JPeckJul 5, 2023
Saw a headline that there will be no human programmers in 5 years due to #ArtificialIntelligence
Yes, it's click bait but I wonder how many entry level jobs will be taken? I mean a lot of #programming is time consuming busy work that's handed off to newer programmers. If we offload that work to AI, how are new programmers going to get experience to then plan for larger applications?
Hmm, now that I think of it, how many insecure applications are being written by AI right now? If no one is checking the quality of the AI work and its all based on code scraped from the web, I suspect it's going to be a great time to be a #blackhat
Show threadChris MarrinJul 5, 2023

@boscoandpeck I can imagine that in the short term some companies will try replacing entry level coders with LLM generated code. It will go horribly wrong and they will either successfully undo their mistake or go belly up. So in the long run I don’t think it will affect entry level (or any) programming positions at all.

AI may well help programmers write initial versions of some code, mocking up UI elements, etc. But then programmers will have to take over to finish the work.

Show threadJPeckJul 5, 2023
@Cmarrin i expect it to cost jobs in the short term when some suits decide that they can save money. those jobs may come back, but that all depends on whether the code it creates gets better over time. if it gets iterates well those jobs may not come back
Show threadChris MarrinJul 5, 2023
@boscoandpeck I believe the jobs will come back or the company will fail and be replaced by another company that won’t make the same mistake. So no net job loss. As I’ve said before, in a few years we’re going to look back on this and have a good laugh. Sort of like disco!
Show threadJPeck

@Cmarrin alright you've convinced me

"#AI is just disco"

This may be my new favorite quote

Jul 5, 2023 at 10:07pmWeb
Show threadByeByeHelloJul 5, 2023

@boscoandpeck @Cmarrin

Giving an ai instructions to code stuff for you is also programming. Because that is what programming is: giving instructions to a computer.

The only thing that is shifting is the focus of abstraction level to a higher one, which is a progress that has been going on since people started programming.

Fully agree that AI is just disco

Show threadChris MarrinJul 5, 2023
@Byebyehello @boscoandpeck yeah, it always seemed like on ST:TNG they were “programming” in a very high level abstraction. Of course they also had true AGI so there’s that. I have no doubt that AI will be helpful to programmers in the near future just like StackOverflow is today. But I disagree that it’s just a higher level of abstraction. It makes mistakes. If you know what you’re doing with a language like C you know what code will be generated.
Show threadByeByeHelloJul 5, 2023

@Cmarrin @boscoandpeck

I actually think the mistakes a user makes in his AI prompt are similar to mistakes in programming code. You could argue it is not the AI that makes the mistake, but the user giving the wrong command.

If the prompt would have been more properly formulated, mistake could have been overcome.

Then again, a C compiler can have a bug, in the same sense an AI model can.

Show threadChris MarrinJul 5, 2023

@Byebyehello @boscoandpeck of course if you work hard crafting the perfect prompt why not just write the code in the first place? 😄

This is just me not understanding why you’d want to give up the pleasure of writing beautiful code to a machine!