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Comment by hackyhacky | Hacker News Reader

> If you can direct AI and produce more value per $/time spent then a non software engineer directing AI to develop software then you still can produce a lot of value.

Sure, in the same way a skilled photographer can take better photographs on an iPhone than I can. Nevertheless, because any twit can take good enough photos on an iPhone, the need for the specialized skills of an expert photographer are much less than in, say, the 1930s.

That's why AI is dangerous. It's not because it makes human skill useless, it's because it makes non-human skill good enough. When was the last time you hired an expert photographer, or skilled dressmaker, or a master cabinetmaker? Maybe once or twice in your life, because the iPhone camera, fast fashion, and Ikea are good enough.

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Software is just language, translating human intent into concrete machine action. That translation being automated doesn't mean, the intent had been made superfluous.

When no human knows what the machine is doing exactly, how do you know your intent is being followed? The seeming sufficiency of superficiality the public "enjoys" is an illusion needing upkeep.

Machines cannot make meaning, nor can they originate intent. They can't keep themselves suspended mid-air, detached from human understanding. You need engineers who understand human and machine, identifying the reasonable among the un-reflected wishes and making it explicit and precise.

> When no human knows what the machine is doing exactly, how do you know your intent is being followed?

No one is saying that no one will know what the computer is doing, but fewer people will have to. We are moving up the abstraction hierarchy, just as we have done since the stone age. In my grandparents' generation, knowing how to fix an internal combustion engine was a common skill among young men; today, it's been abstracted away. In the same way, I don't know how my clothes are manufactured, where my electricity is generated, or whether my CPU's "management engine" is spying on me. I don't need to know the details, because everything "just works." The same thing is happening with AI.

the need for the specialized skills of an expert photographer are much less than in, say, the 1930s

Without even looking it up, I expect that this is patently untrue. I bet way more people make a living as photographers today than in the 1930s.

EDIT: yep, about 4x as many today, and slightly more per capita even.

Not saying your overall point is off, but the fact that you picked a bad example is illustrative of a broader point: it’s very difficult to tell in advance how technology will impact employment.

EDIT: can’t reply so I’ll just add this here:

As I understood it, your entire point was that people don’t have as much need for photographers, dressmakers, and cabinetmakers today, because technology has given us low-skill or no-skill options that are good enough. Is that a fair characterization of your argument?

This is definitely true for some categories (agriculture, or elevator operators), but again, there are more professional photographers working today than in the 1930s. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are more seamstresses / tailors / etc too, more professional carpenters, etc.

Some of this is basic Jevon’s paradox in action, and some of it is just that median American is much wealthier (in real terms) than a century ago, so even though we can buy lots of “good enough”, there’s still a larger market for high-end skilled artisan labor than a century ago.

Not really. The number of photographers doesn't tell you everything about the demand for them. Back then photography was still competing with portraiture as a way for capturing likenesses, both options relatively rare and expensive, but photography certainly cheaper and requiring vastly less skill. It was a very different market than today's where I'd say the work is mostly in weddings.

1. The demand for photographs is fixed. The demand for software is infinite.

2. A photo is just what it appears to be. A program's code can't be gleaned from its output. Without checking the code you can't know if it's good enough or not.

3. For a lot of use cases, good enough isn't good enough. A good enough robot in a factory produces unacceptable defect rates, a good enough space rocket explodes way too often.

> The demand for photographs is fixed. The demand for software is infinite.

A highly dubious assertion. If demand for software is infinite, why don't we have infinite software, since we now have the ability to create infinite software?

> Without checking the code you can't know if it's good enough or not.

And even after checking the code, you still won't know if it's good enough, as evidenced by the large number of bugs that get shipped. I think it's clear that AI can do at least a good job checking code as humans can, so my argument stands.

> good enough isn't good enough

It seems like you are playing word games instead of addressing my argument. Can you please explain the point you were trying to make with this argument?

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