9 ms·

One thing to keep in mind: With every request-response cycle for the probably upcoming paid service, you are feeding constant data points to a commercial entity

by ok2938 5y ago

One thing to keep in mind: With every request-response cycle for the probably upcoming paid service, you are feeding constant data points to a commercial entity. Basically your typing habit, the project development over time, the bugs, the fixes, all will be recorded. Think about it, one well paid profession in the grips of capital siphoning off valuable, highly intellectual work (by using "open source" already), repackaging it and the selling it back to the people it aims to replace. Imagine a million lawyers' days being recorded in 60s intervals - including what they type, the files they have opened, etc. - how long would it take to encode the average lawyer into a hdf5 file? How many lawyers would be fine with that kind of assistance? If that's not ingenious, then I do not know what is. Call to action: Programmer, wake up. Edit: Just to address some typical rebuttals - I'm all for progress and cool toys, but I'm all against monopolies and mega-corps that control and monitor every aspect of your life.

i_haz_rabies 5y ago
Programmers have the worst intelligence to gullibility ratios of any profession. * I should elaborate. We tend to easily accept the "this work is meaningful" line, we volunteer our time because "programming is a craft," and we will hop on tooling bandwagons like this because it's shiny and new without considering the ramifications.
- loopz 5y ago
  This will sell like hot cookies. The only thing that can destroy it will be the immense cargo-culting. So software developers are safe, for now.
  - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
    I fear the "for now" is shorter than we think.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      I don't. This isn't the first time. First it was accessible programming languages (BASIC, Pascal, etc. ~1970s/80s), then it was standard software (spreadsheet software, ERM packages, etc. 1990s), then low code/no code (early 2000s), then model-/requirement driven (Rational Rose etc., late 90s, early 2000s), in between it was visual "programming" every now and again, now it's back to low code/no code again. As long as the mechanical systems cannot test requirements for contradictions, don't accept non-functional requirements such as performance or security and produce non-correctness proven results that even fail to compile or are syntactically incorrect from time to time, I have no fears. The current situation might as well be a local optimum in which NLP/ML will be stuck for quite a while. It's really hard to tell, but I don't see any reason for starting to panic just yet.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    I've read three definitions of "cargo cult" and still don't know what it or your reference to it mean.
    - loopz 5y ago
      It's mainly meant in jest, partly, at how corporations tend to imitate what seems to work for other, more successful corporations. Ie. at one point after FB, everyone and their mother wanted to make their own Social Media platform. Before that, Web Portals were all the rage. It's often about good ideas, but doesn't always make business sense. Implementations often miss the mark, especially in the beginning. The term comes from this, and uncovers a bit of the futility about the so-called benefits of playing the imitation game: https://www.steveglaveski.com/blog/the-curious-case-of-cargo-cults-and-corporate-innovation https://www.steveglaveski.com/blog/the-curious-case-of-cargo... The problem is that in the fast-paced corporate world, you either make your own startup (and usually fail at that), or you have to play the same game everyone else does. There's simply not enough time and resources to get ahead at everything. Unless you go for the smaller niche, ie. embracing agility. Of course, everyone and their mother is Agile (tm) these days too!
      - BoiledCabbage 5y ago
        You've missed the point. A company seeing what another is doing, and copying their idea and implementing it isn't cargo culting. The key feature of cargo-culting is immitating another without understanding the why behind what they're doing. Imitating is simply imitating. Many companies have gotten rich doing this.
        krono 5y ago
        Fun fact: Oreo biscuits are off-brand copycats of Hydrox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
staticassertion 5y ago
> how long would it take to encode the average lawyer into a hdf5 file I'd say, minimally, a good 50 years, except perhaps for the busywork. At that point you could maybe have a tool that could handle a lawyer's job. Law's often an extremely creative, verbal, expressive job, so I think machines are particularly unlikely to do well there. I'm not worried about being automated away. If someone wants to make coding easier, neat, I'm not a programmer, that's just how I get shit done. I solve complex problems, and I don't see machines taking that job for a long, long time. Frankly, if machines can take away the mechanical bullshit part of a job and let us humans do the interesting, creative work, that works for me.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > Frankly, if machines can take away the mechanical bullshit part of a job and let us humans do the interesting, creative work, that works for me. How much "interesting, creative work" is there? Surely most of the work that most of us do, and that most of us are capable of and interested in, is not simultaneously interesting and creative. I count myself as lucky and I have certainly had a more interesting working life than average but the proportion of that forty years of work that counted as both interesting and creative is probably, looking back on it, measured in single digit percentage points. If a machine does all the easy stuff how would I ever get enough practice to stretch myself to the difficult creative parts?
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    > How much "interesting, creative work" is there? I would imagine that the answer is roughly "infinite". It's like asking "how much art is there?" - infinite. > If a machine does all the easy stuff how would I ever get enough practice to stretch myself to the difficult creative parts? By doing the easy stuff? I don't know, you can do whatever you want.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      > By doing the easy stuff? The machine is doing the easy stuff. Why would anyone pay a human to do it? If I am not being paid how will I get the resources needed to be able to spend time working on the easy stuff?
swiley 5y ago
It's not surprising that "normal users" don't think about this but what I've found extremely surprising is that otherwise fairly skilled programmers don't even think about it.
- auggierose 5y ago
  The more skilled the less there is to think about.
booleandilemma 5y ago
Programmers are a weird bunch. Look at stackoverflow for example. Thousands of programmers giving away their professional advice, spending their valuable time…for what exactly? Imaginary internet points? Open source is another one: here’s my code that I’ve worked so hard on, spent countless hours on - please have it for free, my labor is worthless. It’s like they’re actively seeking to bring their own value down.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  The only explanations I can think of are (1) altruism, (2) intent to profit from one's reputation, and (3) simply enjoying puzzle solving. Am I missing any? And are any of them so strange?
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    (2) And (3) aren't strange and are very likely the main drivers. It isn't hard to imagine that humans, and really any intelligent life, have evolved to enjoy problem solving and structure incentives around being good at it.
  - icoder 5y ago
    Do not underestimate how much you can learn from teaching / explaining something (you think you already know) to someone else.
    - rapnie 5y ago
      Learning in public [0], discussed on HN before. [0] https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/ https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/
  - oefnak 5y ago
    For me it is contributing to a project that has helped me too. For every useful answer I received on stack overflow I've answered some questions myself.
    - 5y ago
bluetwo 5y ago
A good lawyer, like a good programmer isn't valued just on their output, but on the questions they ask that lead them to the correct output. This is much more difficult to encode.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  It's an interesting comparison, law and code. GitHub's AI gets a sense of what you're trying to do, and tries to move the ball forward. Sometimes the context it has is enough to do that. It's better with verbose languages. Law can be pretty verbose. Given half a paragraph, how often can an intelligence (artificial or natural) deduce what's next? Of course the coding AI has the advantage that coders write (and publish) comments.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > coders write (and publish) comments. And writers in law write commentaries, some of them having great authority.
kp995 5y ago
> Call to action: Programmer, wake up. The article also mentions - "head of AI products at the St Petersburg office of JetBrains, a Czech developer of programming software, sees time savings of 10% to 20%. " and the subheading says - "The software engineers of the future will, themselves, be software" um, how seriously should we consider the fact that "skilled" software engineer/programmer solving really complex problems are at risk? Can't say if making just another simple CRUD app is not at risk but the statements and their propositions made in the article are too generalize too plant a seed of insecurity in oneself.
- icoder 5y ago
  Call me naive but I really don't see an AI take over my (senior) software development work, there's just so much to it, including a lot of communication and creativity. I dare posing that by the time AI takes over my job, it's gotten so advanced that I've got much more to worry about than just my job.
8note 5y ago
Its not going to find out the actual work I do, which is largely offline Once I've solved a problem, I document it in code. Only seeing the code at the end misses the problem solving parts
na85 5y ago
Programming has always been destined to become more and more "blue collar", for lack of a better term, pretty much from the outset.
mr_toad 5y ago
Greg Egan wrote a short story about a financial salesperson who’s job was taken by an AI that was trained by listening to his phone calls with clients. As a programmer though, I’m not worried. Every line of code is generating more code. Every recursive function, every loop, every piece of meta programming. Every script file that calls a Python program that calls c routines that microcode that call actual ops. It’s already all generated code generating more generated code. When (if) we have full AGI that is capable of truly understanding a real world problem and kicking off a chain of code generation and is affordable, then I’ll be worried.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Imagine a million lawyers' days being recorded in 60s intervals - including what they type, the files they have opened, etc. - how long would it take to encode the average lawyer into a hdf5 file? How many lawyers would be fine with that kind of assistance? Pretty sure that large law firms already automate a lot of the work they do. Standard contracts they customize for instance. But really, aren't a lot of (billables) hours spent explaining legal concepts to customers?

by ok2938 5y ago

i_haz_rabies 5y ago

Programmers have the worst intelligence to gullibility ratios of any profession. * I should elaborate. We tend to easily accept the "this work is meaningful" line, we volunteer our time because "programming is a craft," and we will hop on tooling bandwagons like this because it's shiny and new without considering the ramifications.

loopz 5y ago
This will sell like hot cookies. The only thing that can destroy it will be the immense cargo-culting. So software developers are safe, for now.
- i_haz_rabies 5y ago
  I fear the "for now" is shorter than we think.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    I don't. This isn't the first time. First it was accessible programming languages (BASIC, Pascal, etc. ~1970s/80s), then it was standard software (spreadsheet software, ERM packages, etc. 1990s), then low code/no code (early 2000s), then model-/requirement driven (Rational Rose etc., late 90s, early 2000s), in between it was visual "programming" every now and again, now it's back to low code/no code again. As long as the mechanical systems cannot test requirements for contradictions, don't accept non-functional requirements such as performance or security and produce non-correctness proven results that even fail to compile or are syntactically incorrect from time to time, I have no fears. The current situation might as well be a local optimum in which NLP/ML will be stuck for quite a while. It's really hard to tell, but I don't see any reason for starting to panic just yet.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  I've read three definitions of "cargo cult" and still don't know what it or your reference to it mean.
  - loopz 5y ago
    It's mainly meant in jest, partly, at how corporations tend to imitate what seems to work for other, more successful corporations. Ie. at one point after FB, everyone and their mother wanted to make their own Social Media platform. Before that, Web Portals were all the rage. It's often about good ideas, but doesn't always make business sense. Implementations often miss the mark, especially in the beginning. The term comes from this, and uncovers a bit of the futility about the so-called benefits of playing the imitation game: https://www.steveglaveski.com/blog/the-curious-case-of-cargo-cults-and-corporate-innovation https://www.steveglaveski.com/blog/the-curious-case-of-cargo... The problem is that in the fast-paced corporate world, you either make your own startup (and usually fail at that), or you have to play the same game everyone else does. There's simply not enough time and resources to get ahead at everything. Unless you go for the smaller niche, ie. embracing agility. Of course, everyone and their mother is Agile (tm) these days too!
    - BoiledCabbage 5y ago
      You've missed the point. A company seeing what another is doing, and copying their idea and implementing it isn't cargo culting. The key feature of cargo-culting is immitating another without understanding the why behind what they're doing. Imitating is simply imitating. Many companies have gotten rich doing this.
      - krono 5y ago
        Fun fact: Oreo biscuits are off-brand copycats of Hydrox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago

staticassertion 5y ago

> how long would it take to encode the average lawyer into a hdf5 file I'd say, minimally, a good 50 years, except perhaps for the busywork. At that point you could maybe have a tool that could handle a lawyer's job. Law's often an extremely creative, verbal, expressive job, so I think machines are particularly unlikely to do well there. I'm not worried about being automated away. If someone wants to make coding easier, neat, I'm not a programmer, that's just how I get shit done. I solve complex problems, and I don't see machines taking that job for a long, long time. Frankly, if machines can take away the mechanical bullshit part of a job and let us humans do the interesting, creative work, that works for me.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> Frankly, if machines can take away the mechanical bullshit part of a job and let us humans do the interesting, creative work, that works for me. How much "interesting, creative work" is there? Surely most of the work that most of us do, and that most of us are capable of and interested in, is not simultaneously interesting and creative. I count myself as lucky and I have certainly had a more interesting working life than average but the proportion of that forty years of work that counted as both interesting and creative is probably, looking back on it, measured in single digit percentage points. If a machine does all the easy stuff how would I ever get enough practice to stretch myself to the difficult creative parts?
- staticassertion 5y ago
  > How much "interesting, creative work" is there? I would imagine that the answer is roughly "infinite". It's like asking "how much art is there?" - infinite. > If a machine does all the easy stuff how would I ever get enough practice to stretch myself to the difficult creative parts? By doing the easy stuff? I don't know, you can do whatever you want.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > By doing the easy stuff? The machine is doing the easy stuff. Why would anyone pay a human to do it? If I am not being paid how will I get the resources needed to be able to spend time working on the easy stuff?

swiley 5y ago

It's not surprising that "normal users" don't think about this but what I've found extremely surprising is that otherwise fairly skilled programmers don't even think about it.

auggierose 5y ago
The more skilled the less there is to think about.

booleandilemma 5y ago

Programmers are a weird bunch. Look at stackoverflow for example. Thousands of programmers giving away their professional advice, spending their valuable time…for what exactly? Imaginary internet points? Open source is another one: here’s my code that I’ve worked so hard on, spent countless hours on - please have it for free, my labor is worthless. It’s like they’re actively seeking to bring their own value down.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
The only explanations I can think of are (1) altruism, (2) intent to profit from one's reputation, and (3) simply enjoying puzzle solving. Am I missing any? And are any of them so strange?
- staticassertion 5y ago
  (2) And (3) aren't strange and are very likely the main drivers. It isn't hard to imagine that humans, and really any intelligent life, have evolved to enjoy problem solving and structure incentives around being good at it.
- icoder 5y ago
  Do not underestimate how much you can learn from teaching / explaining something (you think you already know) to someone else.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    Learning in public [0], discussed on HN before. [0] https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/ https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/
- oefnak 5y ago
  For me it is contributing to a project that has helped me too. For every useful answer I received on stack overflow I've answered some questions myself.
  - 5y ago

bluetwo 5y ago

A good lawyer, like a good programmer isn't valued just on their output, but on the questions they ask that lead them to the correct output. This is much more difficult to encode.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
It's an interesting comparison, law and code. GitHub's AI gets a sense of what you're trying to do, and tries to move the ball forward. Sometimes the context it has is enough to do that. It's better with verbose languages. Law can be pretty verbose. Given half a paragraph, how often can an intelligence (artificial or natural) deduce what's next? Of course the coding AI has the advantage that coders write (and publish) comments.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > coders write (and publish) comments. And writers in law write commentaries, some of them having great authority.

kp995 5y ago

> Call to action: Programmer, wake up. The article also mentions - "head of AI products at the St Petersburg office of JetBrains, a Czech developer of programming software, sees time savings of 10% to 20%. " and the subheading says - "The software engineers of the future will, themselves, be software" um, how seriously should we consider the fact that "skilled" software engineer/programmer solving really complex problems are at risk? Can't say if making just another simple CRUD app is not at risk but the statements and their propositions made in the article are too generalize too plant a seed of insecurity in oneself.

icoder 5y ago
Call me naive but I really don't see an AI take over my (senior) software development work, there's just so much to it, including a lot of communication and creativity. I dare posing that by the time AI takes over my job, it's gotten so advanced that I've got much more to worry about than just my job.

8note 5y ago

Its not going to find out the actual work I do, which is largely offline Once I've solved a problem, I document it in code. Only seeing the code at the end misses the problem solving parts

na85 5y ago

Programming has always been destined to become more and more "blue collar", for lack of a better term, pretty much from the outset.

mr_toad 5y ago

Greg Egan wrote a short story about a financial salesperson who’s job was taken by an AI that was trained by listening to his phone calls with clients. As a programmer though, I’m not worried. Every line of code is generating more code. Every recursive function, every loop, every piece of meta programming. Every script file that calls a Python program that calls c routines that microcode that call actual ops. It’s already all generated code generating more generated code. When (if) we have full AGI that is capable of truly understanding a real world problem and kicking off a chain of code generation and is affordable, then I’ll be worried.

908B64B197 5y ago

> Imagine a million lawyers' days being recorded in 60s intervals - including what they type, the files they have opened, etc. - how long would it take to encode the average lawyer into a hdf5 file? How many lawyers would be fine with that kind of assistance? Pretty sure that large law firms already automate a lot of the work they do. Standard contracts they customize for instance. But really, aren't a lot of (billables) hours spent explaining legal concepts to customers?