> code generation today is the worst that it ever will be, and it's only going to improve from here.
I'm also of the mindset that even if this is not true, that is, even if current state of LLMs is best that it ever will be, AI still would be helpful. It is already great at writing self contained scripts, and efficiency with large codebases has already improved.
> I would imagine the chance of many of us being on the losing side of this within the next decade is non-trivial.
Yes, this is worrisome. Though its ironic that almost every serious software engineer at some point in time in their possibly early childhood / career when programming was more for fun than work, thought of how cool it would be for a computer program to write a computer program. And now when we have the capability, in front of our eyes, we're afraid of it.
But, one thing humans are really good at is adaptability. We adapt to circumstances / situation -- good or bad. Even if the worst happens, people loose jobs, for a short term it will be negatively impactful for the families, however, over a period of time, humans will adapt to the situation, adapt to coexist with AI, and find next endeavour to conquer.
Rejecting AI is not the solution. Using it as any other tool, is. A tool that, if used correctly, by the right person, can indeed produce faster results.
I mean, some are good at adaptability, while others get completely left in the dust. Look at the rust belt: jobs have left, and everyone there is desperate for a handout. Trump is busy trying to engineer a recession in the US—when recessions happen, companies at the margin go belly-up and the fat is trimmed from the workforce. With the inroads that AI is making into the workforce, it could be the first restructuring where we see massive losses in jobs.
Exactly, and it does't help with agentic use cases that tend to solve problem in on-shot, for example, there is 0 requirement from a model to be conversational when it is trying to triage a support question to preset categories.
> We heard clearly from users that great AI should not only be smart, but also enjoyable to talk to.
That is what most people asked for. No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even. Its extremely hard to make all people happy. Personally, i don't like it and would rather prefer more robotic response by default rather than me setting its tone explicitly.
> No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even.
It makes sense if your target is the general public talking to an AI girlfriend.
I don't know if that will fill their pockets enough to become profitable given the spending they announced but isn't this like they are admitting that all the AGI, we cure cancer, ... stuff was just bullshitting? And if it was bullshitting aren't they overvalued? Sex sells but will it sell enough?
> i don't like it and would rather prefer more robotic response by default rather than me setting its tone explicitly.
Ai interfaces are going the same way the public internet has; initially it's audience was a subset of educated westerners, now it's the general public.
One suggestion that possibly is not covered is that you/we can document clearly how AI generated PRs will be handled, make it easy for contributors to discover it and if/when such PR shows up refer the documented section to save yourself time.
> if you can find the logic and the will to do it.
This is important. Both logic and will are required. If only one of the 2 exists the impact can be limited if any at all. Broadly speaking, mostly, people have the logic but not the "will" in a sense that latter gets diluted by factors like ego, seniority, org lag etc.
I think that is where the power of current AI chat interfaces like chatgpt beats other digital interfaces. You ask a question. Get just an answer back in more or less same format or grammer. And no ads. No distractions. Clean.
Though it is tough for ai chat providers to keep it that way for long if revenue from subscriptions / apis does not offset the exorbitant compute costs.
Youtube premium. $12 CAD/month. No ads + videos can play in the background.
On the other hand it wasn't worth for us to spend time/money on Netflix/Amazon prime (streaming stuff) so we just killed the subscription and channeled it to Youtube.
Once upon a time (about 10 years ago), I could turn off my iPad’s screen and still hear YouTube playing without paying Google for the privilege. Used to be HN would never accept such a thing, but here it is on a list of things we are happy to pay for. Amazing how times change.
It makes way more sense to do value analysis purely on what what you gain vs what it costs rather than trying to factor in the cost of making or implementing said item.
I don't care if the bill of materials is really high, that's no reason for a consumer to be any more sympathetic for a price; similarly, costing almost nothing is no reason to deride a price. That's the company's problem.
It's optimal to just focus on what you get for what you pay.
Yeah YouTube premium is where I put my money where my is. Always said I would prefer if I could pay for content outright rather than be advertised to. Well, this is it.
but it doesn't do it on all platforms. PC only sure. Red works on smart tvs, phones, tablets, xbox, computer..
and you get the youtube music with it.
it costs me about 20 min worth of work once a month to remove ads from my primary media consumption site.. totally worth it, and don't have to mess with 3rd party BS. Completely changes the youtube experience
When I got a job at one of the FAANG companies I told a friend how many rejections I got. The friend said: “it’s easier to narrate your failures once you’ve emerged victorious”.
She was right, I realized.
Now I’m looking for job again, have been rejected by 4 companies, no offer in hand yet and I’m open about it.
Thank you for this. I recently graduated in May with a bachelors in CS and looking at LinkedIn has been very discouraging. I know it's unhealthy to compare yourself to others but it's hard, especially when you see a lot of other people having success. Before the pandemic I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it (my goal is to be a creative technologist like the Google Creative Lab), now I'm just trying to finish a personal project to showcase my skills (can't wait to share it with Hacker News), find a job, and apply for grad school in a program like NYU ITP, or a Human Computer Interaction program.
> I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it
The secret to networking is to "network" when you don't need anything. If you meet people in your (intended) field, get to know them, learn, learn, learn, and generally establish yourself - even a little - before you need it, you'll be 100x better off when you do.
If you wait until you need it, you can come off as needy, desperate, or one of those "I only hear from them when they need something" people. I have a former friend that literally the only time I heard from her was when she was looking for work. I got in to habit of "Oh, she emailed.. must be looking for a job!" Don't be them.
> The secret to networking is to "network" when you don't need anything.
I can’t emphasise this enough. Over the past decade I have built up a small network of mostly former and current colleagues. We all have mutual respect for each other, so if an opportunity or need arose neither party would feel bad about reaching out or being reached out to. After all, a positive outcome will likely be mutual.
I used to think that networking involved going to conferences and shaking hands with strangers in hallways while exchanging business cards. This was terrifying because I knew I’d be bad at it.
I actually don’t see this is a negative thing, and prefer it sometimes so long as the expectations are mutual. If me and another person are on the same page about only being in touch when the other needs something, and it goes both ways, why waste time trying to facilitate a friendship for the sake of it? Often I find those “friendships” lack substance and just serve to fulfill a social norm that it’s bad to ask for things only when you need them. Perhaps what I’m suggesting is that so long as the social contract is agreed upon (usually implicitly) between parties, there’s nothing wrong with having transactional professional relationships.
On a larger note: I find looking into LinkedIn quite depressing. Everyone is happy and excited and successful. There is no real value in most posts. Rather, they’re usually a variation of this:
”#supergrateful and #blessed for meeting super inspiring %SomeoneImportant today #growth #entrepreneurship %hipsterstartup #nopause”
Those people are showing their “highlights reel,” of course. I see people who’ve been laid off saying how #blessed they are to start their own business, people getting promoted or pumping the release of their latest project but are very stressed and unhappy, etc.
I also stay away from LinkedIn, though. #worthless #selfpromotion
This is the way I think about Linkedin: It’s not really about networking. Most fruitful networking take place on other places. It’s mostly a way for recruiters to find people. The modern equivalent of a Rolodex. Which can be good for people who might want to get in touch with a recruiter that has something to offer them. (Some people don’t want do be contacted by recruiters and for those people Linkedin probably doesn’t have so much to offer.)
The scourge of social media :). Quite some research linking depression/anxiety and social media [0] and even though my own experience is not exactly data, I am happy I don't mindlessly scroll through pics and boasts and get time to spend on other things (like HN ;-)) .
LinkedIn, I am afraid is becoming very similar :(
I’ve had a long career in technology, and for most of it I was doing project and product management, with some light coding on my own time as a hobby. Five years ago I’d finally had it with all that and went to a great coding boot camp. I did end up landing a job after that, but it was a grueling experience to go back to zero in finding jobs.
Comparing yourself to others can be incredibly draining. Not only are many of these people at different stages in their careers than you are, but you’re seeing the best faces they can put forward when you look at LinkedIn.
My advice is - own who and where you are right now. You have done a hell of a lot of work to get where you are now, and you can be proud of that. And if a company isn’t looking for someone like you - if 20 companies aren’t - that’s not on you. Keep working on your craft, keep following what networking angles you can in this crazy year, and keep the faith.
Hey! You might want to look into the public Creative Developers slack -- http://creative-dev.herokuapp.com/ -- there's a good community there.
Also, look into what the School for Poetic Computation is doing -- https://sfpc.io/
Happy to send you (a lot) more references / ideas of places to which you could apply, digital artist centers to follow, etc. Reach out! (email in profile)
I had 11 onsites (over the course of 6-8 months) at mostly normal tech companies before getting an offer at a FAANG.
Now I've been here 6 months.
Really crazy, and I have no idea how this ended up happening. Probably a combination of studying more and getting better with every interview, finding my weaknesses and fixing them. Along with a combination of bad luck with getting rejected so many times, and good luck with the final acceptance of where I am.
Interesting thing is that I think my offer was more towards the higher end of band for this company, so who knows.
I've been rejected by Google once, Amazon like 10 time (I even had an onsight in 2017), Facebook once, and Microsoft once. Apple didn't even say they didn't want me.
I'm also of the mindset that even if this is not true, that is, even if current state of LLMs is best that it ever will be, AI still would be helpful. It is already great at writing self contained scripts, and efficiency with large codebases has already improved.
> I would imagine the chance of many of us being on the losing side of this within the next decade is non-trivial.
Yes, this is worrisome. Though its ironic that almost every serious software engineer at some point in time in their possibly early childhood / career when programming was more for fun than work, thought of how cool it would be for a computer program to write a computer program. And now when we have the capability, in front of our eyes, we're afraid of it.
But, one thing humans are really good at is adaptability. We adapt to circumstances / situation -- good or bad. Even if the worst happens, people loose jobs, for a short term it will be negatively impactful for the families, however, over a period of time, humans will adapt to the situation, adapt to coexist with AI, and find next endeavour to conquer.
Rejecting AI is not the solution. Using it as any other tool, is. A tool that, if used correctly, by the right person, can indeed produce faster results.