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Comment by naiv | Hacker News Reader

But he works 24/7 at then maybe 20x output

Why we can’t keep the current jobs but accelerate humanity development by more than 20x with AI? Everyone is just talking about replacement, without the mention of potential.

There is great potential. But if humanity can't share a loaf of bread with the needy, nor stop the blood irrigation of the cracked, dusty soil of cursed Canaan[^1], what are the odds that that acceleration will benefit anybody?

([^1]: They have been at it for a long while now, a few thousand years?)

I'm not entirely sure I understand exactly what you're suggesting. But I'd imagine it's because a company that doesn't have to pay people will out compete the company that does.

There could be some scenario where it is advantageous to have humans working with AI. But if that isn't how reality plays out then companies won't be able to afford to pay people.

I don't think there is market demand for 20x more software produced each year. I suspect AI will actively _decrease_ demand for several major sectors of software development, as LLMs take over roles that were handled previously be independent applications.

I think it depends on how you view it. With 20x productivity you can start to minimize your supply chain and reduce costs in the long term. No more cloud usage in foreign countries, since you might be able to make the necessary software by yourself. You can start dropping expensive SaaS and you make enough for your own internal needs. Heck, I would just increase the demand because there is so much potential. Consultants and third-party software houses will likely decrease. unless they are even more efficient.

LLMs act as interfaces to applications which you are capable to build yourself and run your own hardware, since you are much more capable.

> and third-party software houses will likely decrease. unless they are even more efficient.

It's going to be really fun for us people who love to write unicode symbols into numeric input boxes and such funny things.

Right. This is insightful. It's not so much about replacing developers, per se. It's about replacing applications that developers were previously employed to create/maintain.

We talk about AI replacing a workforce, but your observation that it's more about replacing applications is spot on. That's definitely going to be the trend, especially for traditional back-office processing.

I'm specifically commenting on the double whammy of increased software developer productivity and decreased demand for independent applications.

That's not how this works:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Jevon's Paradox isn't a hard rule. There's plenty of situations where a resource becomes cheaper and the overall market decreases in total value.

The odds of automation not being like energy are super low. Aka the more, the better.

An LLM by itself has 0% output.

An engineer shackled to an LLM has about 80% output.

Like fuck that's happening. Human dev will spend entire day gaslighting an electronic moron rather than an an outsourced team.

The only argument we have so far is wild extrapolation and faith. The burden of proof is on the proclaimer.

And is neither reliable nor liable.

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