Are you trying to argue that the probability of interacting with a bot or reading/seeing something algorithmically generated hasn't gone up astronomically since the 90s?
391 karma · joined January 2, 2024
I use Godbolt regularly, as do many C and C++ devs, for the sake of optimization, but I'm not sure that's what you mean. Checking the generated output is sometimes still needed for correctness, probably more so in the past than now due to threads not being a part of the language and the memory model being under-specified (allowing compiler authors to assume a single-threaded execution model), but those were deficiencies in those languages in particular (since remedied). Paradoxically, it's also still sometimes needed to ensure the compiler doesn't optimize certain code away, for the sake of security.
I think it's doubtful you'll be even that; certainly not with the salary and status that normally entails.
> I'm very convinced non-technical people will be able to use these tools
This suggests that the skill ceiling of "Vibe Coding" is actually quite low, calling into question the sense of urgency with which certain AI influnecers present it, as if it were a skill that you need to invest major time & effort to hone now (with their help, of course), lest you get left behind and have to "catch up" later. Yet one could easily see it being akin to Googling, which was also a skill (when Google was usable), one that did indeed increase your efficiency and employable, but with a low ceiling, such that "Googler" was never a job by itself, the way some suggest "prompt engineer" will be. The Google analogy is apt, in that you're typing keywords into a blackbox until it spits out what you want; quite akin to how people describe "prompt engineering."
Also the Vibe Coding skillset--a bag of tricks and book of incantations you're told can cajole the model--has a high churn rate. Once, narrow context windows meant restarting a session de novo was advisable if you hit a roadblock, but now it's usually the opposite.
If this all true, then wouldn't the correct takeaway, rather than embracing and mastering "Vibe Coding" (as influencers suggest), be to "pivot" to a new career, like welding?
> The irony is that I haven't seen AI have nearly as large of an impact anywhere else. We truly have automated ourselves out of work, people are just catching up with that fact
What's funny is artists immediately, correctly perceived the threat of AI. You didn't see cope about it being "just another tool, like Photoshop."
I'm not sure that the current growth rate is exponential, but the problem is that it doesn't need to be exponential. It should have been obvious the moment ChatGPT and stable diffusion-based systems were released that continued, linear progress of these models was going to cause massive disruption eventually (in a matter of years).
For now. Though I suspect the commit history would probably still be pretty telling.
We could easily approach a state of affairs where most of what you see online is AI and almost every "person" you interact with is fake. It's hard to see how someone who supposedly remembers computing in the 80s, when the power of USENET and BBSs to facilitate long-distance, or even international, communication and foster personal relationships (often IRL) was enthralling, not thinking we've lost something.
I would also point out that the author, and many AI enthusiasts, still make certain optimistic assumptions about the future role of "developer," insisting that the nature of the work will change, but that it will somehow, in large measure, remain. I doubt that. I could easily envision a future where the bulk of software development becomes something akin to googling--just typing the keywords you think are relevant until the black box gives you what you want. And we don't pay people to google, or at least, we don't pay them very much.
Biggest hit to his reputation has been the revelation that the business in NYC that drew him away from his infant son, hospitalized in the ICU, who eventually went into cardiac arrest (he describes this "shameful" episode in his book), was actually a meeting with Epstein.
They should also be more helpful with not plundering the oceans, even including the territorial waters of far-flung nations, of fish.
Certain political parties (typically leftwing) in these countries will often leverage, if not outright foment, anti-Americanism for political gain. And then you have the external propaganda campaigns, most notably undertaken by the Soviet Union and later, the Russian Federation. The USSR also funded violent separatist movements, like the IRA and ETA, and propped up "pacifist" protest movements that curiously only ever protested the US and other NATO countries' militaries, disregarding the Eastern Block's military buildup.
Today, Code Pink and other organizations run by power couple Neville Roy Singham (ThoughtWorks) and Jodie Evans do this on behalf of the CCP. Name-dropping them now is contentious, because FOXNews and other rightwing outlets have alleged a link to anti-ICE protests. But there was a lengthy NYT piece covering them and their pro-CCP activism back in 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-...
> I think it's also mirrored by some Americans.
It's surely reciprocated, but usually only by Americans who been exposed to enough anti-Americanism from these countries to wise up. The default attitude of Americans towards our allies is overwhelmingly positive: https://news.gallup.com/poll/472421/canada-britain-favored-r...