Comment by i-use-nixos-btw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by i-use-nixos-btw | Hacker News Reader

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i-use-nixos-btw

A common retort to this is that companies also exist to compete (and thus make a profit), so those that use AI to augment their staff rather than replace them will be at an advantage.

Honestly, I can see it, but there are definitely SOME jobs at risk, and it will almost certainly reduce hiring in junior positions.

I am a manager in a dev team. I have a small team and too many plates spinning, and I’ve been crying out for more hires for years.

I moved to using AI a lot more. ChatGPT and Copilot for general dev stuff, and I’m experimenting with local llama-based models too. It’s not that Im getting these things to fill any one role, but to reduce the burden on the roles we have. Honestly, as things stand, I’m not crying out for more hires any more.

Few new hires across the board will mean fewer juniors will get their foot in the door and get enough experience to become seniors. All good for those already well up the ladder, but for those below it feels like the ladder has been pulled up out of their reach

An LLM that’s good enough to replace a junior dev is also good enough to train someone to be as competent as a junior dev. Even better, competent programmers and technically minded entrepreneurs can now afford to “hire” junior dev level LLMs to help them complete their projects and achieve their goals. Further, it isn’t limited to programming but also encompasses every other job that can be done through writing. Every inch of ladder that is lost in corporate employment is paid back in feet of self employment.

I'm all for making us all more efficient, but not at the cost of creating new data monopolies, if possible. The price is very high, even though it's not immediately obvious.

We already have enormous concentration of data in a few places and it's only getting worse. Centralization is efficiency, but the benefits of that get skimmed disproportionally, to the detriment of what allowed these systems to emerge in the first place: our society.

While you're experimenting, worth checking out https://gradient.ai/ -- they're basically the OpenAI API but with llama2

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