It’ll replace brain dead CEOs before it replaces programmers.
Amazon cloud boss echoes NVIDIA CEO on coding being dead in the water: "If you go forward 24 months from now, it's possible that most developers are not coding"
Submitted 2 months ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 2 months ago
ikidd@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m pretty sure I could write a bot right now that just regurgitates pop science bullshit and how it relates to Line Go Up business philosophy.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 2 months ago
if lineGoUp { CollectUnearnedBonus() } else { FireSomePeople() CollectUnearnedBonus() }
Threeme2189@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
ChatJippity
I’ll start using that!
casmael@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I know just enough about this to confirm that this statement is absolute horseshit
ghostface@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sounds like the no-ops of a decade ago and cloud will remove the need for infrastructure engineers. 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂😂😂🤣
ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world 2 months ago
SHUT UP AND GO BACK TO OUR SHITTY YAML BASED INFRASTRUCTURE!
martinb@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
🤣😂😪😥😢😭
piecat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It isn’t that AI will have replaced us in 24 months, it’s that we will be enslaved in 24 months. Or in the matrix. Etc.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Will the matrix it puts us in be in 1999? Because I’d take that deal.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’ll take “things business people dont understand” for 100$.
No one hires software engineers to code. You’re hired to solve problems. All of this AI bullshit has 0 capability to solve your problems, because it can only spit out what it’s already
stolen fromseen somewhere elseHakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
It can also throw things against the wall with no concern for fitness-to=purpose. See “None pizza, left beef”.
breckenedge@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’ve worked with a few PMs over my 12 year career that think devs are really only there to code like trained monkeys.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’m at the point where what I work on requires such a depth of knowledge that I just manage my own projects. Doesn’t help that my work’s PM team consistently brings in new hires only to toss them on the difficult projects no one else is willing to take. They see a project is doomed to fail so they put their least skilled and newest person on it so the seniors don’t suffer any failures.
Simplifying things to a level that is understandable for the PMs just leads to overlooked footguns. Trying to explain a small subset of the footguns just leads to them wildly misinterpreting what is going on, causing more work for me to sort out what terrible misconceptions they’ve blasted out to everyone else.
If you can’t actually be a reliable force multiplier, or even someone I can rely on to get accurate information from other teams, just get out of my way please.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Guys that are putting billions of dollars into their AI companies making grand claims about AI replacing everyone in two years. Whoda thunk it
aaaaace@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
–Lao Tzu…
DinosaurSr@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Great answer to interview questions
mriormro@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What does the person “who knows” do when they have to give a presentation?
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 2 months ago
But coding never was the difficult part. It’s understanding a concept, identify a problem and solve it with the possible methods. An AI just makes the coding part faster and gives me options to quicker identify a possible solution. Thankfully there’s a never ending pile of projects, issues, todos and stackholder wants, that I don’t see how we need less programmers. Maybe we need more to deal with AI, as now people can do a lot more in house instead of outsourcing, but as soon as that threshold is reached, companies will again contact large software companies. If people want to put AI into everything, you need people feeding the AI with company specific data and instruct people to use this AI.
All I see is middle management getting replaced, because instead of a boring meeting, I could just ask an AI.
curry@programming.dev 2 months ago
I dread meetings and I can’t wait for AIs to replace those managers. Or perhaps we’ll have even more meetings because the management wants to know why we’re so late despite the AI happily churning out meaningless codes that look so awesome like all that CSI VB GUI crap.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s when you write an AI auto reply cron. Hehe
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
It’s been said before but the whiter your collar the more likely you are to be replaced by AI simply because the grunts tend to do more varied less pleibeon things.
Middle managers tend to write a lot of documents and emails which is something AI excels at. The programmers meanwhile have to come up with creative solutions to problems, and AI is less good at being creative, it basically just copy pastes known solutions from the web.
LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Realises devs have always joked about their jobs just being about copy-pasting solutions from StackOverflow 80% of the time
Oh God…
Kekzkrieger@feddit.org 2 months ago
CEOs without a clue how things work think they know how things work.
I swear if we had no CEOs from today on the only impact would be that we wouldve less gibberish being spoken
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If AI could replace anyone… it’s those dingbats. I mean, what would you say, in this given example, the CEO does… exactly? Make up random bullshit? AI does that. Write a speech? AI does that. I love how these overpaid people think they can replace the talent but they… they are absolutely required and couldn’t possibly be replaced! Talent and AI can’t buy and enjoy the extra big yacht, or private jets, or over priced cars, or a giant over sized mansion… no you need people for that.
hark@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This will be used as an excuse to try to drive down wages while demanding more responsibilities from developers, even though this is absolute bullshit. However, if they actually follow through with their delusions and push to build platforms on AI-generated trash code, then soon after they’ll have to hire people to fix such messes.
qarbone@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If, 24 months from now, most people aren’t coding, it’ll be because people like him cut jobs to make a quicker buck. Or nickel.
Cringe2793@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well if it works, means that job wasn’t that important, and the people doing that job should improve themselves to stay relevant.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
job wasn’t that important
I keep telling you that changing out the battery in the smoke alarm isn’t worth the effort and you keep telling me that the house is currently on fire, we need to get out of here immediately, and I just roll my eyes because you’re only proving my point.
qarbone@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Define “works”?
If you’re a CEO, cutting all your talent, enshittifying your product, and pocketing the difference in new, lower costs vs standard profits might be considered as “working”.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Oh perhaps the CEOs are the ones that need to be replaced?
CondensedPossum@lemmy.world 2 months ago
😜 👢
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Define “works.”
Because the goals of a money-hungry CEO don’t always align with those of the workers in the company itself (or often, even the consumer).
riodoro1@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Todays news: Rich assholes in suits are idiots and don’t know how their own companies are working. Make sure to share what they’re saying.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Of course they won’t be; somebody has to debug all the crap AI writes.
yokonzo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
How many times does the public have to learn if the CEO says it, he probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If the devs say it, listen
slimarev92@lemmy.world 2 months ago
[deleted]woodgen@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Lets wait for any LLM do a single sucessful MR on Github first before starting a project on its own. Not aware of any.
utopiah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
there isn’t a single serious project written exclusively or mostly by an LLM? There isn’t a single library or remotely original application
IMHO “original” here is the key. Finding yet another clone of a Web framework ported from one language to another in order to push online a basic CMS slightly faster, I can imagine this. In fact I even bet that LLM, because they manipulate words in languages and that code can be safely (even thought not cheaply) tested within containers, could be an interesting solution for that.
… but that is NOT really creating value for anyone, unless that person is technically very savvy and thus able to leverage why a framework in a language over another creates new opportunities (say safety, performances, etc). So… for somebody who is not that savvy, “just” relying on the numerous existing already existing open-source providing exactly the value they expect, there is no incentive to re-invent.
For anything that is genuinely original, i.e something that is not a port to another architecture, a translation to another language, a slight optimization, but rather something that need just a bit of reasoning and evaluating against the value created, I’m very skeptical, even less so while pouring less resources EVEN with a radical drop in costs.
Hawk@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
My last employer had many internal tools that were fine.
They had only a moderate amount of oversight.
I had to find a new job, I’m actually thinking of walking away from software development now that there are so few jobs :(
It sucks but there’s no sense pretending this won’t have a large impact on the job landscape.
Tyfud@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah writing the code isn’t really the hard part. It’s knowing what code to write and how to structure it to work with your existing code or potential future code. Knowing where things might break so you can add the correct tests or alerts. Giving time estimates on how long it will take to build the parts of the system and building in phases to meet your teams needs.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I’ve always thought that design and maintenance are the difficult and gruelling parts, and writing code is when you get to relax for a bit. Most of the time you’re in maintenance mode, and it’s harder than writing new code.
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
This. I’m learning a new skill right now & hardly any of it is actual writing— it’s how to arrange the pieces someone else wrote (& which sometimes AI can decently reproduce.)
When you use a computer you don’t start by mining iron, because the thing is already built
jon@lemdro.id 2 months ago
Good luck debugging AI-generated code…
Zess@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They think it will be easier than having people write the code from scratch. I don’t know shit about coding but I know that’s definitely not right.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
AI is quite good at writing small sections of code. Usually because it’s more or less just copying something off the internet that it’s found, maybe changing a few bits around, but essentially just regurgitating something that’s in its data set. I could of course just have done that but it saves time since the AI can find the relevant piece of code to copy and modify more or less instantly.
But it falls apart if you ask it to build entire applications. You can barely even get it to write pong without a lot of tinkering around after the fact which rather defeats the point really.
It also doesn’t deal well if the thing you’re trying to program for is not very well documented, which would include things like drivers, which presumably is their bread and butter.
Chais@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Really simple. Just ask it to point out the error. Also maybe tell it how the code is wrong. And then hope that the new code didn’t introduce new errors in formerly working sections. And that it understood what you meant. In a language that is inherently vague.
dsilverz@thelemmy.club 2 months ago
It’s the same claim when tools like Integromat, WayScript, PureData, vvvv and other VPLs (Visual Programming Languages) started to get some hype. I once worked for a company that strongly believed they’d “retire the need for coding”, and my ex-boss was so confident and happy about that… Although VPLs were a practical thing, time is the ruler of truth, and for every dev-related job vacancy I see, they ask some programming language, the written ones (JS, PHP, Python, Ruby, Lua, and so on).
Because if you look closely, deep inside, voila, there’s code in anything that is claimed to be no-code! Wow, could anyone imagine that? 🤯 /sarcasm
DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Phoenixbouncing@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Looking at your examples, and I have to object at putting scratch in there.
My kids use it in clubs, and it’s great for getting algorithmic basics down before the keyboard proficiency is there for real coding.
spacecadet@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Everybody talks about AI killing programming jobs, but any developer who has had to use it knows it can do anything complex in programming. What it’s really going to replace is program managers, customer reps, makes most of HR obsolete, finance analysts, legal teams, and middle management. This people have very structured, rule based day to days. Getting an AI to write a very customized queuing system in Rust to suit your very specific business needs is nearly impossible. Getting AI to summarize Jira boards, analyze candidates experience, highlight key points of meetings (and obsolete most of them altogether), and gather data on outstanding patents is more in its wheelhouse.
I am starting to see a major uptick in recruiters reaching out to me because companies are starting to realize it was a mistake to stop hiring Software Engineers in the hopes that AI would replace them, but now my skills are going to come at a premium just like everyone else in Software Engineering with skills beyond “put a react app together”
doubletwist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Copilot can’t even suggest a single Ansible or Terraform task without suggesting invalid/unsupported options. I can’t imagine how bad it is at doing anything actually complex with an actual programming language.
spacecadet@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It also doesn’t know what’s going on a couple line before it, so say I am in a language that has options for functional styling using maps and I want to keep that flow going, it will start throwing for loops at you, so you end up having to rewrite it all anyway. I have find I end up spending more time writing the prompts then validating it did what I want correctly (normally not) than just looking at the docs and doing it myself, the bonus being I don’t have to reprompt it again later because now I know how to do it
underthesign@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Trouble is, you’re basing all that on now, not a year from now, or 6 months from now. It’s too easy to look at it’s weaknesses today and extrapolate. I think people need to get real about coding and AI. Coding is language and rules. Machines can learn that enormously faster and more accurately than humans. The ones who survive will be those who can wield it as a tool for creativity. But if you think it won’t be capable of all the things it’s currently weak at you’re just kidding yourself unfortunately. It’ll be like anything else - a tool for an operator. Middlemen will be wiped out of the process, of course, but those with money remain those without time or expertise, and there will always be a place for people willing to step in at that point. But they won’t be coding. They’ll be designing and solving problems.
spacecadet@lemm.ee 2 months ago
We are 18 months into AI replacing me in 6 months. I mean… the CEO of OpenAI as well as many researchers have already said LLMs have mostly reached their limit. They are “generalizers” and if you ask them to do anything new they hallucinate quite frequently. Trying to get AI to replace developers when it hasn’t even replaced other menial office jobs is like saying “we taught AI to drive, it will replace all F1 drivers in 6 months”.
Zacryon@feddit.org 2 months ago
While I highly doubt that becoming true for at least a decade, we can already replace CEOs by AI, you know? (:
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Most middle managers could be replaced by a simple script already.
exu@feditown.com 2 months ago
That’s probably because they hit all the VC keywords of 2023.
- AI
- metaverse
Fosheze@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A company I used to work for outsourced most of their coding to a company in India. I say most because when the code came back the internal teams anways had to put a bunch of work in to fix it and integrate it with existing systems. I imagine that, if anything, LLMs will just take the place of that overseas coding farm. The code they spit out will still need to be fixed and modified so it works with your existing systems and that work is going to require programmers.
ammonium@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So instead of spending 1 day writing good code, we’ll be spending a week debugging shitty code. Great.
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If generative AI hasn’t replaced artists, it won’t replaced programmers.
Generative AI is much better at art than coding.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
It will never replace artists anyway.
Art isn’t just about what it looks, like it’s also about an emotional connection. Inherently we think that you cannot have an emotional connection with something created by a computer. Humans will always prefer art created by humans, even if objectively there isn’t a lot of difference.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Generative AI is much better at art than coding.
Mostly because humans invented this convenient thing called abstract art - and since then tolerates pretty much everything that looks “strange” as art. Must have been a deep learning advocate with a time machine who came up with abstract art.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
24 months from now? Unlikely lol
sudo42@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sure, Microsoft is happy to let their AIs scan everyone else’s code., but is anyone aware of any software houses letting AIs scan their in-house code?
Any lawyer worth their salt won’t let AIs anywhere near their company’s proprietary code intil they are positive that AI isn’t going to be blabbing the code out to every one of their competitors.
But of course, IANAL.
TriflingToad@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Seriously how can these CEOs of a GPU company not talk to a developer. You have loads of them to interview
EnderMB@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I feel sorry for all those people in AWS that now have him as a leader…
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 months ago
Let’s assume this is true, just for discussion’s sake. Who’s going to be writing the prompts to get the code then? Surely someone who can understand the requirements, make sure the code functions, and then test it afterwards. That’s a developer.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I seem to recall about 13 years ago when “the cloud” was going to put everyone in IT Ops out of a job. At least according to people who have no idea what the IT department actually does.
“The cloud” certainly had an impact but the one thing it definitely did NOT do was send every system and network admin to the unemployment office. If anything it increased the demand for those kinds of jobs.
I remain unconcerned about my future career prospects.
Nighed@sffa.community 2 months ago
I’m going to call BS on that unless they are hiding some new models with huge context windows…
For anything that’s not boilerplate, you have to type more as a prompt to the AI than just writing it yourself.
Also, if you have a behaviour/variable that is common to something common, it will stubbornly refuse to do what you want.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I’m curious about what the “upskilling” is supposed to look like, and what’s meant by the statement that most execs won’t hire a developer without AI skills. Is the idea that everyone needs to know how to put ML models together and train them? Or is it just that everyone employable will need to be able to work with them? There’s a big difference.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 months ago
!remindme in 24 months
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The only people who would say this are people that don’t know programming.
LLMs are not going to replace software devs.
lemmyuser100002@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wrong, this is also exactly what people selling LLMs to people who can’t code would say.
APassenger@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s this. When boards and non-tech savvy managers start making decisions based on a slick slide deck and a few visuals, enough will bite that people will be laid off. It’s already happening.
There may be a reckoning after, but wall street likes it when you cut too deep and then bounce back to the “right” (lower) headcount. Even if you’ve broken the company and they just don’t see the glide path.
It’s gonna happen. I hope it’s rare. I’d argue it’s already happening, but I doubt enough people see it underpinning recent lay offs (yet).
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
AI as a general concept probably will at some point. But LLMs have all but reached the end of the line and they’re not nearly smart enough.
li10@feddit.uk 2 months ago
LLMs have already reached the end of the line 🤔
I don’t believe that. At least from an implementation perspective we’re extremely early on, and I don’t see why the tech itself can’t be improved either.
Maybe it’s current iteration has hit a wall, but I don’t think anyone can really say what the future holds for it.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“at some point” being like 400 years in the future? Sure.
Ok that’s probably a little bit of an exaggeration. 250 years.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I can see the statement in the same way word processing displaced secretaries.
There used to be two tiers in business. Those who wrote ideas/solutions and those who typed out those ideas into documents to be photocopied and faxed. Now the people who work on problems type their own words and email/slack/teams the information.
In the same way there are programmers who design and solve the problems, and then the coders who take those outlines and make it actually compile.
LLM will disrupt the programmers leaving the problem solvers.
IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’ll have to improve a magnitude for that effect. Right now it’s basically an improved stack overflow.
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There is no reason to believe that LLM will disrupt anyone any time soon. As it stands now the level of workmanship is absolutely terrible and there are more things to be done than anyone has enough labor to do. Making it so skilled professionals can do more literally just makes it so more companies can produce quality of work that is not complete garbage.
Juniors produce progressively more directly usable work with reason and autonomy and are the only way you develop seniors. As it stands LLM do nothing with autonomy and do much of the work they do wrong. Even with improvements they will in near term actually be a coworker. They remain something you a skilled person actually use like a wrench. In the hands of someone who knows nothing they are worth nothing. Thinking this will replace a segment of workers of any stripe is just wrong.
felbane@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The problem with this take is the assertion that LLMs are going to take the place of secretaries in your analogy. The reality is that replacing junior devs with LLMs is like replacing secretaries with a network of typewriter monkeys who throw sheets of paper at a drunk MBA who decides what gets faxed.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I thought by this point everyone would know how computers work.
That, uh, did not happen.
VubDapple@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good take
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t know if you noticed but most of the people making decisions in the industry aren’t programmers, they’re MBAs.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Irrelevant, anyone who tries to replace their devs with LLMs will crash and burn. The lessons will be learned. But yes, many executives will make stupid ass decisions around this tech.
assembly@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The one thing that LLMs have done for me is to make summarizing and correlating data in documents really easy. Take 20 docs of notes about a project and have it summarize where they are at so I can get up to speed quickly. Works surprisingly well. I haven’t had luck with code requests.
Zexks@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s not what was said. He specifically said coding.