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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

If you know what are you doing in general, I'm convinced that it can actually help you out but I had 0 success with doing it brainfuck(chatgpt claims that anything beyond hello world is too complicated haha).

Just like with the image and video generators, I'm fishing to find evidence of machines building something useful - had very little success so far.

If the claims are true and these huge investments are not done in vain, not too far in the future we should be able to tell AI to build the tools we need, for example Microsoft should be expecting to discontinue MS Office either because someone can tell AI to make them an Excel instead of paying a subscription or tell AI to just do the job they will do in Excel.

It's very strange that they talk about replacing the developers with AI but somehow still sell software. Something doesn't add up.

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> It's very strange that they talk about replacing the developers with AI but somehow still sell software. Something doesn't add up.

There's a simple answer. This is the "replacement" fallacy that is all too common when hypothesizing the impact of tooling. Tooling increases the productivity of workers. This "replaces" workers in that you will need fewer of them to do the same job, but can't replace all of them because zero times anything is zero.

If you have 10 people shoveling, you can replace 9 workers of them with a backhoe. But a backhoe can't replace all 10 workers.

The talk is literally about replacing developers, engineers, and scientist with AI. It is not advertised as a developer tool, it is advertised as a someone who has PhD and ideally we will have AGI soon. companies are not talking about making even greater products they’re talking about cutting off developers through the same thing.

for example, salesforce proudly announced that it’s not hiring the developers this year because they are going to use AI. they don’t intend to make even greater software with the same developers using AI, they intend to replace them.

i’m getting the vibes that nobody at the top believes that AI actually can replace anybody. I find this interesting.

Advertisers are perennially full of shit. Generative AI is a technology, and just like literally every useful technology created since the dawn of man, it improves productivity.

A box of literal rocks does not do anything on its own, even if we have tricked them into thinking even better than we did last year.

Literally for hundreds of years have people been fear mongering that some new technology will replace workers. It never happens. Technology displaces the available distribution of jobs, but it doesn't eliminate the need for people... and it never will, because human jobs are a human construct.

> salesforce proudly announced that it’s not hiring the developers this year because they are going to use AI.

Yeah, more bullshit. Translated, they really mean: "Hey our AI is so great that we don't have to hire developers anymore -- it's definitely not because we have 70k+ employees and our payroll is way too big -- it's because we're so good at AI and you should totally buy our software #EinsteinAIRocks #SalesforceOhana"

I agree, it's absolutely and entirely bullshit and is becoming an easy sloganism that you can bash around. Where "replacing developers, engineers, and scientist with AI" really is about 'doing more with less'... or... just 'doing more, faster?'.

But it is genuinely replacing workers, in real terms. And more importantly it's replacing services, which in turn means jobs and revenue. So they too turn to electricity & automation, so they can do more... so they can remain competitive.

So uh yea, I 100% agree with you there, and wish that more people saw straight through it like you do.

> But it is genuinely replacing workers, in real terms.

Replacing whom? Can you name a single company that has laid off employees because AI is now doing the work?

> for example, salesforce proudly announced that it’s not hiring the developers this year because they are going to use AI.

Which is complete bullshit. Not only are they hiring right now, but having worked there, none of their engineering org's productivity pain points are going to be solved by AI.

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