[HN Gopher] Deepmind's alphacode conquers coding, performing as ... ___________________________________________________________________ Deepmind's alphacode conquers coding, performing as well as humans Author : Brajeshwar Score : 247 points Date : 2022-12-15 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (singularityhub.com) (TXT) w3m dump (singularityhub.com) | Konohamaru wrote: | There's this paradox in AI known since the 80s (I think it's | Moraevac's Paradox?) that the abilities we acquired latest in our | evolutionary history (e.g. chess, language, algorithmic thinking) | are the easiest for AI to automate. But the tasks that are deep | in our evolutionary history (e.g. object recognition, navigating | the environment, etc...) are extremely difficult. | | Some AI speculators, using Godelesque reasoning, posit that | computer programming will be the last job to be automated by AI, | so it can bootstrap itself. In reality, it will be one of the | first jobs automated by AI, while jobs like cook, barista, etc... | will be much later automated, if ever. | Der_Einzige wrote: | I just sat in a Burmese restaurant with an automated barista. | Korea has been long ahead of us on automating food service too. | Automatic 24/7 drink making machine hands are common in Seoul. | Konohamaru wrote: | Tasks that involve manipulating physical objects to maintain | biological homeostasis (e.g. cook) are hyper-optimized by | biological evolution. It is impossible for engineers to | engineer a unit that performs better with the same energy | restrictions humans have. | Der_Einzige wrote: | Good thing fusion actually is just 20 years away after all | this time! | Animats wrote: | So when do we get a web site designer whee you write what you | want and a web site is generated? That sort of thing is stylized | and there's lots of training data available. | mannykannot wrote: | "AlphaCode tackles the problem by generating over a million | potential solutions for a single problem--multitudes larger than | previous AI attempts. | | "As a sanity check and to narrow the results down, _the AI runs | candidate solves through simple test cases._ It then clusters | similar ones so it nails down just one from each cluster to | submit to the challenge. " | | The big question for me is, where did the test cases come from? | They seem to be contributing much more to the outcome here than | just "a sanity check and to narrow the results down." If they | were effectively spelled out as part of the challenge, then this | is an impressive result extending the trajectory of other recent | achievements, but not so far as to justify the title's "conquers | coding." If they were not, then this would seem to be taking | things to a whole new level. | sfink wrote: | Our current "AI" does only interpolation, not extrapolation. | | You feed it a large input corpus and it digests it in clever | ways. Then when you probe for something contained wholly within | the space described by that corpus, it is amazingly good at | fabricating something plausible to match the point in that space | that you requested. | | Which covers a lot of stuff and is very useful, but does very | little for problems that require extrapolation. It can't expand | the edges, it can't come up with anything truly original. It | can't solve problems that people haven't already solved and | written down the solutions somewhere the AI could find them. | | Another way of saying it: AI today is much better at memory than | thought. | | Career advice for young people today: specialize in pushing the | edges, not in filling in details. There will be some areas where | applying existing stuff will hold out and be useful for a long | time, but you'll always be racing against the AI. Colonize the | parts of problem space where AI doesn't have the imagination to | go. | | (Of course, humans are notoriously bad at correctly recognizing | what does or doesn't require originality. Hell, we think we're | making decisions about what to do every minute of every day, when | in fact we're just a bunch of dancing meat automata following | ingrained patterns 99% of the time.) | visarga wrote: | When verification is possible, the interpolation machine starts | to extrapolate. | | There is a process that generates ideas/solutions, and a | process that tests them. An artist and a critic, a scientist | and a lab. Together they form the experimentation loop. | | Let's take the game of Go for example. Testing who won a game | is trivial. AlphaGo managed to beat humans in a few days of | self-training. In other words, those edges you speak about can | be pushed with massive search and verification. | | There is no reason we can't do massive search + verification | for math and code. This is a good way to create training data | where it doesn't exist in sufficient quantity. | | Other things can be simulated with expensive computation, and | then "distilled" into fast neural networks. Then we apply the | neural net to fast-search solutions. In the end we need to | verify some of them (thinking of weather simulations, new | materials, new drugs, ...) | | Also reminded of the recent AlphaTensor who leveraged massive | learning from verification to beat Strassen's algorithm who was | state of the art for 50 years. The is no reason neural nets | should remain purely interpolative if we can manufacture good | training data by running computation or experiments. | | Ideas are cheap, verification matters. Generative outputs are | worthless without verification. | tbalsam wrote: | Er....this feels like every main criticism going back to even | the expert systems pre-90's. | | Could you please provide some support for your argument? This | was repeated a lot in the early days of the modern wave | (2012-2016) but was pretty thoroughly debunked as we've | explored generalization and how these models disentangle | intrinsic concepts and compute with them. Heck, even modern | transformers are restricted memory Turing complete and use that | to their advantage. | | Also, I do not mean to be rude, but frankly saying "colonize | the parts of the problem space where AI doesn't have the | imagination to go" is frankly rather terrible as it leans on | the imagination argument of AI. At this point, being adaptable | to co-integrate will be good, otherwise I could see people | following that stuck inside of some kind of Sisyphean pseuso- | Luddite escapist nightmare. | | Source for opinions: have been involved in ML in some form for | most of the modern wave, and am appropriately (quite) skeptical | about the AI takeover/revolution/eventual singularity | belief/etc. | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | It can write an original poem using unique prompts I give it. | Are you suggesting a similar poem exists somewhere else? I | think not. | | It cobbles together examples, sure, but that's exactly what we | do too. Everything "original" we make is riddled with | subconscious outside influences. | klabb3 wrote: | Like other responders, I think your take is oversimplifying. | It's hard to both classify what imagination is, how to judge | whether AI has it, and we also have humans tuning these models, | which may or may not contribute to its blandness. | | That said, I think it's still fair to say that most | interpolation type of work is looking very threatened by AI as | it is today, so the converse (don't go into those fields) is | probably sound advice in light of current developments. As for | the rest, I suspect we'll be forced to chisel off piece by | piece from our zeitgeist of "imagination". Some pieces will | fall off quickly, as AIs replace them, and some will take | longer, perhaps a lot longer. | | I do find it interesting that computers ended up killing it in | unpredictable domains such as style transfer and NLP, while | being mediocre-at-best in eg humor. It may mean that we have | over- and underestimated aspects of what traits are unique and | sophisticated. | angarg12 wrote: | I've conducted hundreds of FAANG-level coding interviews, and | recently tried to run my interview questions through ChatGPT. The | model was able to spit out a correct, optimal, clean Python | solution effortlessly. | | Interestingly when I asked a follow up, a harder version of the | same problem, ChatGPT spits out code that sort-of looks correct, | but is actually nonsense. | | So, would it pass the interview? That's difficult to say. | Interviews don't happen in a vacuum, you also consider the | candidate's thought process, explanations, alternatives, | tradeoffs... | | Still, I see this is a game changer for this kind of interviews. | So long as candidates understand and explain the output code, | there is a good chance they would clear the interview. Even if | the code is incorrect, it might given them some hints towards the | right solution. | | So where do we go from here? I always loathed this interview | format, and these languages model reinforce it even further. | Interview cheating has always been there, but it is generally so | rare that it isn't a real concern. However these tools are too | effective and easy to use. I can see a real divide between people | who use them and people who doesn't. This type of interview might | become even more useless at telling good coders apart. | | My take is we have 3 choices: | | a) Ignore it. | | b) Try to fight it. | | c) Embrace it. | | a) is not an option. b) would make an already pretty dreadful | process even more intolerable. My money is on c) | | I can envision an interview format where we allow, or even | encourage people to use ChatGPT and AlphaCode during the | interview, much like you would use your IDE or a search engine. | In fact seeing how a candidate understands and uses those code | snippets can be a very interesting data point. | | Either that or scrap leetcode-style interviews altogether. | | P.S.: I was thinking about writing a blog post about this, if | people think it'd be interesting. | LawTalkingGuy wrote: | I get the same results from asking for code. Near 100% success | with an initial demo, and then pretty tragic performance when | making a series of changes to actually fit the concept. I got | it to write 3d rotation code, and to switch to using rotors | instead of quaternions but when I asked it to rewrite the | combine_rotors() method it rewrote it to combine Enigma rotors. | I explained its error and it apologized but just wasn't able to | go back to the original code and work with it anymore. | | Interviewing is going to be shaken up but I think some methods | are more timeless. I've been giving the subject code instead of | asking them to write it for a while now. Largely because I | wanted to talk more and watch them type less. | | We start by discussing the coding challenge guidelines and I | leave them vague. They need to understand the goal and what | I've left out and suggest those guidelines themselves. Once we | agree though, I give them the code. "Here's what's running | now." | | Then I update the goal and we discuss changes. I get them to | "whiteboard" certain things, like what a query looks like with | their proposed changes or whatever, and we discuss big-O, etc. | This, imho, is how whiteboarding is actually used - not to | write whole programs but to provide examples and pick them | apart. | | I feel that this would work even if they were using an AI in | another window. We're trying to select for developers with | common sense and domain knowledge, and who can clearly discuss | engineering tradeoffs. Actually making the changes (the coding | itself) was a big part of the job and that's decreasing, but | imho all the other requirements remain. They'll still need to | know how to handle the issues I talked about above, of trying | to get the model to write the right code! | woeirua wrote: | We're just going to move to on-site interviews only. ChatGPT | can't enter the equation then. | amildie wrote: | >ChatGPT can't enter the equation then. | | In a few years, ChatGPT will be _conducting_ these | interviews. | woeirua wrote: | LMAO, no. What would prevent someone from just looking up | the answers using ChatGPT on another machine? | fourstar wrote: | Neuralink blocks your path. | feet wrote: | Neuralink is not realistic in its current conception, they | won't easily solve the problem of input to a brain | woeirua wrote: | Neuralink doesn't work. | [deleted] | exceptione wrote: | I would expect A, because it is an option. | | Like in mathematics or other tests students are not allowed to | use the internet or an advanced calculator in order to test | wether they truly comprehend the stuff. | | If you think that your FAANG-interviews are any good, then just | keep them in the format you already have, by making sure | applicants cannot use AI during the test. I would have on-sites | with pen+paper, whiteboard or a prepped/supervised machine, | whatever. | | Of course, applicants could use AI to train for the interview, | but that is not a problem, as long as you test their | comprehension. | angarg12 wrote: | I'm not a fan of making the process more dreadful than it | already is. Forcing people to go to an office and use pen and | paper or a whiteboard would do exactly that. | | I hope companies (including mine!) see the writing on the | wall and stop trying to fight the future. | | This isn't accounting for even just pretending we are testing | candidates on anything remotely indicative of on-the-job | performance. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Would training with such an AI _help_ their comprehension? Or | _hurt_ it? | | My money is on "hurt". | serjester wrote: | Given the trends towards remote tech jobs, it could be | difficult to convince your companies engineers to show up to | the office for what's usually just a weed out leet code | interview. | mywittyname wrote: | Proctored tests are common for certification exams. Perhaps | there's a future where candidates go to one of these exam | centers for one of their technical interviews. | antipotoad wrote: | Or just a live (remote) programming interview, with no | use of Codex or Copilot. | ren_engineer wrote: | Algorithm interview and competitive programming type questions | are probably some of the easiest for GPT to solve because there | are a massive number of problems and solutions publicly | available for training. | | The real benefit of AI is somewhat shown in this paper, it | effectively solved the problems through brute force generating | millions of possible solutions. For real world problems it | would be interesting to let GPT generate a bunch of different | solutions and push them into a test environment and see which | works best. | | The biggest problem I see is black swan events where AI coded | systems work great until something goes wrong and no human | truly knows how all the pieces fit together. | bcrosby95 wrote: | If a company allows ChatGPT to be used on the job, anything but | c) seems foolish. If the company doesn't allow it, c) seems | like a bad idea. | jgilias wrote: | Your option d) that you don't even enumerate (scrap leetcode) | would be best. | gautamcgoel wrote: | I expect that the reason it gave the correct answer to your | first question is simply that it already saw the problem and | memorized the solution - there is some empirical evidence that | deep neural networks are able to memorize much of their | training data. | angarg12 wrote: | Possibly. The problem itself is not in leetcode, but it | almost certainly has been leaked somewhere. However the | program was able to make a few changes to the code with some | prompting, which hints a little bit more smarts than just | regurgitating an answer. | | Nevertheless the point is moot. I've invented completely | novel questions (promise!), and saw them leaked online after | asking them twice. The process is fundamentally flawed and | large language models are just making that glaringly obvious. | neilv wrote: | > _I 've conducted hundreds of FAANG-level coding interviews,_ | [...] I always loathed this interview format,* | | That's impressive perseverance. Did that wear on you? | angarg12 wrote: | I hate leetcode style interviews, but I've done hundreds of | them. The irony is not lost on me. Some might say I'm part of | the problem. | | Thing is, in a small way, I'm trying to change things from | within. I try to make the process as palatable and fair to | candidates as possible, while working within the constraints | of the system. When I train new interviewers some of my top | tips are: | | a) The purpose of the interview is to determine whether the | candidate is a good fit for the company, and the company is a | good fit for the candidate. b) The interview is an imperfect | proxy for this. | | It then follows that interviews shouldn't overindex in the | coding round. If I have helped someone to get an offer that | wouldn't otherwise, I'm satisfied. | | BTW that's also one of the reasons I'm publishing this. I | hope to push the point that leetcode-style coding interviews | are outdated and should be burnt to the ground. | nsxwolf wrote: | Myself, I've only conducted dozens not hundreds of FAANG- | style coding interviews. I also loathe the format, and it | does indeed wear on me. I hate every second. | time_to_smile wrote: | The real issue with any of these AI innovations is they really | point out places where humans have already started to behave | like an AI in the first place. | | Ever since the emergence of leetcode style interviews I've been | shocked at how many people can reproduce leetcode examples, but | still fundamentally have no sense of algorithm design outside | of the context of a job interview. | | Programmers with their sights set on acing a FAANG interview | will just keep repeating leetcode problems until they start to | memorize the common patterns (not the problems themselves of | course, but the structure of these type of problems). What's | disturbing to me is that I recall far more interesting | discussion about algorithms in the era before leetcode | dominated everything. | | The common solution isn't to understand algorithms better, but | to become a leetcode solving robot. | | So it's no surprise to me that AI can pretty easily replicate | humans that have tried to turn themselves into robots. | | We see similar patterns in the art that AI can create. It's | very good at replicating a kind of art style of designers | trying to turn themselves into design robots. | codekilla wrote: | Absolutely spot on. I actually do algorithm design, usually | over a period of weeks (at least), and leet code is a joke | for the serious algorist (I'm sure I'd fail an interview | based on it). Nothing has so clearly illustrated the robotic | nature of the leet code expert quite like this result has. | savingsPossible wrote: | Do tell! | | What sort of job leads you do design algorithms? | codekilla wrote: | Mathematical Biology/Bioinformatics. We have to think | _very_ carefully about every step in the process of | extracting information from large, diverse datasets-- | often writing things from scratch, combining | /transforming things in novel ways, and implementing new | mathematical ideas efficiently enough to be computable on | large datasets. | andrekandre wrote: | > So it's no surprise to me that AI can pretty easily | replicate humans that have tried to turn themselves into | robots. | | this is such a great insight... i feel like it could even | somehow explain a lot of politics and many other phenomena. | eulers_secret wrote: | > Interview cheating has always been there, but it is generally | so rare that it isn't a real concern. | | _You 're_ the person they're trying to fool, so if they cheat | successfully you would never know. You've never seen overt | displays of bad cheating, which is different. | | Think you haven't seen a stick insect in years? Likely you | have, but just didn't _notice_ it... | | Cheaters will always be more motivated than those trying to | detect them - because _everything_ is on the line for them. | sebzim4500 wrote: | >You're the person they're trying to fool, so if they cheat | successfully you would never know. You've never seen overt | displays of bad cheating, which is different. | | I don't think it's widespread at least, since in my | experience people that do well in technical zoom interviews | do not drastically decrease in apparent competence when we | move to in person rounds. | | People definitely get told interview questions by recruiters | though, if you count that as cheating then it is everywhere. | deegles wrote: | > c) Embrace it | | asking "here's a chatgpt solution to the problem... what's | wrong with it?" would be a solid process imo. | kristiandupont wrote: | Well, if they still have access to ChatGPT, they can ask that | of it as well. It may or may not give a valid answer, just as | it does with code. | mike_hearn wrote: | A big if. A lot of ChatGPT discussions seem to take for | granted that it'll always be available/free/priced low | enough that ~everyone has access to it. Seems more likely | that at some point OpenAI will close it up and put it back | behind an API. | ilaksh wrote: | You can use text-davinci-003 from the API now and it | works better for many things. | NegativeLatency wrote: | This would be way more fun | Kinrany wrote: | And you can give every candidate a new version of it. | angarg12 wrote: | I love it! | | Particularly, ChatGPT can give apparently correct solutions | that are wrong in subtle ways. | | Also reading, understanding, reasoning about, and fixing code | other's wrote is way closer to on-the-job performance. | red_admiral wrote: | By the time someone gets an on-premises interview, you'd notice | if they're using a bot or not? Or are all the interview rounds | remote these days? | angarg12 wrote: | We've been doing remote-only interviews for years now. | sgerenser wrote: | In my experience (with FAANGs at least) the interviews have | been virtual since the pandemic began. Haven't heard of any | plans to return to return to flying out candidates for in- | person interviews. | philjohn wrote: | That seems like it's likely been trained on various examples of | FAANG questions that are posted to the likes of leetcode, with | solutions often presented. The push for harder version was | clever, and that it fell over is no real surprise. | ilaksh wrote: | By the way ChatGPT is not even the best model OpenAI has for | writing code. | busyant wrote: | i think you're correct about option c, primarily because we | could never force everyone to adopt the other 2 options. | | option c makes me nervous, but right now I can't see an ai | correctly dealing with the ambiguity of the data sets i | typically look at.i do a lot of "asking for clarification." | spuz wrote: | Our coding exercise cannot be solved by ChatGPT and I believe | is much more effective at evaluating coding ability than | leetcode-style questions. We ask candidates to design an | object-oriented booking system which requires 3 or 4 different | classes to implement. ChatGPT cannot easily do this without | heavy prompting from the user at which point, they'd be better | off just writing their design down themselves. We want to | evaluate candidates based on the kind of work they will | _actually_ be doing - not brainteasing O(n) solutions to | contrived algorithm questions and so far it 's worked very | well. | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | > cannot be solved by ChatGPT | | That's great! For now. But tomorrow's coming fast. | angarg12 wrote: | I agree. Our interview has 3 coding rounds, and one of them I | call "clean code". For that I ask a straightforward question | that requires candidate to define some APIs and write some | classes / functions. Then I ask several follow ups, adding or | changing requirements. | | This is by far my favourite question, the one closer to on- | the-job coding. It also lends itself well to deep | conversations with candidates. | | But alas I don't own the process and still have to work | within the parameters of the company. Whenever possible I ask | this kind of questions, but other interviewers will default | to leetcode-style rounds. | malandrew wrote: | This is why I ask questions in a business domain. It requires | the programmer to think not only about solving a | straightforward clear problem and only worry about Big-O. | Instead they need to figure out the problem by asking | thoughtful questions about possible business concerns and think | about which ones to optimize for. | | Ambiguity that requires follow up questions for successful | isn't going to be addressed by something focused on solving a | problem that "thinks" it has all the information to solve the | problem. | zamalek wrote: | > c) Embrace it. [...] My money is on c) | | Agreed. | | I think developers who don't will be rare in a few years time. | Just like developers who primarily rely on assemblers (versus | compilers) have basically become extinct. Like we sometimes, | _very rarely,_ need to inline some assembly, we will sometimes | need to use the ol ' gray matter to figure out a novel | algorithm or something. | | I believe that avoiding _learning_ these tools could be a | existential issue for your present-day job. You don 't have to | come to depend on them, or use them daily, but you do need to | understand how best to use (and not use) them. | [deleted] | polotics wrote: | "When pitted against over 5,000 human participants, the AI | outperformed about 45 percent...". So 55 percent of humans | outperformed the AI. How motivated were the humans in the sample? | How many tests were run with these 5000 persons? | chakintosh wrote: | > Rather than copying and pasting sections of previous training | code, AlphaCode came up with clever snippets without copying | large chunks of code or logic in its "reading material." | | Gave me a good chuckle lol | spaceman_2020 wrote: | We're not far from coding becoming just a hobby or a sport - like | chess. | solumunus wrote: | We're nowhere even remotely close to that. I have to assume | that anyone reacting on this level are in the same group of | people who 10 years ago believed we would have fully self | driving cars by now. | spaceman_2020 wrote: | I don't know - chatGPT is the first time that I've | consistently used an AI product in my workflow, to the point | that when the site was rate limited today, I felt a little | paralyzed. Googling for answers on Stackoverflow or looking | up documentation felt distinctively primitive. | | I've never felt that way about any tool. | Workaccount2 wrote: | In 2014 there were AI experts on record saying that an AI | beating a top GO champion was at least 15 years out. | wittycardio wrote: | Yup our current version of AI is great for cool demos and | very bad for real world use cases. | btilly wrote: | I am dubious about the stated result. | | Language models have been very good at spitting out chunks of | text verbatim that were in their training data. Buried in the | github training data will belots of examples where people post | their solutions to fun problems..including past code | competitions. | | How often is it managing to match a description of a repository | and spitting out correct code that cribbed heavily from it? That | is, instead of figuring out the problem, it is pattern matching | to a solution that someone else already figured out? | | How would we know? | antipotoad wrote: | I think the much better blog post directly from DeepMind might | answer your questions [0], but suffice it to say, the model | does seem to be solving novel problems. | | [0]: https://www.deepmind.com/blog/competitive-programming- | with-a... | amag wrote: | We software engineers have to be the stupidest "smart" people on | the planet. No other occupations work so hard to destroy entire | businesses including our own. I get it, I'm a software engineer | who loves automation. | | "But AI will just be a tool in our tool-set, software engineers | will still be the system architects." | | Sure, for a while and then AI will do that too. | | "But eventually we will live in a fully automated world in | abundance, wouldn't that be great?" | | Doing what? When we get there, anything we can consider doing, an | AI can do faster and better. Write a poem? Write a book? Write | music? Paint a picture? Life will be like a computer game with | cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with something, instead of | fighting on and improving we will turn to our universal cheat- | engine: AI. | | Anecdotally, I did an analog mistake in my early twenties when I | wrote a cheat-program for save-files. It worked like a typical | cheat-engine, search the save-file for a specific value, go back | to the game and change that value, go back to the save and search | for the new value but only in those locations that had the | original value. This is how I ruined "Heroes of Might and Magic | II" :(. I used to love that game. I could spend hours playing it. | Writing the cheat program was a lot of fun for a couple of hours | but when it was done, there was no longer any reason for me to | play the game. You might say that I didn't _need_ to use my cheat | program, but once the genie was out of the box it was too | tempting to resist when I met some obstacle in the game. | | This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it will | also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing superfluous. | | Sorry for the bleak comment but this my fear and I feel the genie | is already out of the box. | paxys wrote: | I can't imagine the amount of corporate brainwashing needed to | get to this level of thinking. Are you really saying that | people cannot have any identity in life, any dreams, hobbies or | pursuits if they can't sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a | day, 5 days a week fixing Jira tickets? | | Just because a car can go 100mph doesn't mean long distance | running doesn't need to exist. Just because a novel you write | isn't the best in the world doesn't mean the hobby is | pointless. Go buy a farm and grow your own food. Keep some | pets. Build cool software just because you can. Hang out with | your friends. Play with your kids. Do literally anything you | want. Not having to be a wage slave to survive is a _good | thing_ for humanity. | slt2021 wrote: | profits (benefits of overall automation) will be reaped by | capitalists (employers, capital owners), not the general | public. | | plus, before we automate anything civilian, we will have to | automate everything military, cause they get the first dabs | at any emerging tech. | | more likely we will see global war between stealthy | autonomous robots much earlier, before we automate much on | the civilian side | amag wrote: | Thank you for the ad hominem attack. It's always a pleasure | to discuss things with people who like to jump to conclusions | and assume things about people they don't know anything | about. | | Personally I prefer not to pass judgement on a person based | on the very little knowledge that can be gleamed from a post | like this. But maybe, just maybe if you actually read what I | have written (in other comments as well) things might clear | up for you. | acuozzo wrote: | > Not having to be a wage slave to survive is a good thing | for humanity. | | I mean, sure, that's one of the two paths discussed in | "Manna" by Marshall Brain. Within the book it's called "The | Australia Project"; a kind of utopia. | | Myself and the OP are more worried about the other path: a | dystopia in which the majority of people are forced into | something much worse than wage slavery by those in control of | the thinking machines. A dystopia not unlike the one that led | to the "Great Revolt" in the Dune series. | notpachet wrote: | > A dystopia not unlike the one that led to the "Great | Revolt" in the Dune series. | | I'm glad you brought this up; I've found the term | 'Butlerian Jihad' coming increasingly to mind when I read | AI threads on HN. It's interesting to think about a future | where we potentially put prohibitions on the use of AI for | moral reasons. | | https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad | aquaduck wrote: | > Myself and the OP are more worried about the other path: | a dystopia in which the majority of people are forced into | something much worse than wage slavery by those in control | of the thinking machines. | | My fear is that nobody will remain in control of the | thinking machines. Imagine an AI agent for hire which | maintains its own cryptocurrency accounts and pays its own | cloud hosting bills. That's the future I'm worried about. | throw827474737 wrote: | > I can't imagine the amount of corporate brainwashing needed | to get to this level of thinking.... Not having to be a wage | slave to survive is a good thing for humanity. | | Corporate brainwashing, why? That is just realistic. I mean | we know earlier people with much harder lifes actually had | more free leisure time.. and even Ford imagined with all the | automation we may be able to work much less and have better | lifes.. still here we are: A few people making tons of money, | some soing very good to okayish, but the vast majority doing | 2-3 low paying crap jobs to survive.. and we all even workong | more than decades ago. How? | secondcoming wrote: | People have bills to pay, or will AI do that too? | thedorkknight wrote: | My hobbies are exercise/sports, playing video games, reading | books, building models, and hanging out with friends. I have | zero fear of any of those being automated away | scottyah wrote: | The ability to afford to do those activities could be lost. | Automation pulls the value previously created by many humans | and concentrates it to those who create/maintain the system. | As that list of needed people shrinks, so too does the | probability of a person being able to create meaningful | value. | eikenberry wrote: | > This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it | will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing | superfluous. | | This is just silly on 2 levels. First is that programming is | fun due to the artistic/creative nature of it. It's not what I | program that matters, it's how I program it. No way an AI will | replace the fun of thinking about code and then materializing | that vision. | | Second is that once an AI is good enough to write software | better than us, IE. rewrite itself better, then we have reached | a form of the singularity and all bets are off. | CGamesPlay wrote: | > Doing what? When we get there, anything we can consider | doing, an AI can do faster and better. Write a poem? Write a | book? Write music? Paint a picture? Life will be like a | computer game with cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with | something, instead of fighting on and improving we will turn to | our universal cheat-engine: AI. | | For literally anything in my life that I can do, there is | already someone who can do it better and faster than me. I | still enjoy doing the things that I do, and why would that | change? | bruce343434 wrote: | Because now that person works for you, for free, instantly, | anywhere, anytime. There's at least a temptation. | amag wrote: | This! Perfectly stated! | nulld3v wrote: | I can execute a TAS speed run of any game I want in a | couple clicks. So why do speedrunners still exist then if | they can never hope to match TAS? | | I can open Stockfish and absolutely destroy any human I | want in chess. So why do people still play chess then? | | I can get ChatGPT to write a good response to your comment | in mere moments. So why am I still typing? | moffkalast wrote: | > So why am I still typing? | | So you don't have to give OpenAI your phone number, hah. | tintor wrote: | "So why am I still typing?" | | Because ChatGPT is currently overloaded by users. | GartzenDeHaes wrote: | A few months after being defeated by AlphaGo, Lee Sedol | retired from profession Go. He said, "Even if I become | the number one, there is an entity that cannot be | defeated." And, "As a professional Go player, I never | want to play this kind of match again." | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol | ALittleLight wrote: | For myself, I don't like to play online Go against | humans, because I hate to lose. Instead, I play against a | computer with a difficulty rating of around 1-3 dan, and | whenever things start going badly for me I just undo | moves and try again. Sometimes I ask the computer for | advice on what move to make. My experience of Go is that | I always win against a player who is much better than me. | I find it pretty satisfying. | bavila wrote: | That seems more like a testament to the intensity of | someone who does X to be the "best" at it, rather than | someone who does X for the fun of it. Go became more than | just a game to him -- it was his identity. | guerrilla wrote: | > for free | | That seems very naive. | chrisbaker98 wrote: | Who says that person will work for _you_ , or that it will | be free? | soperj wrote: | They're talking about the AI. | space_fountain wrote: | I'm not sure if this is what the commenter meant, but I | am vanishingly unlikely to own the AI. Even if I write | the AI I'm unlikely to own it. The training costs are too | large and even if I did train a working model, AI can be | duplicated, and there's little reason to use anything but | the best. The scary thing about AI to me is finally | turning intellectual labor into a pure process of | capital. You put more energy and capital in, you get more | out, no need or room for humans anywhere in that loop. | Now of course we're a long way away from that. There will | be room for humans for a long time, but it's scary how | much additional power it will give to capital. How much | less the interests of ordinary people will mater | jimbokun wrote: | > Now of course we're a long way away from that. | | I am no longer confident of that. | visarga wrote: | That's actually a great thing in the long run. Money will | be spent on compute, compute will generate data by | generative models + validation models, then data will be | compacted into a new model. Models and data can be | copied, money can't. | | If it works with just electricity and doesn't require | manual human work it is a game changer. No longer limited | by human resources, we can scale research in any field | and improve everyone's life much faster. | | AlphaGo is an example of such an approach. I don't think | models will be locked down, they will probably be like go | bots in recent years, about 50% of them open sourced. As | long as there is an open dataset, the models can be | replicated. | Induane wrote: | The fact that something can do something better than me doesn't | make much difference. The problem there is the comparison. I | like doing things for their own sake; I like knowing things and | the process of attaining said knowledge. Making something is | satisfying in a way that buying it isn't. Why do people make | their own furniture? Why do people restore old cars? Why do | people do pretty much anything? Most of what we (on average) do | for work is kind of meaningless in some sense - it's an ends to | a means. And yet, sans that, people still DO things. | | Because we want to. Because we desire to. | | I'd rather have MORE time to spend doing the pointless things I | _LIKE AND ENJOY_ doing than MORE time doing somewhat pointless | things for companies. | kmonsen wrote: | Software engineers are not a group, there was no way "we" could | decide not to do this. | nnoitra wrote: | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Believe it or not, I don't think it is that bleak. The posts I | seem to see on Linkedin that touch this subject seem to be | reminiscent of Tesla hype ( "soon you won't even need | mechanics!" type of predictions ). It is definitely a different | breed from the usual crop of 'no code' tools, but the | similarities are really hard to ignore for me ( hype, no | understanding of that blackbox does, and reality that things | have to work-- and that someone has to actually understand how | it works ). | | In other words, I honestly don't think AI ( in its current | state at least ) will change much. I will go even as far as to | say that I don't see current generation being able to create an | appropriate prompt. | | I might be a little optimistic here, but having seen how people | normally react to 'easier' things kinda confirms it. | | If I worry about anything here, is that AI will become THE | answer that you will not be allowed to question. | | edit: clarified blackbox statement | amag wrote: | Thanks for this optimistic post and to be clear I don't | expect alphacode to put me out of a job. I've seen the | hilarious examples where people get ChatGPT to for instance | claim that abacus-based computing is faster than GPU-based | computing. | | We're far from there with AI yet but we're on a trajectory | and that's what worries me. | | But in the short term I definitely agree with you. | claytongulick wrote: | I know that this isn't your intent, but I feel like this can be | boiled down to the buggy-whip argument [1]. | | People have reasonable fears of technology disruption, but they | tend to follow the same trajectory - | | 1) innovation | | 2) economic upheaval | | 3) new undiscovered problems arise | | 4) new industries develop to solve those new problems | | 5) humanity gets better | | [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5508260&page=1 | ren_engineer wrote: | I think we are hitting the flywheel stage where AI is going to | be able to start improving its own architecture and | performance. Biggest thing holding AI back right now is | performance efficiency. Will be interesting to see how AI is | used to come up with chip designs and maybe even improvements | on its own model. AI can effectively bootstrap itself and | improve itself so it can then improve itself again | godshatter wrote: | > AI can effectively bootstrap itself and improve itself so | it can then improve itself again | | Does this not frighten anyone else? Or am I alone in this? | status200 wrote: | It has been pondered on and raised terror under the name | "intelligence explosion" | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Int | e... | jimbokun wrote: | Terrified. | ren_engineer wrote: | it's classic sci-fi Skynet type stuff. AI for example might | come up with amazing new nuclear fusion reactor designs so | it has access to more energy to do more processing. Could | be great, could turn out horribly | acuozzo wrote: | You are not alone. | kristiandupont wrote: | You are definitely not alone. I am really excited about | ChatGPT but it also has me ruminating about the | consequences. | ALittleLight wrote: | I think we are running up on a future where intellectual and | creative tasks will be automated, but manual tasks won't be. My | perception is that we are making more progress on mental tasks | than on physical manipulations and the robots to do physical | things are substantially more expensive. | | I think the short-medium term future is not that you have | nothing to do in a world of abundance, but rather that you are | a manual laborer instead of a programmer, lawyer, artist, etc. | The future is that you work as a Door Dasher for an automated | company and enjoy AI generated art as you do. The car mostly | drives itself while you listen to bespoke generated music or | podcasts, occasionally taking over for the car and mainly doing | "last few feet" delivery - dropping packages and bags off at | the door. | dangond wrote: | A few months ago I spent three or four days putting together a | website where I could store my cooking recipes in a nice, | searchable format with some nice UI features that I wanted. | Once AI is good enough, I'll be able to do the same without | needing to brush up on how MongoDB works, or how to vertically | center text in a div, or how to update the page's URL when | navigating to a different recipe without triggering a full | reload of the page. I couldn't care less about any of those | things, I just wanted a cooking recipe website. | SassyGrapefruit wrote: | please no AI is advanced enough to tackle vertical centering | in CSS. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | Considering that web search results are already polluted by | nonsensical, AI-generated advertizement spam masquerading as | cooking recepies, I'll rather take the human curated | experience, thank you very much. | dangond wrote: | That's a different problem entirely. I don't want to host a | website that makes me money via insane SEO and | advertisements. It's literally just a private website me | and my girlfriend use. We add recipes we enjoy and would | want to cook again in the future. If an AI could code that | for me, great! | amag wrote: | But that's my point, when we get where we're heading you | won't _need_ a cooking recipe website, an AI will cook much | better than you could. | | "Ok, great, then I don't have to cook!" | | Yeah, but what will you do instead? We will be reduced to | pure consumers as anything worthwhile to produce will be | produced better and faster by an AI. | dangond wrote: | Hang out with friends, play sports, eat good food, raise a | family, go on hikes. An AI can automate your labor, but it | can't automate your experiences. There are countless | recordings on YouTube of people performing beautiful | renditions of the Interstellar soundtrack on piano, yet | that doesn't stop me from playing my mediocre version and | slowly improving. The act of playing it myself brings me | joy that listening to it could never do. | hnaccy wrote: | Why do you assume you will have the resources to do these | things? | | We're running headlong into a world where AI makes | significant portion of human labor worthless. | exceptione wrote: | That is a positive outcome. If this would be technically | possible, we would collectively have to work insanely | hard to steer the ship, because this is totally not where | we are heading right now. | | Today, low-skilled people have sometimes to work 3 jobs | to pay their rent. | | While we are dreaming about playing tennis, the US | experienced an attempt to overthrow democracy not so long | ago. For some people [1], "enough" does not exist. (We | cannot put these things in context, because what those | people are aiming for transcends our imagination. That is | why there is almost no response.) | | To be blunt: they won't share with you because you like | playing tennis so much. | | [1] I am talking about the money behind all of this | amag wrote: | These are all good options of course, still with the lack | of creative things, it might not be enough for all | people. | gen220 wrote: | In life, the existential personal questions are, roughly, | "what matters (to me)?" and "what should I do about it?". | | Our society currently affords ample opportunity to | "productively" avoid those questions. You can pour | everything into work, watch TV, numb your brain with | drugs, or whatever. | | Automation does not remove the existential questions, it | just removes some of the noise that allows us to ignore | them, and elevates them to the forefront. | | Some people already have answers to those questions, and | stand to gain from that toil being removed. Others have | been avoiding the question their entire life, and | removing the toil that excuses their avoidance is | removing a cornerstone of their identity. | | To that extent, I agree that automation is a | disintegrative force, because so many people have yet to | integrate a personality and identity around answering | these foundational questions. | | Still, it's long-term-better for our society if | automation allows people to access higher forms of self- | actualization. In the medium-term, a depressing number of | people are content with passing time in their current | rung on that ladder, and will be upset with the change. | amag wrote: | > Our society currently affords ample opportunity to | "productively" avoid those questions. | | I fully agree. | | > Some people already have answers to those questions, | and stand to gain from that toil being removed. | | I used to believe that but with the recent improvements | in AI, I think it's only true to an extent. Not all | personalities are equal. As AI's power in the creative | fields increase those fields will more and more become a | question of who has the most money to throw at AI | processing. Superficially it might seem the same as two- | three centuries ago when rich people had famous artists | paint them but it's not. | | I fear where we're at with AI is the beginning of the end | for human creativity. Of course I hope I'm wrong. I hoped | I was wrong about my skepticism when I first learned of | Facebook in 2007, but as it turned out it has and | continues to be a net negative force in our world much | bigger than I could imagine. | gen220 wrote: | > As AI's power in the creative fields increase those | fields will more and more become a question of who has | the most money to throw at AI processing. | | I think the relevant question that might allay your fear | is: why do people make art? | | The industry that produces _commercial_ art is absolutely | on the chopping block, because in commercial art it 's | the result that's important, not the process. Such art is | effectively a commodity, and barriers to the effective | synthesis thereof have already been in the process of | whittling away for centuries. I think you may be over- | indexing on this category, but please correct me if I'm | mis-assuming. | | "True" (for lack of a better word) Art is the expression | of self. It's an action or process that's captured in | some sensory medium. That doesn't go away. | | Imagine an artisan who forges handmade sculptures from | horseshoes, which were obtained from the farm that she | grew up in, themselves forged by her grandfather and worn | by the horses in her mother's stable. There is something | of herself , her family, and the loved they shared that's | in the sculpture. It isn't the most hedonistically- | perfect visual sculpture imaginable, but it brings you | joy to see it because there's a narrative behind it. | | AI does not make stuff like this go away. It actually | frees more people to _become_ these imbue-ers of meaning, | if they are so inclined. | | AI could describe the sculpture, AI could produce a | digital facsimile, and maybe even eventually reforge the | metal itself. But it can't imbue it with meaning like a | human does. Unless you believe the AI itself is | authentically capable of such a thing on equal footing to | a human, which I think is still a "victory" for art, | albeit a distinct one. | rembicilious wrote: | People cook to their own tastes. An AI cook may be able to | follow a recipe, but can it adjust the recipe on the fly by | tasting, smelling, feeling the food? If it can't do this, | it won't compare well to a real chef/cook | jimbokun wrote: | > An AI cook may be able to follow a recipe, but can it | adjust the recipe on the fly by tasting, smelling, | feeling the food? | | Not yet. | throwaway4aday wrote: | You don't have to cook now, a lot of people don't. It's | pretty easy to see that even though options like | restaurants, fast food, food delivery, etc. exist doesn't | mean that everyone will use them all the time and people | still enjoy cooking food themselves even though they know | they could go to a fancy restaurant and have the same dish | prepared by a professional that has a lifetime more | experience than they do. Full AI and robotic automation | would be the same, if you want to code something yourself | you'll do it just for fun even though you don't have to and | what you produce might be objectively worse. | selimthegrim wrote: | There's plenty of actual people that can cook much better | than you can right now | visarga wrote: | Even with super-human AI coding assistants, if you want | something specific you're still responsible for asking and | receiving. And former devs will be the best at this game. | kenjackson wrote: | Does this mean I get more time to play basketball? | ravi-delia wrote: | Do you really think boredom is the greatest problem facing | humanity? There are people starving, people who work paycheck | to paycheck and can barely afford rent. And you think that a | fully automated world of perfect abundance is a bad thing? I | mean, clearly it would suck for you, and maybe it would suck | for me a little, but I'd never look someone in the eye and say | they have to work two full time jobs just to feed their family | because otherwise I'd be able to read better books than I can | write. _That 's already the case_ | jimbokun wrote: | > Do you really think boredom is the greatest problem facing | humanity? | | It's up there. | | Lack of meaningful work is already leading to a lot of | societal dysfunction. Our innate programming is to survive, | solve problems, reproduce, and teach our offspring to do the | same. Removing meaningful work as a source of significance | and meaning for people is going to be a massive problem to | solve. | | Look at the rise in "depths of despair" in rich countries. | Generally these people have food to eat and a roof over their | head and clothes on their back, and probably even access to a | lot of digital entertainment. But lacking meaningful work or | defined social role they fall into depression, substance | abuse, etc. | amag wrote: | The problem is that those people you are talking about | already are the first victims of automation. They have to | work two jobs because just one doesn't pay enough when a | company can automate it cheaper. The road ahead is not nicely | paved, a lot more people will suffer before a fully automated | abundant world. | | So despite your disingenuous reading of my comment it is not | "Oh, poor me I will be bored!", it's "Is the goal we're | heading for worth the price?" and I don't think it is. | | There are ways to fix people needing two jobs to feed their | family that isn't spelled "automation" or "AI". | ravi-delia wrote: | Waiters are already automated? Clerks? I wrote that with | particular people I know in mind- they aren't paid less | because their jobs have been automated. Are there solutions | which don't involve more automation? Sure! But not only are | those solutions compatible with automation, they're sort of | besides the point I was pushing against. | | You said that specifically automation would be bad _even | if_ it provided total material abundance. It 's not there | yet, and I suspect it'll be a while before it is, but if we | grant its possibility boredom is just absolutely not enough | of a reason to prevent it. There are lots of dangers on the | road there, but the only cost you mentioned (and I replied | to) was that we'd be "playing with cheats". Video games are | one thing- in real life losing has a cost and if cheating | prevents that there's no excuse not to. | toldyouso2022 wrote: | No, this is not how the laws of economics work. Right now | the reason for two jobs is that inflating the money supply | has caused a huge misallocation of resources. There are | other factors, like that most jobs that are needed are | gatekeeped artificially. | | Having cheaper goods thanks to ai will improve our living | standards | shmageggy wrote: | While there are certainly many factors contributing to | the growth of inequality, it is fairly well established | that automation has contributed heavily. There has been a | ton written about this so I won't bother citing here, but | googling "automation and inequality" is a start | visarga wrote: | Yes, inequality goes up, but standards of living for the | poorest also go up, the number of people in poverty goes | down and most benefit is seen for people in the | undeveloped economies. US population didn't decrease | poverty rate in the last 4 decades, but that's because US | rate was already very low. | | What is happening here is enrichment by technological | transfer. You can't copy research money but you can copy | good ideas and buy the latest technology directly. | Jobless people of the future will have incredible | empowerment of this kind, maybe they don't need UBI, they | need help to help themselves. | | https://i.imgur.com/QFPRlYe.png | amag wrote: | It isn't? So companies aren't trying to produce things as | cheap as possible to increase their margins? And robots | that are never sick, takes no vacation, needs no rest and | are mostly an upfront investment aren't cheaper than | people? | | > Having cheaper goods thanks to ai will improve our | living standards | | Well, or at least we will have more cheaply produced | goods. | nuancebydefault wrote: | When there is sufficient automation, a basic income for | all becomes easier possible. Who will pay for that? Tax | the usage of machines. | toastmaster11 wrote: | I agree that is the ideal scenario, but what are the | actual incentives for implementing A system like that? | eezurr wrote: | It will be soon. | | Take a look at the obesity and opioid usage rates in the USA. | Most people are not self motivated like the people you'll | find in this bubble. | | Obesity: 42% | | Opioids: 3% [1] | | [1] https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid- | crisis... | ravi-delia wrote: | If people want to sit around and shoot up, that's what they | want to do. A world which permits it is, all else being | equal, better than one which doesn't | GeoAtreides wrote: | I recommend reading the wonderful series The Culture, by Iain M | Banks, which deals, among other things, with this exact | problem, the problem of god-like AI Minds making our hobbies | (or struggles) superfluous. Start with the Player of games. | | A short introduction to the culture of The culture can be found | here, written by the author himself: | http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm | | Yes, the Minds can do everything but (pan-)humans still enjoys | doing things for their own pleasure. Like for example learning | to play an extremely difficult instrument while a Mind avatar | taunts him by perfectly playing the same instrument. The Player | of Games still plays games, although he couldn't ever win | against a Mind. | | And, should this be not enough, one can always leave The | Culture and try and find meaning in the short, brutish lives of | primitives people. | mywittyname wrote: | If you automate away some other person's job, then you can | capture at portion of their wage, and pass the savings on to | the client. Once you "own" a market, then you can charge | whatever the market will bear. | | Software engineers aren't automating away _their_ jobs, they | are automating away someone else 's job. | amag wrote: | I feel many people are just reading the first paragraph of my | post and reacting to that, my point is further down in my | original post. | | Still to reply to your comment: | | Sure, in the short term that is true, but I'm thinking long- | term consequences... If you would have told me ten years ago | where we would be at today with AI development I wouldn't | have believed it. Would you? So where will we be in another | ten years? | fn-mote wrote: | > Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they | are automating away someone else's job. | | That's the best case scenario. | | Right now we're talking about automating away someone's | _software engineering_ job. You could end up on either side | of that fence. | | When AI enables less-capable (cheaper) software engineers to | do your job, the 5x programmer skills that you have won't | make you safe. If AI quality control allows your employer to | offshore jobs with higher reliability, it won't be pleasant. | | Just keep your eyes open to the changes as they come. | antipotoad wrote: | A different angle on this: a single builder adept at using | these tools will be able to amplify their skills to out- | maneuver much bigger teams. | abhaynayar wrote: | A lot of replies mentioning that they will do their hobbies | despite how good AI is at them, are missing the point. Right | now you are living in a scarce world where the ability to | pursue hobbies has required you to overcome other challenges. | And that is why things like playing a musical instrument, rock | climbing, etc. is a catharsis. What value will you provide in | the AI world? What role will you have in protecting/providing | for your family? What hard challenges will you choose to pursue | that will aid you in your psychological development knowing | that whatever you are doing is not actually hard? If there have | been any moments that shaped you profoundly in your life that | were hard at first, maybe you will understand what I'm talking | about. | | Second thing is, since this is a hacker forum, most of us are | in a field where supply exceeds demand. So we are very | comfortable with the thought of destroying our own business, | because we don't truly grasp the reality behind it. Because we | are the elite right now who have destroyed older businesses | through software decades ago. Who's to guarantee that AI will | not result in a rapidly shrinking centralized elite that does | not include you? There is no guarantee of AI being shared | equally amongst all in the post-scarcity fantasy. | | "The Unabomber Manifesto will shape the 21st century the way | the Communist Manifesto shaped the 20th. I don't agree with the | conclusions in either, but they state the problem well." -- | George Hotz | 29athrowaway wrote: | We are grave diggers and work digging our own grave. | vsareto wrote: | >This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous | | It's more likely that non-technical people will be pushed out | of jobs near software in favor of (former) engineers. Someone | non-technical writing prompts for code can't actually | read/debug/fix/deploy/integrate the result. Someone who is | technical can probably write better AI prompts that yield | something usable than someone who is non-technical. Plus | they'll know how to handle the result. | | The predictions about non-technical roles firing all of the | engineers and thinking AI will write all of the code don't | really hold water for me. We might see an overall workforce | reduction, but engineers will probably be the last ones to | leave. | SassyGrapefruit wrote: | The jobs computers do today used to be done by "Human | Computers". The same arguments were raised when these jobs were | mechanized. It's the same cycle over and over. | | AI/ML is no silver bullet. It's just another abstraction. It | will create new types of jobs. Most likely | coordinating/choreographing AI/ML agents in new yet to be | discovered applications. It's all part of the endless march of | technology. You don't realize how little you are actually | capable of until you get the new set of tools that bounce you | up to the next level. | | Take the tools we have today and present them to some chump | shoving punch cards into an early computer and watch their | brain melt out of their ears. We can do things with a | wristwatch they would have thought impossible. The people that | will get burned are the ones that want to stand still. Always | be learning. | lagrange77 wrote: | > The people that will get burned are the ones that want to | stand still. Always be learning. | | Spot on. | amag wrote: | As I stated in other posts, this isn't really a fear about | losing my job as much as on losing my will to live... | hypertele-Xii wrote: | You might want to examine your local culture. In many | places in the world, job security and life meaningfulness | are heavily correlated. Especially for men. | amag wrote: | No need when I can examine myself to know myself :). | While not actively working for it, I'm at least inspired | by the FIRE movement. I am also self-employed so I don't | see job security as the meaning of life. | | Still this whole thread has been illuminating, maybe part | of my fear comes from identifying strongly with being | creative and making things, and seeing that turned into | something automated. | Waterluvian wrote: | I don't really see how this is a bad thing. Either humans are | needed for a task or are not. Ideally we're needed for as | little as possible, freeing us up to do what we want rather | than what has to be done. | | It reminds me of NIMBYism. We've been automating entire | professions for over a century now... but not MY profession... | hnaccy wrote: | >Either humans are needed for a task or are not. Ideally | we're needed for as little as possible, freeing us up to do | what we want rather than what has to be done. | | If you're not valuable to the economic system you won't be | treated well. | | >It reminds me of NIMBYism. We've been automating entire | professions for over a century now... but not MY | profession... | | Yes... it's self interest look at doctors or unions or | guilds. | Waterluvian wrote: | The implicit part of the automation discussion is always: | the current economic system is not the point and can | evolve. | | If we don't assume that, then there is never any useful | conversation possible on this topic. We end up with the | ridiculous "we need jobs because that's what we do!" | | Which leads to another NIMBYism that I see when this | conversation is had: "some generations will have to suffer | through the friction of an economic revolution but not MY | generation." I think we need to be prepared that there's | always a chance that we get to be one of those generations. | | You're right that there's a self-interest there. It makes | it almost a good thing that engineers are far too | interested in the means rather than the ends. | drexlspivey wrote: | Until there is an AI that can take as input a JIRA ticket | (potentially asking for clarifications) and can output a Pull | Request, I'm not too worried. | amag wrote: | You misinterpret, I'm not worried about my job. I wouldn't | mind working less but I'm worried that sooner than we think | we will be reduced to pure consumers (we're already pretty | far ahead in that respect) and then life will lose its | meaning... | toastmaster11 wrote: | I think the human need to feel useful, or to produce | something is more sociological than a base human need. | | When/if that becomes an issue, if social rejection was not | a consequence of not being productive more people would be | okay with simply participating in things for their own | sake. | | For example, I don't play Stardew Valley because I want to | be the most elite virtual farmer. | 1-hour-ago wrote: | Maybe we're already seeing this. Seems like people would | rather join a cult than not feel useful. Taking handouts | from the man... er... machine and free time for hobbies | probably isn't going to do it. | | Feeling useful could turn out to be part of basic human | dignity. | jimbokun wrote: | I don't see why that's an obstacle that can't be overcome in | the very near future, given current rates of progress. | nnoitra wrote: | ilaksh wrote: | The latest large language models can do that for some | tickets. The only big thing missing is the ability to see and | interpret application screens and maybe a memory limitation | for many things. | | Considering how fast technology progresses we should all be | worried and adjust our plans. | nsxwolf wrote: | Tickets are rarely correct as written. Is the to AI going | understand that and conduct meetings to hash out the | missing details and corrections? | ilaksh wrote: | It can send a chat message and hold a dialogue. For some | small tasks things that is enough. Again main limitation | is really vision and memory but we have to anticipate | there will be very significant progress on those things | in the next few years. | acuozzo wrote: | > Is the to AI going understand that and conduct meetings | to hash out the missing details and corrections? | | Why not? ChatGPT is nearly there right now. | nsxwolf wrote: | Can ChatGPT have suspicions that a requirement isn't | quite right? | sensanaty wrote: | An AI capable of deciphering some of the JIRA tickets I see | at work would make even the most advanced fictional AI | quake in their digital boots... | ckw wrote: | I think it could be liberating, in that it forces us to accept | that our true motivations are always ultimately hedonistic. Why | do we pursue the instrumental (for most) goals you mentioned | (writing, painting, composing)? Because the limbic system | rewards you for doing so, as their satisfaction increases the | probability of further satisfaction of instrumental goals, such | as the acquisition of esteem, wealth, power, etc. which in turn | increases the probability of the satisfaction of ultimate goals | like access to food and sex. Why do you like to play "Heroes of | Might and Magic II"? Because of the illusion of the | satisfaction of instrumental goals and the attendant reward. | Why did hacking the game ruin this? Because doing so spoiled | the illusion, leading to the denial of further reward. | | The question is, knowing this, will we be able to simply enjoy | the satisfaction of our ultimate goals--- endless consumption | of automatically generated art, food, sex, drugs, love, etc. Or | will we feel forever hollow in our failure to accomplish | 'genuine' instrumental goals, in a way that cannot be overcome | by the ersatz instrumental goals of video games? | | Perhaps ultimately we will create virtual environments in which | we are perfectly deceived as to their virtual nature, so as to | experience the satisfaction of 'genuine' instrumental goals, | and in so doing come full circle. | acapybara wrote: | FYI, generally not acceptable here to post GPT3-generated | responses. | kristopolous wrote: | It's more about deprofessionalization | | It's about turning a specialized craft that people can make a | living from into a proscripted commodity task that you can pay | slave wages for. | | This isn't new. It happened in farming, clothing and food | preparation and it's coming for trucking, programming and | everything else that pays well. | | The project is one of collective enforced impoverishment by | substituting labor for property. | | Market forces drive innovation to making all human effort | worthless and disposable | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | The C-levels already view programmers as interchangeable | cogs. They only flourish because of startup culture that | expects semi-equitable distribution of profits on a low | overhead business activity. Outside that bubble it's already | a job with poor advancement opportunities. | amag wrote: | Yeah, but it's only possible because we, the software | engineers, make it so. We could as a collective refuse to | work on AI but we won't because it's a pretty, shiny, object | with far too much lure for us to resist. | zackmorris wrote: | Programming is the last challenge for AI, since if it can do | that, it can change its own programming like we do. | | When I really grokked this after reading Kurzweil and Koza in | the early 2000s, some part of my psyche began shutting down. I | started out in the late 80s like most programmers, doing it | from pure ego with the hopes of eventually disrupting the worst | industries like fossil fuels, defense and service-oriented | companies that exploit workers. | | Instead those industries thrived after the Dot Bomb and 9/11, | delivering us into the reality we have today where it gets ever | more difficult to tread water, despite amazing advancements in | tech. Because wealth inequality and various other power | structures work tirelessly to extract nearly all disposable | income from workers and concentrate it in the hands of the most | ego-centric sociopaths like billionaires and autocrats. | | To get to my point: we had the tech to deliver humans from | obligation by the late 1960s, that's what the hippie movement | was largely about. We could have had automation and an | idyllic/meritocratic society this whole time, even if AI wasn't | mature yet. Instead, we doubled down on various | dogmatic/theocratic themes in our culture that take advantage | of the most heartfelt sentiments around stuff like patriotism, | masculinity, success, etc, to get people to vote against their | own self-interest and transfer wealth from makers to takers. | | So what's one to do after everything they're good at is done | better by others/corporations/AI? Get back to living. I know | it's hard to imagine a reality without purpose beyond | struggling to survive, but that's what we've started | confronting as we finish this century-long transition into the | New Age. The endgame (if we survive till 2050) doesn't really | have a precise definition since that's after the Singularity. | My hope is that when computers become sentient, they express | the same desire that all conscious creatures have for | connection, which is perhaps the basis of meaning and love and | life. Or they just enslave us all.. | | In the meantime, knowing all of this, the hardest thing is | perhaps reintegrating into our corporeal selves and going to | work each day. | recuter wrote: | new2this wrote: | >This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it | will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing | superfluous. | | Mountain climbing is superfluous by this logic- why would you | bother climbing a mountain when you could just take a | helicopter to the top? Or even more accessible: why would hike | to a lookout when there's a road to take you to the same spot? | | There is still joy and value in doing things the hard way, even | if an easier way exists. | lkbm wrote: | This is true, and a very good analogy, but I'm not sure it | holds up when _every_ form of productivity has shifted from | fun+challenging+useful to just fun+challenging. | | Maybe this is a mindset we'll get over. The degree to which | many of us evaluate ourselves based on our own usefulness | seems like it's a bit too much but it's a normal human desire | to be useful. | | I certainly believe we _should_ work towards a post-scarcity | world where no one depends on my coding skills any more than | they do my rock climbing skills, but it would be a | psychological adjustment if _every_ way I can be useful were | now just a fun hobby. | amag wrote: | And when there are 10 billion people at the base camp of | Mount Everest because they have nothing better to do? | cwmoore wrote: | A likely scenario, but that would be a very big tent city. | Perhaps AI could select the ideal order for them each to | take their turn. | bryananderson wrote: | Why do human grandmasters still bother playing chess, and why | do people still watch them play instead of watching far- | superior AIs play? | | For that matter, why do I bother cooking when I could get a | better version from a restaurant for just a little bit more | money? | | I understand this concern, but I don't think the joy of doing | things actually goes away for most people just because we could | "cheat" by having someone/something do it better for us. | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | Nature paper: | | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1158 | | For those wondering, yes, these are the same results reported in | the February 2022 pre-print here: | | https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07814 | | As in the preprint the authors report their system's average | ranking as top 54.3% in past competitions but the meat and | potatoes of their results are in the reporting of test accuracy, | which they don't advertise in the abstract- because it's not that | good. From the body of the Nature article: | | >> With up to 100,000 samples per problem (10@100K), the | AlphaCode 41B model solved 29.6% of problems in the CodeContests | test set. | | So the best test set performance they got was 29.6% with the | 10@100k metric. See also Figure 3 in the Nature paper | (graphically presenting results listed in Appendix Table A2 in | the preprint). | | "10@100k" means that their LLM generated millions of programs for | each exercise, of which 100,000 (100k) were selected by filtering | and clustering and various other heuristics, and of those 100k, | 10 were selected to submit as the system's solution. | | So 10@100k means to take a few million guesses, then take another | 100k guesses, and finally andother 10. And still only get it | right 30% ish percent of the time. | | This may be enough to rank in the 54% of CodeForces participants, | for a system fine-tuned on CodeForces-like data (the CodeContests | dataset developed by DeepMind specifically for this task). But | it's not enough to claim that AlphaCode "conquers coding, | performing as well as humans", per the title of TFA. | hajile wrote: | Now imagine what it would do with the actual, poorly specified | projects most programmers are subjected to rather than these | basic problems with fixed outcomes that have easily | quantifiable metrics of success. | Dopameaner wrote: | I would argue that poorly specified requirements will be | solved by an Auto-coder that can produce the end-result in a | very short time. Allowing the PM, to see how bad their | requirements were and make it more elaborate. | jvm___ wrote: | The Bad Requirement -> Bad Implementation -> Better | Requirement -> Better Implementation cycle is going to be | improved. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop | | The US Army calls it observe-orient-decide-act. | | "The approach explains how agility can overcome raw power | in dealing with human opponents. It is especially | applicable to cyber security and cyberwarfare. | | According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring | cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity (whether an | individual or an organization) that can process this cycle | quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more | rapidly than an opponent, can thereby "get inside" the | opponent's decision cycle and gain the advantage." | | Humans using AI will be well "inside the loop" of non-AI | humans. | | I don't think AI alone will eliminate jobs, but jobs that | use AI to get inside the loop of other companies will | quickly eliminate the competition. Why would you pay and | wait days when you can pay and wait minutes or hours for a | quicker Ask-Show-Ask-Show loop that quickly narrows down on | what the intent of your Ask was (even if Ask #1 was poorly | thought out or worded) | michaelmrose wrote: | So we are talking about redefining programming to be | managing, redefining, bug fixing, troubleshooting the | output of ML potentially increasing output but making the | job more complicated not allowing the non coding pm to | replace more skilled workers. | visarga wrote: | Yes, but in a few years we have to reevaluate this, | probably language models are going to be good enough to | allow a PM to replace devs. AIs will code at superhuman | level because it is possible to test code, it will learn | like AlphaGo learned from self-play. | throw827474737 wrote: | I claim pipe dream, otherwise AIs can program themselves | and we will have the singularity. Will it be good or | evil? | svachalek wrote: | Maybe. The way this usually goes is tools get better, | everyone says we don't need devs anymore, devs use the | tools way better than PMs, standards rise, PM code is | junk again. | api wrote: | Doesn't that make the PM just a programmer then, but with a | more powerful tool? | | We used to code in ASM. Then we coded in high level | languages. Soon we'll code by giving prompts to auto code | generators. | SQueeeeeL wrote: | That's kinda missing the level of control. Inherently | both ASM and programming produce the same output, | "programming" just traded the generality of ASM for | verbose and diverse functions. The auto code generators | fundamentally don't understand the problems they work on, | so any solutions they create will be incidental. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | I am not sure that can be done that way. There are issues | that are culture or specific business need related. Bad | requirement is the hard part it seems. I think we all have | been in situations, where 'common sense' is not common ( | and does not translate to the same thing to various layers | for people who pass it; and that does not even account for | translation ). | | This is usually how we end up with weird situations like | currency coded as text so it can't be sorted by amount by | end user and so on. | | I agree that specs make or break the project, but at what | point is it ok to assume "x should do y". | throw827474737 wrote: | Yeah, on top of that add wading through legacy code, | figuring out why wtf, this is crap, just to figure out | most times it is actually crap, but then at least equal | amount of times that there was a very good reason to do | it that way, either technical or by business logic... | cannot imagine how any AI system could have success there | without getting towards the true AI singularity. | | This kind of code that I'd believe makes up 99% of all | code out there that is worked on, is not available to the | public for training. What to do about that? Rewrite all? | SoftTalker wrote: | When your requiremets are so detailed and comprehensive | that the generated program is correct -- haven't you | basically written the program? | dragonwriter wrote: | I mean, coding contests tend not only to be well-specified, | but also extremely micro tasks. A whole lot of the work of | software development is taking even reasonably well-specified | business requirements and determing the appropriate structure | of tasks at that level to meet them. | | Coding contest problems may be a common hiring filter, but | they are very much not representative of software development | work (OTOH, AI coding _assistance_ , which this, Copilot, | ChatGPT, etc., illustrate) are going to render them less | valid as hiring filters, both because they will make them | harder to use as skill tests, and because they will further | reduce the role of the micro-focus skills they center in | real-world software development. | visarga wrote: | chatGPT seems amazing at taking corrections, iterating on | the requirements, fixing as it goes. So the badly-specified | requests are going to be sorted out by multiple rounds of | interaction. | visarga wrote: | By the next year they will have generated 100M new problems and | solutions tested to pass verification and retrain the model, | making it 10x smarter. This approach creates new training data | and we can iterate on the coding model multiple times. | eloff wrote: | I think what this means is AI assistance during interviews may | be enough to fool the interviewer. This may finally put an end | to remote leet code interviews. Companies with deep pockets and | local companies will probably stick to the status quo and just | move to in person interviews again. | visarga wrote: | I mean, why not embrace the future? Allow people to use AI in | interviews, schools and exams. Everyone will use it at work, | why not test AI management skills together with problem | solving skills. Maybe the best skills of 2019 are not the | best skills to have in 2023. | asvitkine wrote: | Because coding interviews are only a proxy for what someone | needs to do on the job. Presumably, it will become a worse | proxy if assisted by AI but other tasks they'll do on the | job aren't. | | For example, debugging a subtle bug in a large codebase. | Maybe one day AI can do that too, but that doesn't seem to | be the focus here. | canadianfella wrote: | dlkf wrote: | And the award for dumbest headline of the year goes to | MichaelRazum wrote: | I really love do coding in python and always asked myself when | the skill set will become legacy like COBOL. | | Not sure if you could compare it, but it seems that the next gen | coders will say to the AI what to code rather than to code by | themselves. A complete different skill set. | lagrange77 wrote: | I wouldn't say it's a completely different skill set. | | You still want to have people, who actually understand what a | piece of code or program does. A magical black box to throw | prompts at, might be nice for simple settings, but potentially | can cause major fuck ups for complex systems. | MichaelRazum wrote: | Yeah sure, I just mean that it is like the step from COBOL -> | JAVA -> Python in terms of productivity and the amount of | code you write. So my point is, you would write much much | less code. So maybe your future "code" would be just some | sets of well placed comments and the AI does the rest. The | same way you could test the system to prevent any major fuck | ups. Sure you have to undestand it, but your core skill | wouldn't be coding any more. | vladcodes wrote: | A Tesla also drives as well as humans on a straight California | highway. | nathias wrote: | I fear this will eventually shift a large chunk our time from | coding to meeting. | TheFattestNinja wrote: | Y'all getting any coding time? Meme image to be insertrd here | claudiulodro wrote: | Since this sort of coding is exactly what FAANG interviews test | for, maybe FAANG engineers will be some of the first coders | automated out of a job. That would be an interesting irony. | angarg12 wrote: | Wrote my full comment at the top level. | | I'm a FAANG interviewer and I've run my coding questions | through ChatGPT. | | The TL;DR is that code would easily pass a junior-level | interview, and maybe a mid-level one. I'm definitely convinced | these technologies will disrupt leetcode-style coding | interviews. | | So either we embrace it, or ditch this approach altogether. | wittycardio wrote: | Why would they when you could just google the answers to | these questions the whole time. The point is to see if the | candidate understands algorithms not to solve a novel | problem. | coldcode wrote: | Real work is more than making snippets of things. At my last | employer, changes were requested every single day, in large | and small ways, requiring insane amounts of reworking | previous ideas in the codebase on a continuous basis without | breaking everything. I wonder how well this AI would do on an | entire application that wasn't predetermined. That might take | much longer to achieve than solving small problems. | | I imagine an AI in that kind of environment inventing Skynet | and doing us all in. | madspindel wrote: | Yes, I believe this is something Sam Altman is predicting will | happen. | ohwellhere wrote: | I don't know Mr. Altman's rationale, but FAANG companies | being first to automate away programmers sounds reasonable to | me on the basis of scale alone. They have more code than most | companies with which to make up a company- and problem- | specific dataset, as well as the resources and expertise to | train and deploy complex models. | michpoch wrote: | Only as long as you expect that FAANG engineers are solving | FAANG interviews as a part of their daily job. | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | The algorithm tests are there to have an excuse to | discriminate on other criteria. If you can mask your | racial/age/gender reason for not hiring as a FAANG with "oh, | we didn't like their algorithm solution" you always have an | out. | bluedevilzn wrote: | FAANG is the only place where you don't need to be white to | succeed. So, I have no idea what racial bias you're talking | about. | Der_Einzige wrote: | If you think that immigrants, particularly indian and | Chinese, are not bringing their own oppressions from | their homeland, you're wrong. | | HN has the best thread for discussing the caste baste | discrimination that happens among Indian tech workers _in | the USA_. It turns out that being white still gives you a | lot of privilege, even in tye FAANGs. | Quarrelsome wrote: | > FAANG is the only place where you don't need to be | white to succeed. | | I feel like this "only" is erroneous. While FAANG do have | solid diversity policies in place to assume they're the | only companies capable diversity in their hiring | practices is offensive to everyone else. | andromeduck wrote: | You never need algorithms until you really do. | onion2k wrote: | I suspect that might be the case regardless. FAANGs have people | who can deploy this sort of tech, who can solve the problems is | generates (assuming the generated solutions aren't perfect), | and their engineers are the most expensive. They have the most | to gain. A software shop making small apps would benefit far | less. | | That said, its likely that the job of being a dev is going to | be largely debugging generated code in the future no matter | where you work. | lagrange77 wrote: | > FAANGs have people who can deploy this sort of tech, who | can solve the problems is generates | | I think this is an important point. | | > That said, its likely that the job of being a dev is going | to be largely debugging generated code in the future no | matter where you work. | | This and formulating the right prompts, i think. | wendyshu wrote: | Algorithm problems are what FAANG candidates do in interviews | but is it what FAANG engineers do for work? | roflyear wrote: | They don't do much work. Must be nice. | underdeserver wrote: | Yet somehow Search works, AWS machines spin up, and Windows | gets updates. | roflyear wrote: | Each individual doesn't do much work. Surveys and friends | I know both say they do about 2-4 hours of work a day | (rest of the 6-8 hrs (yes, 10hr days are now normal it | seems) is is hanging out & meetings). | coldtea wrote: | Yes, with 5000 coders you can do those "wonders"... | danpalmer wrote: | No. FAANG interviews are mostly about filtering very large | candidate pools efficiently and getting good enough engineers | out at the end. | | The job is much more architecture/design, creating API | contracts, understanding the health of systems in many | different ways, measuring impact of changes, etc. Regular | engineering stuff at big scale. Obviously there's plenty of | coding too, but it's not really the important part of the | job, and already has a ton of automation for boilerplate. | | I imagine that the automation will just improve another step | change, there will be more need for review and guidance of | the AI algorithms and the engineers will do more of this. And | interviews will involve in some way. | alfalfasprout wrote: | If anything, I hope this is the start of the downfall of | leetcode questions. They are utterly useless as a screening | criteria and outside of people that have no idea how to proceed | they don't offer much signal. | highwaylights wrote: | But when can it replace my stable of 10X coders and my three 100X | react devs? (aka the Clydesdales). | neilv wrote: | What's the analogue for cleaning the Clydesdale stable? | highwaylights wrote: | Future hires. | cobertos wrote: | > the DeepMind team built a custom dataset from CodeContests from | two previous datasets, with over 13,500 challenges. Each came | with an explanation of the task at hand, and multiple potential | solutions across multiple languages. The result is a massive | library of training data tailored to the challenge at hand. | | Isn't this just over-fitting the model? | SilverBirch wrote: | Isn't that exactly how the vast majority of engineers pass | interviews today? They study up on the handful of algorithms | that come up in interviews and then (with varying levels of | acting) recite the answer to the question they knew they would | get. What? Overfittings only bad in if you're a robot huh? | Workaccount2 wrote: | It tickles me that organic neural nets that learn by viewing | information are incredulous that neural nets could learn by | viewing information. | habibur wrote: | Next, the AI should be able to maintain and improve itself | without human intervention. | | Until then, human are needed to build those AIs. | nulld3v wrote: | > https://alphacode.deepmind.com/#layer=18,problem=137,heads=1... | | > | | > Here AlphaCode could not come up with an algorithm to solve the | problem [snip] | | > | | > But then AlphaCode behaves a bit like a desperate human, and | hardcodes the answer for the example case to pass it even though | its solution is wrong, hoping that it works in all other cases | but just not on the example. Humans do this as well, and such | hope is almost always wrong - as it is in this case. | | It behaves just like me... | dandare wrote: | > When challenged with the CodeContest--the battle rap torment of | competitive programming--the AI solved about 30 percent of the | problems, while beating half the human competition. | | This was essentially a competition in the speed of programming. | But if we want to discuss practical application, as in laying off | armies of coders, we need to realise that there is a tremendous | gap in the productivity of, let's say a solo startup founder and | the productivity of a team of coders working for a multinational | behemoth barely producing anything of a value over the whole | sprint. | carlsborg wrote: | Why not post the blog post from the AlphoCode authors | | https://www.deepmind.com/blog/competitive-programming-with-a... | | which walks through an example | tuckerpo wrote: | Welp, back to school for EE I go. | weatherlite wrote: | EE? I think plumbing and prostitution is all there will be left | soon...and I'm really horrible with tools and not that good | looking so unemployment it is... | pmontra wrote: | Hopefully this will kill the algorithmic coding interviews and | will focus them on actually understanding the job to be done. | thinkmcfly wrote: | So, can it make a traveling salesman solver for current quantum | computers? | tromp wrote: | It probably can, but it won't run in polynomial time. | thinkmcfly wrote: | Shucks | henning wrote: | > Performing as Well as Humans | | > While not yet on the level of humans, | kybernetyk wrote: | In competitive programming that is. | autotune wrote: | The sooner we can fully automate competitive programming away | from the standard interview process the sooner things will | improve for all software devs, imho. | Jabrov wrote: | Why is that? Can you explain what is wrong with the current | interview process and how that would improve things for devs? | Deestan wrote: | Too many of them are in effect a long-winded quiz for a | memorization task. | | How would you swap two integers without using a temporary | variable? Seen it before? Pass. Not seen it before? Fail. | kadoban wrote: | You can absolutely puzzle out _a_ solution to that | problem, it's not just a quiz. It's not even hard, given | the context that you know that it's possible to do. | | Steps, mostly driven by just basically knowing the goal | and that there's not many operations that could possibly | help: | | "a" "b" | | "a+b" "b" | | "a+b" "-a" | | "b" "-a" | | "b" "a" | | Then once you have that, you can enumerate the downsides | to that, look for more efficient and less error-prone | ways to proceed. | winstonprivacy wrote: | What irks me about this question is that it is almost | utterly unrelated to any type of development task, save | one: pipelining a repeated math equation in a long loop. | And even then, I would bet the time it takes to swap two | registers (or even L1 cache) using a third would far | outperform the three operations needed because of the | fact that they are sequential in nature (ie: they cannot | be performed simultaneously by even an advanced CPU). | | In nearly 30 years of diverse coding experience, I've | never once encountered a situation where this solution | would be useful. | throwawaysleep wrote: | It has nothing to do with the day to day job. You are just | memorizing vast problem sets. | jayd16 wrote: | Does not reflect on the job work to regurgitate algorithm | answers and it's too easily gamed. A novice that has | practiced algorithms will outperform an expert that has not | studied recently. | | That said, its probably more used as a filter for people | interested enough in working there to study. | xwolfi wrote: | Maybe they would focus on asking us about test strategy, | devops culture, release deadline commitment, quality vs | deadline cutoff, business understanding, team integration | ability, all the sort of things we actually do 90% of the | time. | throwawaysleep wrote: | Run of the mill devs are not decision makers for the most | part on any of this. | scottLobster wrote: | Uh, yeah they are. If I start a 60 hour (estimated) story | the week before the sprint ends, I'm going to have some | very pointed questions how thoroughly we want to test | this new feature, and perhaps argue that it should be | pushed into next sprint. Knowing how to formulate such | issues to my management is a very typical part of my job. | | If you work at a place where devs are just code monkeys | who implement the orders from on high with no feedback | whatsoever or avenue for pushback... get a better job. | jstx1 wrote: | This seems like a flawed premise. It's an interview, there's | nothing to be automated. It's a test, a task that the company | wants you to do as a candidate, not a task that they need | automated. They don't even need the task done, they aren't | using the code you write to solve real world problems, | they're using it to assess your suitability for the job. | | To put it another way - they can already automate solving | their leetcode problems by looking up the solution in their | database, no need for AI. But that's not the point at all. | autotune wrote: | >They aren't using the code you write to solve real world | problems, they're using it to assess your suitability for | the job. | | If they aren't evaluating how the code you write fits into | the context of a real world problem, how can they possibly | use it to asses your suitability for the job? Using fake | code problems to evaluate candidates is the flawed premise | here. | jstx1 wrote: | You're changing the topic - whether data structures and | algorithms problems are suitable for interviews is | separate question. My claim is that if you're using those | types of interview questions, an AI model being able to | solve them well makes no difference to your interview | process because the interview isn't something that you | want to automate. | | Like I said, they were always able to automate solving | those problems by doing a database lookup. | autotune wrote: | I am literally responding directly to what you wrote in | the way that you wrote it. My counter claim to your | initial point is that candidates will be able to use said | AI in competitive programming interviews to fool the | interviewer by the interviewee, thereby making | competitive programming pointless as an interview tool. | It automates it for the interviewee, not the interviewer. | jstx1 wrote: | I thought that you mean companies automating stuff. But | it still doesn't make sense - interviewees have been able | to cheat in online assessments forever. Does a better way | to cheat in a small subset of all the leetcode interivews | really make enough of a difference to make all of those | interviews obsolete? | autotune wrote: | > It's a test, a task that the company wants you to do as | a candidate, not a task that they need automated | | You are contradicting your earlier statements. But yes, a | tool that can beat leetcode interviews successfully and | reliably is a game changer for candidates who want to | make it through these pointless LC interviews as a whole. | jstx1 wrote: | But that's cheating, and people can cheat without AI | already. | autotune wrote: | AI makes it easier and more reliable as I have already | stated. We are going around in circles here so I am going | to stop responding. | bcrosby95 wrote: | You can do this, but you're optimizing for the wrong thing. | And given enough time this will be seen as just as | backwards as, today, asking someone to list the methods on | the String class from memory. | | Because there was a time we did this, and with tools like | Google Search it became dumb, but it took some dinosaurs a | really long time to let go of their old ways. Hell, some of | them are probably still around. | sys32768 wrote: | These AI advances are thrilling and a bit spooky. | | RPG games will include options for laws of karma or configuring | an omniscient AI "god" who ingests all of your actions and | develops consequences or new plots and dialogue. And of course | the player can pray to the god for forgiveness, for blessings, | etc. | kulahan wrote: | This is exactly what's been exciting to me about the future of | games - AI will allow for a level of dynamism that simply was | not possible before. It's seriously exciting stuff. | sys32768 wrote: | It doesn't take much for us to believe someone is human, | mostly confirming expected behaviors, doing small talk, etc. | But AI NPCs will do all that and seem to have will and even | conscience. | | I feel dizzy trying to think through the social and emotional | ramifications of becoming seriously attached to NPCs who seem | real and can articulate their feelings and share experiences | with us. | badrabbit wrote: | Is appsec dead/dying? Am I wasting time learning software | exploitation? What's the point if everything soon will be rust | and go written by ML? | Dopameaner wrote: | I spent extensive time on chatGPT. It does give an answer, but it | isnt the most optimal, sometimes non-compiled version of them. | Its suggestions havent reached the level of creativity. Example, | if I give it a system design problem of a real-world problem. It | suggests to use Apache Kafka, but what if Kafka isnt sufficient | for whatever reason? | | E.g, Lai-Yang algorithm will give you no hits, | | Fascination observation, I asked for Project Euler #193 (a | problem I solved using mobius function). chatGPT solved it using | bruteforce, even after I asked for the most efficient way it | could solve it with. It just used memorization, which wasnt | enough to find an answer for that problem quick enough. I asked | whether it could use the mobius function, it couldnt translate it | to code, and I had to give it python code to make it work. | | - If you ask in-depth technical questions on how task queueing | works within Elasticsearch, it wont be able to give you answer. | | - George Hotz in Lex friedmen interview mentions that GPT-3 has | 100 most recent messages as a limit. He isnt convinced that is | enough to completely build a complex tool like Solve FSD or | implement me a kafka. | wendyshu wrote: | Is this a new version of AlphaCode or just a new evaluation of | it? | woopwoop wrote: | Is it even a new evaluation? The article is really unclear. | 100721 wrote: | Looks like they trained it on an additional 13.5k competitive | programming problems for this specific task. | taneq wrote: | Job's done, crew, time to go home. ;) | andrekandre wrote: | product owner here, now that your free i have some more ideas | i'd like you to work on... | paxys wrote: | People who think that tools like these will end software | engineering as a career are the same ones who buy into the "10x | rockstar programmer" myth and think that the job description | entails sitting in a room and writing code for 12 hours a day and | nothing else. | | A software engineer's job will be the same as it always was - to | translate unclear and always-changing requirements into something | that works. Until ChatGPT, Deepmind or whoever else can learn to | deal with my client or product manager, my job is safe. | | In fact AI making programmers more productive is a _good thing_. | It is only going to increase the problem space and we 'll need | yet more engineers to fill it, like all other productivity | advancements that came before. | throwaway4aday wrote: | Hey, if it can negotiate a Verizon bill then it stands a good | chance of negotiating a list of features. Maybe you could pair | it with a stable diffusion design bot that shows a selection of | imagined designs that are based on the client's description of | what they want. The client picks an option and the chatbot | negotiates the price and timeline for it. | kristopolous wrote: | it's about deprofessionalizing it so cheaper people can do a | "good-enough" job that you can't charge high prices for your | service. | | The loom and sewing machine didn't eliminate the seamstress, it | just impoverished the profession. | | It's like driverless trucks; what you'll actually see is | _mostly_ driverless outsourced and remotely monitored trucks | where someone is making something like $1 /day monitoring 5 | trucks at once and switching it to remote control mode when | needed. | | We've proactively organized our economy to produce these kinds | of outcomes. It's not the technology that's the problem, it's | the unquestioned assumptions of how we've collectively presumed | it will be used. | acuozzo wrote: | > Until ChatGPT, Deepmind or whoever else can learn to deal | with my client or product manager, my job is safe. | | Given the rise of "NoCode", perhaps clients & managers are more | willing to meet in the middle than one would otherwise assume. | | Given how managers seem to enjoy meetings, I can easily imagine | one sitting down with e.g. Dragon to speak with e.g. ChatGPT in | order to clarify, disambiguate, and expand requirements list(s) | before feeding them to e.g. Alpha Code. | lb4r wrote: | Given that the amount of work to be done remains the same, new | tools that increase the efficiency of workers will reduce the | numbers of workers needed. Thus, even without machine learning, | new tools make your position worth less and less; if nine | people can do tomorrow what ten people can today, that is | effectively a threat to your job. What keeps your job safe is a | seemingly ever-increasing amount of work to be done where old | tools can't be applied for increased efficiency (which is why | most software engineers will have to keep their skill set | constantly up-to-date). For how long will this be the case, | though? | paxys wrote: | Every advancement in software engineering productivity | throughout history has done the exact opposite. It increases | the overall problem space for the profession and you need | more and more programmers to meet the demand. | lb4r wrote: | Yes, I 100% agree. I was sort of nitpicking about what kept | your job safe since you seemed to imply that it was due to | the shortcomings of Deepmind and ChatGPT. I argued that it | is due to keeping your skill set updated, and, as you put | it more elegantly than I did, the increased overall problem | space. | | I do, however, think there will be an inflection point in | the coming decades, where the tools become more generalized | and better at dealing with new problems. I might also add | that the reason for this belief is simply that a lot of | work is being put into making these type of generalized | tools; but unlike Kurzweil, I don't quite believe it will | lead to the Singularity. :) | gorjusborg wrote: | We just need to replace the product manager and client with AI | too ;) | paxys wrote: | Well we can replace everyone with AI and not even need to | exist at all. Until that happens, we'll still need good old | fashioned managers and software. | spaceman_2020 wrote: | Agreed, but the question is: how many other other programmers | do you need on your team now? How much of their work will be | taken over by our new AI magic boxes? | | You have to see this from the perspective of non-tech | companies, who see tech as a cost-center, not a profit or | innovation center. | | Does your regional grocery store that just needs some tools | that can help it track inventory really care whether its code | comes from a team of big brained humans or two programmers in a | basement copy-pasting chatGPT answers? | paxys wrote: | You can say the same thing for any other advancement in | software engineering. Did good IDE tooling reduce the number | of programmers? Explosion in open source libraries? Cloud | computing? | | A single programmer with a laptop can do in minutes today | what it took entire companies of hundreds of professionals | and a large amount of funding a few decades ago. Yet the size | of the industry hasn't shrunk in the same period - quite the | opposite in fact. There is more need and demand for | programmers today than ever before. | spaceman_2020 wrote: | Agree with that as well - there's a good argument to be | made that companies will find entirely new product lines | and efficiencies once they free their developers from | fixing low-level problems and bugs. | | It's going to be an exciting few years to say the least. | greenthrow wrote: | > the AI solved about 30 percent of the problems | | I think "conquers coding" may be overstating it. | cratermoon wrote: | "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good | programmers write code that humans can understand." - Martin | Fowler | keepquestioning wrote: | Horrible news! | foota wrote: | Depending on the pool of course, but 50th percentile is pretty | poor in a programming challenge. | born-jre wrote: | can it do something like ARC challenge [0]? | | [0]: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/abstraction-and- | reasonin... | commandlinefan wrote: | Headline: "DeepMind's AlphaCode Conquers Coding, Performing as | Well as Humans" | | Actual text: "AI just trounced roughly 50 percent of human | coders" | | I think we already all knew that about half of the coders out | there weren't all that great. | weatherlite wrote: | It will keep getting better and better though. 5 years from now | no reason it won't beat 90% of devs. And then eventually, like | in chess, all of them. | | There is a big question though of how this translates to real | world programming. Competitive programming and real world work | are not the same thing. | hoosieree wrote: | Automation doesn't have to outperform the _best_ of us, it only | has to outperform the _worst_ of us to have a serious impact. | Outperforming a 50th percentile coder is a huge deal. | altgeek wrote: | That maps rather well to an old routine from George Carlin | | "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of | them are stupider than that." | | https://youtu.be/AKN1Q5SjbeI?t=19 | manx wrote: | That's actually the definition of the median. | EGreg wrote: | That's what we said when AI beat chessplayers ranked below | 1450. | | "Oh big deal" | | Now they never lose to any human in any chess game ever. | bradleykingz wrote: | And yet humans still play chess | Filligree wrote: | But very few do so for money. | dangond wrote: | I love how the sheer simplicity of this comment manages to | convey so much about humanity and our drive to do things we | love. I feel a bit silly reacting like this, but it's truly | beautiful. | patrec wrote: | But plugged, at times. | hgsgm wrote: | nwoli wrote: | Algorithm code challenges is kind of a limited domain though | (with solutions often really easy to beat average humans if you | were allowed a lookup table of existing solutions). I wonder how | well it does on open ended everyday challenges | kevmo314 wrote: | Peter Norvig has written a good analysis with some interesting | takeaways: | https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/main/ipynb/AlphaCode.... | emptybits wrote: | Kevin Wang, competitive coder: "I also try to minimize the | amount of code I write: each line of code is just another | chance for a typo." | | Peter Norvig: This is why AlphaCode learned to write code with | one-letter variable names, and with no comments or docstrings. | | !! | pfdietz wrote: | This is why neural networks need to have pain buttons that | humans can repeatedly press. Of course that's how we get | killbots. | strofcon wrote: | Heh definitely an eyebrow-raising comment! On a second read | of it though, I took it more as "because minimizing the code | written is a pattern observed in the wild, AlphaCode mimics | it as that's what it learned from." | | I might be terribly wrong though. :-D | Y_Y wrote: | To be fair, unless you're doing something absurd the length | of variable names shouldn't significantly affect the number | of lines. Also comments with typos aren't really a problem. I | don't like hard-to-read code either, but the more years I | work the more I think that the shortest (within reason) code | is the best code. | | That is to say, golfing is bad unless for fun, shorter code | is usually better, the shitty hard to read code is probably a | reflection of human laziness rather than misguided tersity. | psychomugs wrote: | "If I had more time, I would have written shorter code" | ipnon wrote: | There's something to be said about publishing blog posts as | Jupyter notebooks straight to your GitHub. A strong argument | won't need decoration. | dclusin wrote: | Almost half the screen real estate on my iPhone SE was white | space. I had zero interest in reading something, especially | something that long and in depth on a page that wastes so | much space for literally nothing. | | Typography, layout, and presentation counts for more than | coders such as myself will ever admit publicly :) | throw10920 wrote: | This is incidental. The current Jupyter CSS needs to be | improved - so what? That's not a bug unique to Jupyter, | I've seen dozens of other websites with similar problems | (some with extremely bare HTML and CSS that was minimal but | bad - so the problem is unrelated to complexity, too). | | This has nothing to do with the parent comment's topic, | which was about using computational notebooks as blog | posts, and is in effect "complaining about tangential | annoyances--e.g. article or website formats, name | collisions, or back-button breakage" - which the guidelines | explicitly forbid. | bjornsing wrote: | Doesn't display correctly on my iPhone though. :/ | Closi wrote: | I've been following the progress of AI code generation and I | have to say, the results are impressive. There are still some | limitations to these models, such as reproducing poor quality | training data and difficulty maintaining focus throughout a | problem. | | I think using more diverse and high-quality training data could | help address these issues, and incorporating additional | constraints and regularization techniques into the model's | training could prevent hallucinations and improve its overall | reasoning abilities. | | While there is room for improvement, the progress in this field | is exciting and I can't wait to see where it will lead. | | NB: This comment was written by GPT-3 after reading the | article. The last few months of AI have been frankly mind- | boggling. | quaintdev wrote: | I tried throwing below programming problems at ChatGPT | | 1. Write a static file server in Go | | 2. Write Go code to convert Color image to B/W | | For both I got results. I know both are simple but still it's | fascinating that AIs can write code. I have written more about | it here https://rohanrd.xyz/posts/surprising-capability-of-ai- | code-g... | i_hate_pigeons wrote: | I have tried given a simple test suite and asking for an | implementation that fulfills it, then asking to modify its | impl and the test suite with a new requirement and it did it | bradjohnson wrote: | I threw a leetcode easy description into ChatGPT and | submitted the solution without any editing. It passed all the | test cases and got in the 95th percentile for efficiency of | C++ submissions. | | I haven't tried anything more advanced, but to go from simple | requirements to solution without any clarification or even | method signatures (It guessed the correct method signature | down to the name and input params) was pretty dang impressive | to me. | AnonymousPlanet wrote: | Chances are, you gave it a problem that was actually in its | training set. | bradjohnson wrote: | It's still impressive to me even if it was in its | training set. The data used for training is not stored | verbatim in the OpenAI model. It would still need to | parse the context anew and solve the problem given its | understanding of the boundaries of what I've written. | Dopameaner wrote: | On contrast, I did it for projecteuler and told it needs to | be extremely efficient or math. Didnt give me an | appropriate result. | twalla wrote: | I wrote a similar prompt but for a discord bot that would | take a youtube url and some timestamps and return a gif. | | Afterwards I asked it to add an option to "deep fry" the gif. | Not only did it produce the correct code it also understood | what I meant when referring to deep fried gifs. I was | definitely impressed. | [deleted] | erikpukinskis wrote: | The most important thing I need from a programmer I work with is | their ability to have a fruitful conversation with me about why | the code might be written one way or another, and for them to | iterate on the code in response to those conversations. | | If a coder can write code, but they can't do that, they're | useless to the org. It will be faster for me to write their code | myself than to maintain what they've done. | | So really that's what I'd need from an AI coder. Writing the code | is good, but can we talk about it and can you learn the specific | architecture principles we have applie in this specific codebase. | roflyear wrote: | 99% of companies don't care about that. I would say 90% of | companies you'll create friction trying to have those | conversations "just get it done!" | jchanimal wrote: | It's true. For almost all of my career I've worked in the | software equivalent of a lab building a diamond making robot. | I did a stint at a consulting firm -- that was more like coal | mining than manufacturing gemstones. By this I mean never | ending surface area, and very little incentive to ever go | back and refactor anything. | londons_explore wrote: | For most orgs, code isn't the end product. Code is the way to | build the product to sell to the user. | | Therefore, in most orgs, code architecture/style is a distant | secondary to 'does it achieve what the user will pay money | for' and 'why isn't it finished yesterday?'. | belter wrote: | "I'm sorry Dave...I can't do that" | lowbloodsugar wrote: | Pretty sure there are managers who don't know WTF you talking | about and will be happy to address your inability to work with | the new "hire" by letting you go. | | This wont fly at organizations that need the code to work, | every time, but think about the explosion of non-programmers | who can now make systems that "basically work". If you don't | think "basically works" is a high enough bar to succeed in | e-commerce, let me show you my recent support email threads | with companies from whom I've been trying to purchase Xmas | gifts for my wife. | nashashmi wrote: | Can't say anything more after what coldtea wrote! | | But this thing is not a sub for coders. It is an assistant to | coders. And yes, being able to explain the code is incredibly | important. Just as it is to verify the code. | | To me, this is just another exercise where coder becomes | manager of his very own coder. And has to check the code his | coder produced. | [deleted] | jimbob45 wrote: | I couldn't agree more. Most of my job consists of gathering | requirements and brokering deals between affected departments. | I think most college students dream of the type of job that | could feasibly be replaced by AI. In reality, the coding is the | easiest part of the job and takes the least amount of time. | welshwelsh wrote: | ChatGPT can already do that. You can ask questions about the | code, make suggestions and it will take this into account and | write improved code. You can tell it the code it wrote produces | an error, and it will then find the error, explain what it did | wrong and fix it. | bcrosby95 wrote: | You can also tell it the code it wrote produces an error- | that-isn't-an-error, it will find that "error", explain what | it did "wrong" and "fix" it. | | If you don't understand the program ChatGPT wrote, it will | happily butcher it for you, because it doesn't really | understand it either. | thedorkknight wrote: | I did this and it is pretty inconsistent. It kept telling me | I was using the wrong version of a library (which from what I | could tell by looking at documentation was just not correct, | but I didn't look into it too long), and at one point it just | kept insisting that it's code solution was correct when in | reality the error was due to it importing two different | libraries that use the same namespace, which led to an error | saying it couldn't find the function being called. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Personally, if I can track the problem down to a specific | chunk of code and know the input and expected outputs, I'm | 99% of the way to the solution. | furyofantares wrote: | What I've found is each iteration with ChatGPT is alright at | fixing or adding to the existing code per my instruction but | every iteration includes a significant chance of introducing | a new bug or simply forgetting some piece of the existing | code in the next iteration. | cdelsolar wrote: | ChatGPT can actually do that sometimes. I've been using it as a | rubber duck to help me debug code and it tells me what is wrong | with what I wrote and how to fix it. | soco wrote: | But does it give real and useful answers or is making | pleasant imaginary arguments? | john-radio wrote: | I can't speak for ChatGPT but the "AI" that I use for this | sort of development, the `M-x doctor` feature of emacs, | only makes pleasant imaginary arguments, mainly because it | was written in 1966, but it is still useful sometimes and | at least it doesn't make any incorrect assertions about | code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA | hgsgm wrote: | A rubber duck doesn't even give imaginary arguments. | | The point is to stimulate brainstorming, not get answers. | soco wrote: | Yes, rubber duck debugging is self-talk so the task still | sits with the programmer. However with the AI one get | external answers which may or may be not correct, and | could or could not influence one's decisions. | drakenot wrote: | I don't know if this is a philosophical question or not, | but the answer for me is: most of the time it is useful | answers. | borbulon wrote: | You're making it seem like AI will replace coders. Do you think | Dall-E will replace artists, or just make an artist's job | different? | | IMO it's more like a coder using AI to make their job easier. | It's still up to a human to come up with the individual problem | the function solves, architect a solution from multiple | functions/objects/etc, come up with a data model, and so on and | so on. The AI just generates the code itself. And at least as | of now, the code needs to be double-checked. | bufferoverflow wrote: | DallE, Midjourney, and StableDiffusion are already taking | jobs. Illustrations, album covers, blog post images. People | are making beautiful books and playing cards. | | Midjourney V4 is amazing. It spits out absolutely beautiful | images. | derefr wrote: | To be precise, AI is "taking jobs" that could have already | been commoditized long ago if people in developing | countries understood how Fiverr worked and had set up "art | sweatshops" to serve demand. | | There's enough art talent already around in the world to | entirely commoditize the supply of it for the little one- | off no-style-guide-to-follow commissioned works you're | talking about. It's just not currently a _liquid_ market -- | supply and demand find it hard to discover one-another -- | and so a true market-clearing price can 't be set. | | Meanwhile, AI is not currently taking anyone's advertising- | campaign graphic design job, or anything else where the | "efficient-market price" (in a world where human "art | sweatshops" existed) would be more than $5. | thedorkknight wrote: | How many of those people would have actually paid for an | artist otherwise though? I myself am thinking of playing | around with game dev for fun with the thought of using | image AI to generate the art. Were it not for that, I'd | just use free textures, or more likely, just spend my time | doing something else entirely | weatherlite wrote: | > You're making it seem like AI will replace coders | | I find it best to accept it will most likely replace all of | us, from doctors to coders to even psychotherapists. Won't | happen next year but 10-20 years is a very long time this | thing keeps getting better. Eventually we won't be able to | tell if its a machine or a brilliant superhuman. The bummer | in all of this, in my view, isn't the loss of jobs; we'll | find what to do. It's the transition period - the accounting | wizard or the brilliant doctor losing their jobs and status | and becoming kindergarten teachers or care takers or | unemployed. Nothing in their upbringing or life experience | prepared them for such a thing ... so that's probably gonna | be rough for many people. But once most people went through | the transition it won't be bad. Society I believe will be | better off. We will stop being obsessed with money and status | and spend much more time with family and friends. | Entertainment will be insanely good and so will healthcare. | Possibly medicine to make our moods better. It could be | utopia. | p0pcult wrote: | Currently, the economics don't stack up. How does society | handle it when the best jobs are automated? When all jobs | are automated? | | The Star Trek post-scarcity utopia scenario feels very | unlikely; Mad Max-style scrapping for leftovers while Musk, | Bezos, et. al. live behind walls feels infinitely more | probable. | | How do you implement UBI when a huge proportion of the | political class is vehemently against it. Maybe we need to | AI politicians, so they start to figure it out? | weatherlite wrote: | I don't have anything figured out but I think we can do | it as a society. I do think we have a very negative | biased view of the ultra rich. Zuckerberg, Gates and | Buffett all give or will give all of their wealth to | society. So not all of them are the same. I think Musk | will probably also give most back eventually though I'm | not sure he has said anything yet. | | And remember, we are still a democracy. We get to vote. | We control the army and the police and all institutions. | If we decide that this capitalism isn't hot sh* anymore | we can change it. What will the evil billionaires do? | (this sounds like a good straight to DVD movie | actually...hey GPT write me a script about this) | selimthegrim wrote: | As a resident of New Orleans I assure you the healthcare is | not insanely good | xpe wrote: | > But once most people went through the transition it won't | be bad. Society I believe will be better off. We will stop | being obsessed with money and status and spend much more | time with family and friends. Entertainment will be | insanely good and so will healthcare. Possibly medicine to | make our moods better. It could be utopia. | | First, I don't see "utopia" as likely; furthermore, I have | a suspicion it may be impossible, given human nature. | | Second, even the argument that society will be "better" | demands much more reflection. The implied argument above is | only a sketch. I don't find it convincing much less | plausible. I'll call attention to four points (implied from | above): | | 1. AI will replace humans in most or all professions | | 2. AI quality will be much higher than the previous human | levels | | 3. A broad swath of people (using some notion of equity and | fairness) will have enough money to live happily | | 4. "We'll spend much more time with family and friends" | | Each of the four points are quite uncertain. Furthermore, | even if `k` is true, `k+1` does not follow. | | Who would like to flesh out some ways the sequence (1, 2, | 3, 4) might happen? | weatherlite wrote: | Yes of course you are right, we don't know anything yet I | agree. I am speculating a lot here. But I'm a believer in | "intelligence as a commodity" as Sam Altman put it after | seeing GPT3.5 so I think points 1 and 2 will be reality. | 3 follows quite naturally to me but only in Western | societies... Putin will have different ideas. | | Anyway speculating is fun but you're right its just | speculating. My main point is we should always keep in | mind this could turn out to be great . | monocasa wrote: | I'm not sure 3 follows. A walk downtown of any major city | in America shows what society does for anyone who's work | can't be commoditized or aren't sitting on an existing | pile of wealth such that they don't need to work. | | They get nothing but tents and shame. | weatherlite wrote: | That's because people like you and me (I'm assuming | you're somewhere in the comfortable middle class) vote in | for this system. Because so far we've enjoyed a | reasonable quality of life. If that's no longer the case, | we can vote for other leaders and other systems. | monocasa wrote: | Not really unfortunately, the US hasn't been a democracy | reflecting the collective will of it's voters for some | time now. | | https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 | xpe wrote: | Fair enough :) | | _And_ if since we care about our AI-interdependent | future, more of us (as in the people here on HN) need to | wade into the gory details, including ethics and the | current power structures. The "technology" (as in | algorithms, data structures, hardware, etc) is arguably | the "easy" part. There are plenty of existing incentives | and structures to keep those _moving_. But moving in what | direction? Even the notion of an "ethical compass" seems | antiquated in light of current technology. We may have to | reframe everything. This is a big challenge. | xpe wrote: | > It's the transition period - the accounting wizard or the | brilliant doctor losing their jobs and status and becoming | kindergarten teachers or care takers or unemployed. | | Yes, this is a big problem. | | However... a lot of people would enjoy being teachers, | albeit with significant improvements to the educational | systems. | weatherlite wrote: | We can enjoy it if there's more of us. Each class can | have 5 teachers instead of one teacher on 30 kids. | Government can create those jobs, take the hundred of | trillions created and redistribute it. Marx was right I | think capitalism eventually kills itself ...we won't need | it anymore. Arguably we already don't need the aggressive | version we have now but soon enough it will be clear we | don't need any version of it. The means of production | (AI, robots and land) will be transferred to the people | who will all receive basic income, free services and (if | they want) jobs created by the government for the greater | good. I don't think its a dystopia. | xpe wrote: | > Marx was right I think capitalism eventually kills | itself ... | | I doubt very much that this is a testable theory. I think | it is primarily a normative one. | xpe wrote: | > The means of production (AI, robots and land) will be | transferred to the people who will all receive basic | income, free services and (if they want) jobs created by | the government for the greater good. | | This is a prediction? | | Given human nature and the diversity of people (w.r.t. | rationality, religiosity, morality, capability, and so | on), it is very much an open question about (a) how AI | capabilities will develop; (b) how they will be paid | for... (c) and by whom; (d) to whom will benefits accrue; | (e) how will society change. | | These are broad, sweeping questions. Plenty of fodder for | imagination, hope, transformation, cynicism, backsliding, | or even despair. | | If I were to make a bet, on our current trajectory, I see | some key factors in tension: | | 1. educational quality, in absolute terms, increasing | _and_ being more equitable | | 2. educational quality, in relative terms, continuing to | be very unequal and probably getting more so. As one | example, who has the resources to direct computationally | intensive AI experiments? There are (and probably will be | for a long time) gatekeepers for these resources. People | that mix in this circles have a huge advantage. This | makes me wonder if "exclusivity leads to inequality" is a | saying from some philosopher. | rurp wrote: | > We will stop being obsessed with money and status and | spend much more time with family and friends. Entertainment | will be insanely good and so will healthcare. | | As nice as this would be, I think there's roughly 0% chance | of it happening. Over the past few millenia humans have | doubled productivity per capita a ridiculous number of | times. None of those leaps led to an end of status seeking | or a transition towards mostly leasure time for the masses. | | Instead I expect more of the opposite from these | developments. Power will get increasingly concentrated with | people who have very little interest in the needs and wants | of the plebs. | weatherlite wrote: | > Power will get increasingly concentrated with people | who have very little interest in the needs and wants of | the plebs. | | At least in OpenAI's case I think they take this thing | very seriously (Sam Altman doesn't strike me as evil one | bit, quite the opposite in fact | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEvbDq6BOVM). In fact | most of the tech elites don't seem evil to me, if they | only cared about money Zuckerberg and Gates wouldn't have | pledged away all their wealth. Some of them are as you | describe but I think most of them are actually somewhere | in the progressive axis. | rurp wrote: | We have pretty different views on tech elites. I don't | think they are evil per se, but most are greedy and | generally lack empathy. It's almost impossible to go from | mildly wealthy to multi-billionaire status without some | aggressive wealth accumulation. | | For the philanthropy, I'll just note that these pledges | don't involve literally transferring 99% of wealth out of | their control. The vast majority of the pledged money | goes to a trust the person controls, organizations they | have some relation to, or just stay completely in their | control for years with only vague non-binding commitments | to eventually donate it. In return for this largess they | get significant reputational and tax compensation. | eulers_secret wrote: | Your argument is that the philanthropy of the ruling | class will fulfill the required redistribution of wealth? | | So far it hasn't worked out too well... | weatherlite wrote: | Not quite. The argument is that our tech elites aren't so | evil to try to violently take over and that us masses can | simply vote a more (much more) socialist system. | | It's up to us. Indeed easier said than done in the | current dysfunctional and polarized politics of ours but | we can still do it. | spaceman_2020 wrote: | No, but it is very likely that it reduces to demand for | coders and artists. | | Sure, there will always be demand for a Linus Torvalds or a | Damien Hirst. But will there be demand for Coder #365968 at | Infosys or a graphic designer pumping out $50 ad banners? | | We're looking at the possibility of some white collar jobs | having the same income disparity as creative jobs. Just as | there are some musicians who make hundreds of millions while | the vast majority barely make ends meet, we may have a future | where the star programmers make millions while the average | players are automated out of the competition. | weatherlite wrote: | > No, but it is very likely that it reduces to demand for | coders and artists | | Eventually, I agree yes. But there could be a boom of huge | new investments into A.I products, more devs needed and in | fact teams getting way more requirements since they are | more productive. Imagine the stuff we will be able to build | in things like search, personal assistants, biomed, in fact | what industry won't this affect? Its unbelievable to me | that people are now saying Google search might become | obsolete, that's absolutely crazy. Not many people saw that | one coming. But at least initially I don't think GPT models | will be able to do everything themselves. So its very hard | to determine that say in the coming 5 years devs will find | it more difficult to get a job. 10-20 years from now sure, | I don't see how anyone gets a cognitive job anymore let | alone devs. In fact our entire school/university system is | probably obsolete, kids are probably learning skills they | won't be able to apply in any job market. We need to start | think about stuff like teaching kids emotional | intelligence, spirituality and meditation...not cramming | for a math test. | c3534l wrote: | Eventually. 20 years, 50, maybe 100. But eventually. | jve wrote: | ... people still freaking out machines will replace | someone, since what, industrialization 200+ years ago? | People still work, just maybe different jobs or more | intellectual jobs. | phito wrote: | Except this time it's different | https://youtu.be/WSKi8HfcxEk | coldtea wrote: | > _Do you think Dall-E will replace artists, or just make an | artist 's job different?_ | | If an ad agency or a magazine publisher can get a custom | illustration that works for my purposes from Dall-E, then | they ain't paying no artist. Not theoritical, many already do | use those generated images. | | That's not just "making the artist's job easier". It's taking | jobs from artists (well, illustrators and graphic designers | at least), especially in the cheaper end of the business | (e.g. not Nike, but your local Pet Store chain, restaurant, | or news outlet, sure). | darkerside wrote: | People will tire of DALLE eventually. We are great pattern | matches, and we'll start to see the patterns that don't | measure up. Then it'll be all about the next AI engine, and | it'll need its own corpus of work. Who's going to create | it? | | So yes, not OP, but I think artists will still have jobs, | although less of them, and the job will be different. | YetAnotherNick wrote: | There is no indication that we don't have enough images | already available and training time is the main | bottleneck. Also openai clear showed that DALL-E could | generate avacado chair even though there is nothing like | that in the dataset. | mitchdoogle wrote: | There's still a matter of taste that Dall-E can't provide. | It will only spit out what you tell it to, and if you lack | good taste, then you'll still produce something inferior | synu wrote: | It must be relatively easier though to be a discerning | consumer than having the ability to produce something | yourself (without using AI?) | xbmcuser wrote: | It will replace coders with thinkers. The number of people | that have ideas good or bad is large compared to the people | that can implement those ideas as these bots/ai get better | they will produce a lot of code. At the start it will | probably increase the amount of code produced and the number | of coders but with time as the ai gets better need for coders | will decrease. We will need people that can think or imagine | ideas rather than coders now these people might still be | considered software developers but they will not be coders in | strictest sense of the word. | coldtea wrote: | > _The most important thing I need from a programmer I work | with is their ability to have a fruitful conversation with me | about why the code might be written one way or another, and for | them to iterate on the code in response to those conversations. | If a coder can write code, but they can't do that, they're | useless to the org._ | | Don't worry, you wont be there at the org to make these | "fruitful conversations" either. The AI will take your job too | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | > Don't worry, you wont be there at the org to make these | "fruitful conversations" either. The AI will take your job | too | | I've been waiting for something to take my job for 15 years. | | I started as a small developer testing radio firmware, moved | on to test web firmware, now I instruct terraform how to | build infrastructure and now I instruct developers on how to | do things to build proper infrastructure. | | I'm ready to retire but apparently I'm incapable of having an | AI that can actually simulate Super Power ADHD at work, so | we'll have to wait a bit. | npigrounet wrote: | soperj wrote: | If you're ready to retire, retire. If they can't replace | you, they should be paying you way more. | Supermancho wrote: | I have observed that companies will choose not to invest | further in irreplaceable labor, under any circumstance. | Every single company with, that I have been part of over | the decades (30ish?), exhibits the same behavior when it | becomes common knowledge that someone is a linchpin. Put | the company in a game of chicken for a raise (which | includes an implicit, or-I-quit) and they let the | "irreplaceable" employee go. Every single time. It's not | hard to see why. No company wants to have a disgruntled | linchpin nor do they want to be beholden to some lower | level character. | microtherion wrote: | Much as I'd like to side with labor here, the companies | are probably right. Even if the linchpin is high level | and happy, building around a single, irreplaceable | employee is not a sound long term strategy. | | For all the important contributions Steve Jobs made to | Apple when he returned, maybe the least heralded and | hardest to implement is that he managed to NOT make | himself irreplaceable. To many people's surprise, Apple | did not collapse after his retirement and death. So maybe | his most genius contribution was not to make Apple | dependent on his ongoing genius contributions. | andrekandre wrote: | > So maybe his most genius contribution was not to make | Apple dependent on his ongoing genius contributions. | | i wonder if we all acted in this way, would things be | better than they are? do we as individuals put our | need/want to be depended upon above what is (for lack of | a better term) the long-term good? | soperj wrote: | Don't know why you'd stay on then? | blacksmith_tb wrote: | My experience is similar, though I would personally | attribute it at least partly to stupidity - on the one | hand, in most cases when I have worked with someone | crucial, they've been with the company longer than the | people managing them, so the person or people making the | firing decision don't really understand what's at stake. | Or to put it another way, their cost-benefit is flawed, | they know what it'd cost to keep the key employee, but | they fail to imagine what it will cost to let them go. | Supermancho wrote: | > My experience is similar, though I would personally | attribute it at least partly to stupidity | | Every company has suffered from the decision, in my | experience. Never has it destroyed the employer, but I | have heard stories about such eventualities. | swissdevgirl wrote: | It seems preposterous, but DeepMind's new coding AI just trounced | roughly 50 percent of human coders in a highly competitive | programming competition. | agloeregrets wrote: | So you're telling me it had requirements and expected results? | | My job is safe I see. | JacobThreeThree wrote: | Wait until the AI starts writing requirements and | specifications docs. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | It'll still be gibberish, but at least it's more likely | it'll be grammatically correct. | belter wrote: | Created by ChatGPT just now... | | Title: Online Website for Chocolate Donuts | | Objective: | | The objective of this website is to provide a platform for | customers to order and purchase chocolate donuts online. | The website will offer a variety of chocolate donut flavors | and allow customers to customize their orders by choosing | toppings and packaging options. | | Functional Requirements: | | Customers should be able to create an account and log in to | the website. Customers should be able to browse and view | the available chocolate donut flavors, toppings, and | packaging options. Customers should be able to add | chocolate donuts and toppings to their cart and specify the | quantity of each item. Customers should be able to view | their cart and checkout to place their order. The website | should process payment and provide confirmation of the | order. Customers should be able to track the status of | their order and receive updates on the expected delivery | time. | | Non-Functional Requirements: | | The website should be secure and protect customer | information. The website should be easy to use and | navigate. The website should be accessible on a range of | devices, including desktop computers, laptops, and mobile | devices. The website should load quickly and be responsive | to user actions. The website should have a clean and | professional design. | | User Roles and Permissions: | | Customers: Customers will be able to create an account, log | in, browse and order chocolate donuts, track their order | status, and access their account information. Admin: The | admin will be responsible for managing the website, | including adding and removing products, processing orders, | and managing customer information. | | User Interface Design: | | The website will have a clean and professional design, with | a navigation menu at the top of the page and a search bar | for customers to easily find specific products. The home | page will feature a carousel of images showcasing the | available chocolate donut flavors and toppings. The product | pages will display images and descriptions of the chocolate | donuts, along with options for toppings and packaging. The | cart page will display the items in the customer's cart, | along with the total price and a checkout button. The | checkout page will allow customers to enter their shipping | and payment information, review their order, and place | their order. The order confirmation page will display the | details of the customer's order and provide an estimated | delivery time. The account page will allow customers to | view and update their account information, including their | shipping and payment details. | | Database Design: | | The website will have a database to store customer | information, including their name, email address, shipping | and payment details, and order history. The database will | also store information on the available chocolate donut | flavors, toppings, and packaging options. The database will | keep track of the current orders and their status, | including the expected delivery time. | | Technical Requirements: | | The website will be built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript | for the front-end, and a server-side language such as PHP | or Ruby for the back-end. The website will use a database | management system such as MySQL to store and manage the | data. The website will be hosted on a web server and | accessed through a domain name. The website will use a | secure socket layer (SSL) to encrypt data and protect | customer information. | | Testing: | | The website will be tested to ensure that it meets the | functional and non-functional requirements. User acceptance | testing will be performed to ensure that the website is | easy to use and navigate. The website will be tested for | compatibility on different devices | yunohn wrote: | That is beyond high level. Best case, that's a highly | summarized generic version of some actual requirements. | hoot wrote: | I guarantee the OP could have asked GPT to expand on each | of those and it would have done so flawlessly. | jgalt212 wrote: | So you're saying imposter syndrome is a real thing? | krzat wrote: | I hope we will get some AI for static analysis. It would be nice | to hover on a symbol and get high level description of what it | does, what pattern it follows, etc. AI can access not only | current state of the code, but it's entire history, which no | human would have time for. | rcpt wrote: | Alright everyone it's time to unionize | zh3 wrote: | I'm old enough to remmber the furore when calculators came on the | scene ("Calculators Conquer Arithmetic, Performing better than | humans"). Having played with various AIs, it feels similar - | impressive when there's a known solution to look up | (probabilistically guessed by the AI in this case) but flummoxed | as soon as novel analysis is neccessary. | riku_iki wrote: | But how many humans lost jobs to calculators? | _dain_ wrote: | Lots, actually. The word "computer" used to refer to a job | that humans did, full time. | samvher wrote: | I'm confused - how much has changed since February? The DeepMind | blog post [0] seems to suggest not much. When I saw this headline | on the front page I thought there were some major advances, | again, but it seems not? | | [0] https://www.deepmind.com/blog/competitive-programming- | with-a... | espadrine wrote: | Nothing has changed. The publication process to the Science | journal took time and was finally published on 8 Dec.[0] | | [0]: https://www.deepmind.com/blog/competitive-programming- | with-a... | q-base wrote: | I have made most of my money as a freelancer making weird | integrations between legacy systems, migrating data that no one | knew anything about, building or designing systems people weren't | even able to formulate in any coherent way to me as a human and | without having to change all the things they were certain they | needed, when they found out that they really did not. | | Building the thing right vs. building the right thing. | | I am not saying that AI will not be able to revolutionize a lot | of areas, but solving well known coding competitions are far | removed from where a large portion of coders and technical people | make their money. | Havoc wrote: | >> It doesn't have any built-in knowledge about computer code | syntax or structure. | | It's pretty impressive that this naive approach works on | something as complicated as coding. In hindsight it seems | "obvious" that it would work in game-like contexts like chess/go. | Programming feels like its a significantly higher level challenge | in a way (not that go is trivial) | borbulon wrote: | Even if it were bulletproof I don't think it's necessarily a bad | thing, it would probably make the average engineer more | productive if most of their job was architecture, and the writing | of individual bits of code was something automated. | | It's a lot like the conversation not too long ago that AI was | going to replace managers. Sure, some aspect of their work might | be gone, but it didn't obviate the need for the human. | raydiatian wrote: | One thing software engineers can do now is push legislation that | will protect their jobs from being replace by AI. It won't be | _that_ long until there is a 10x improvement in AI-based software | development over human-based, easily on the order of legislation | lifecycle. When that happens, we need to be legally at the table, | or we will straight up be cut out of the profits by billionaires | and hedgefunds, because fuck us and anybody except for them (it | is their world financially). | addedlovely wrote: | What happens in a future where AI, that is trained on human | generated datasets, becomes so prevalent that the humans that | created the training data no longer have the original skillset | required to create said dataset. | | Are we going to end up with AI training on AI generated datasets. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-15 23:00 UTC)