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Comment by throwawayfgyb | Hacker News Reader

I really like AI. It allows me to complete my $JOB tasks faster, so I have more time for my passion projects, that I craft lovingly and without crappy AI.

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"AI" is just a trick to circumvent the copyright laws that are the main brake in writing quickly programs.

The "AI" generated code is just code extracted from various sources used for training, which could not be used by a human programmer because most likely they would have copyrights incompatible with the product for which "AI" is used.

All my life I could have written much faster any commercial software if I had been free to just copy and paste any random code lines coming from open-source libraries and applications, from proprietary programs written for former employers or from various programs written by myself as side projects with my own resources and in my own time, but whose copyrights I am not willing to donate to my current employer, so that I would no longer be able to use in the future my own programs.

I could search and find suitable source code for any current task as fast and with much greater reliability than by prompting an AI application. I am just not permitted to do that by the existing laws, unlike the AI companies.

Already many decades ago, it was claimed that the solution for enhancing programmer productivity is more "code reuse". However "code reuse" has never happened at the scale imagined in the distant past, but not because of technical reasons, but due to the copyright laws, whose purpose is exactly to prevent code reuse.

Now "AI" appears to be the magical solution that can provide "code reuse" at the scale dreamed a half of century ago, by escaping from the copyright constraints.

When writing a program for my personal use, I would never use an AI assistant, because it cannot accelerate my work in any way. For boilerplate code, I use various templates and very smart editor auto-completion, there is no need of any "AI" for that.

On the other hand, when writing a proprietary program, especially for some employer that has stupid copyright rules, e.g. not allowing the use of libraries with different copyrights, even when those copyrights are compatible with the requirements of the product, then I would not hesitate to prompt an AI assistant, in order to get code stripped of copyright, saving thus time over rewriting an equivalent code just for the purpose of enabling it to be copyrighted by the employer.

Not sure why this is downvoted. People forget or weren’t around for the early 2000s when companies were absolutely preoccupied with code copyright and terrified of lawsuits. That loosened up only slightly during the GitHub/StackOverflow era.

If you proposed something like GitHub Copilot to any company in 2020, the legal department would’ve nuked you from orbit. Now it’s ok because “everyone is doing it and we can’t be left behind”.

Edit: I just realized this was a driver for why whiteboard puzzles became so big - the ideal employee for MSFT/FB/Google etc was someone who could spit out library quality, copyright-unencumbered, “clean room” code without access to an internet connection. That is what companies had to optimize for.

It's downvoted because it's plainly incorrect.

What part is incorrect?

The claim that it's just spitting out code it's been trained on. That is simply not the case, broadly speaking - sure, if you ask it for a very specific algorithm that has a well-known implementation, you might end up with such a snippet, but in general, it writes new code, not just a copy/paste of SO or whatever.

This is an extremely important point, and first time I see it mentioned with regards to software copyright. Remember the days where companies got sued for including GPL'd code in their proprietary products?

I have never had a job where completing tasks faster wound up with me having more personal free time. It always just means you move on to the next task more quickly

Perhaps the OP completes the assigned task ahead of schedule and keeps the saved time.

Shhh! Do you want to kill AI? All the C-suite and middle management need to hear is that "My QoL has never been better since I could use AI at work! Now I can 'quiet quit' half the day away! I can see my family after hours! Or even have a second job!"

Expectations will go up, while the pay will stay the same. And many will just take it because of lack of alternatives

While sitting in the open office staring blankly into space because of RTO, work really has nothing to do with productivity it's all fugazi.

This is a fair bit easier as a remote worker, but even in-office you would just sandbag your time rather than publishing the finished work immediately. In-office it's more likely that you would waste time on the internet rather than working on a personal project though.

That's not the worst thing. Having more work means you're less bored. You probably won't be payed more though. But being too productive can cause you to have no next task, wich isn't the same thing as having free time.

I think that's part of the reason why devs like working from home and not be spied on.

You’re saying companies don’t get information on how remote employees utilize their time? I could almost be sure many companies do that.

I wish I had a job where if I completed all my work quickly, I was allowed to do whatever

How do they know if you're done, if you haven't "turned it in" yet? They're probably not watching your screen constantly.

My last boss told me essentially (paraphrasing), "I budget time for your tasks. If you finish late, I look like I underestimate time required, or you're not up to it. If you finish early, I look like I overestimate. If I give you a week to do something, I don't care if you finish in 5 minutes, don't give it to me until the week is up unless you want something else to do."

That is really not the norm nowadays.

Was it ever? Twenty years ago I had a boss that told me he cuts every estimate engineers give him in half and the work always gets completed on time, never mind the terrible quality and massive amount of bugs.

Sounds like your last boss was working under some very twisted incentives.

He was told to have our team do 'x', and either given a deadline, or asked for a timeframe it would be done by. Then he assigned it out to the team.

We certainly did not receive bonuses based on doing work faster, so unless you are, what incentives are you being driven by to do the work sooner?

My coworker/manager sits next to me

You can implement this yourself fairly easily.

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