but the way we do it is going to change so fundamentally that “learn C, learn Rust, learn Python” will all be obsolete sentiments of a bygone era.
Here’s an honest take. Let me preface this with some credential: I’m an AI Engineer with many years in field. I’m directly working on right now multiple projects that augment and automate code generation, documentation, completion and even system design/understanding. We’re not there yet. But the pace of progress in how fast we are improving our code-AI is astounding. Exponential growth in capability and accuracy and utility.
As an anecdotal example; a few years ago I decided I would try to learn Rust (programming language), because it seemed interesting and we had a practical use case for a performant, memory-efficient compiled language. It didn’t really work out for me, tbh. I just didn’t have the time to get very fluent with it enough to be effective.
Now I’m on a project which also uses Rust. But with ChatGPT and some other models I’ve deployed (Mixtral is really good!) I was basically writing correct, effective Rust code within a week—accepted and merged to main.
I’m actively using AI code models to write code to train, fine-tune, and deploy AI code models. See where this is going? That’s exponential growth.
I honestly don’t know if I’d recommend to my young kids programming as a career now even if it has been very lucrative for me and will take me to my retirement just fine. It excites me and scares me at the same time.
Venture into desert cause my wife and kids pissed me off tonight and my boss is an asshole.
I need a walk.
Where dafuk am I. Shit I’m fucked.
Thirsty as hell. No water anywhere.
Oh hey there’s a weird cactus ball over there. It’s not much but it’s something.
Ouch, fucking needles. Whatever, don’t care, thirsty.
Chomp chomp. Keep on walking.
Sun’s setting; that’s weird never seen it purple before.
It’s dark now I think. But not really dark either. Wtf is going on with the sky?
Oh hey look a bush. It’s on fire. I should go listen to it.
It’s talking to me? Ok that’s cool cool, wonder what this bush has to say.
Blah blah some babble about some dude named Jehova and some rules. Dude wtf. There’s enough rules in my life already.
Eh ok some of these kinda make sense. Maybe I should write it down.
Fuck, left my chalk at the house. But there’s some slabs of rock over there maybe I can just scratch it in until I get back home.
Done. Now how the fuck do I get home from this mountain? How did I get on this mountain in the first place. Shit’s weird bruh, but I think I can see the light of my city over there.
K bush, ima go home now. Ciao.
My bro at home, he’s all like where ya been?
Cool story bro, you ain’t gonna believe this shit.
Better sit down and get something to write with would ya?
It’s part of Vegas’ branding strategy.