As always, I use the term “AI” loosely. I’m referring to these scary LLMs coming for our jobs.
It’s important to state that I find LLMs to be helpful in very specific use cases, but overall, this is clearly a bubble, and the promises of advance have not appeared despite hundreds of billions of VC thrown at the industry.
So as not to go full-on polemic, we’ll skip the knock-on effects in terms of power-grid and water stresses.
No, what I want to talk about is the idea of software in its current form needing to be as competent as the user.
Simply put: How many of your coworkers have been right 100% of the time over the course of your career? If N>0, say “Hi” to Jesus for me.
I started working in high school, as most of us do, and a 60% success rate was considered fine. At the professional level, I’ve seen even lower with tenure, given how much things turn to internal politics past a certain level.
So what these companies are offering is not parity with senior staff (Ph.D.-level, my ass), but rather the new blood who hasn’t had that one fuckup that doesn’t leave their mind for weeks.
That crucible is important.
These tools are meant to replace inexperience with incompetence, and the beancounters at some clients are likely satisfied those words look similar enough to pass muster.
We are, after all, at this point, the “good enough” country. LLM marketing is on brand.
Yeah, that’s true for a subset of code. But for others, the hardest parts happen in the brain, not in the files. Writing readable code is very very important, especially when you are working with larger teams. Lots of people cut corners here and elsewhere in coding, though. Including, like, every startup I’ve ever seen.
There’s a lot of gruntwork in coding, and LLMs are very good at the gruntwork. But coding is also an art and a science and they’re not good at that at high levels (same with visual art and “real” science; think of the code equivalent of seven deformed fingers).
I don’t mean to hand-wave the problems away. I know that people are going to push the limits far beyond reason, and I know it’s going to lead to monumental fuckups. I know that because it’s been true for my entire career.