edit: I mean, he tried transformer powered voice-to-text and liked it, and now he’s all in on the LLMs are a rigorous and accurate tool actually bandwagon?
This is probably just me, but that doesn't seem particularly shocking. If this AI bubble's taught me anything, its that tech culture (if not tech as a whole) was deeply, deeply vulnerable to the LLM rot from the start.
idk if the bubble will pop or slowly deflate, but im certain that in 10 years we'll look back at 2020s as the decade where tech stopped progressing in the way we know it - since we're diverting all our resources to ai, there's no longer any room left for anything else to grow
the 2010s crypto gpu shortage was the warning siren for this. it really hampered the growth of gpus because they permanently became so much more expensive - now the same is happening to memory, storage, and...well, gpus again! we've reached the point of reverse progress
If you model the impact of working LLM coding tools (big increase in productivity, little downside) where the bottlenecks are largely outside of coding, increases in coding automation mostly just reduce the need for labour. I.e. 10x increase means you need 10x fewer coders, collapsing the job market
If you model the impact of working LLM coding tools with no bottlenecks, then the increase in productivity massively increases the supply of undifferentiated software and the prices you can charge for any software drops through the floor, collapsing the job market
If the models increase output but are flawed, as in they produce too many defects or have major quality issues, Akerlof's market for lemons kicks in, bad products drive out good, value of software in the market heads south, collapsing the job market
If the model impact is largely fictitious, meaning this is all a scam and the perceived benefit is just a clusterfuck of cognitive hazards, then the financial bubble pop will be devastating, tech as an industry will largely be destroyed, and trust in software will be zero, collapsing the job market
I can only think of a few major offsetting forces:
If the EU invests in replacing US software, bolstering the EU job market.
China might have substantial unfulfilled domestic demand for software, propping up their job market
Companies might find that declining software quality harms their bottom-line, leading to a Y2K-style investment in fixing their software stacks
But those don't seem likely to do more than partially offset the decline. Kind of hoping I'm missing something
I wish we could finally agree that tech bros (and MBAs!) are greedy, full of shit and ruining the planet. And then remove both groups from any place of influence.
Prohibiting the teaching of MBAs and/or massively funding the humanities would be a good start. Hell, you could fund the humanities with the cash that currently goes toward MBAs and kill two birds with one stone.
Personally, I'm willing to take Scott at his word on that last part - between being a programmer and being a rat/rat-adjacent, chances are his circles are (were?) highly vulnerable to being hit by the LLM rot.
So AI is a parasite that takes from Wikipedia, contributes nothing in return, and in fact actively chokes it out? And you think the solution is for Wikipedia to just surrender and implement AI features?
Given how thoroughly tech bought into the AI hype, that is probably the exact "solution" he's thinking of.
(Exactly why tech fell for the slop machines so hard, I'll probably never know.)
some nimrod suggested skilled machinists be outfitted with pressure sensing gloves and cameras and patiently explain eahc machining step so the LLMs could take their jobs
I expected a willingness from HN users to backstab the working class, but I didn't expect something this blatantly half-baked.
This is probably just me, but that doesn't seem particularly shocking. If this AI bubble's taught me anything, its that tech culture (if not tech as a whole) was deeply, deeply vulnerable to the LLM rot from the start.