If anything it seems to me like we've just swapped coding with what is effectively a lot more code review (of whatever the LLM spits out), at the cost of also losing that long term understanding of a block of code that actually comes from writing it yourself (let's not pretend that a reviewer has the same depth of understanding of a piece of code as an author).
There will be point where ai will consistently write better prs - you can already start to see it here and there - finding and fixing bugs in existing code, refactoring, writing tests, writing and updating documentation and prototyping are some examples of areas where it often surpasses human contribution.
In the past the tradeoff has been very straight forward. But this is a unique situation because it involves knowledge and not just the physicality of the human in regards to productivity.
That was literally what everybody said would happen.
If the cab companies had gotten together on an app, they might have shortcut Uber and all of its many dubious practices. They finally are starting to but it's much too late.
Uber regularly doesn’t show up, just playing with “4… 3… 6… minutes left”. I always have to wait half an hour at a certain location, with a message “Just book a few minutes before your trip.”
I’ve had a friend miss his flight because of Uber not showing up!
Ive noticed similar shenanigans with Uber eats - they are definitely playing around with stuff to increase profitability its clear as day.
They didn't. They innovated, practically implemented ideas that resulted in the introduction of new goods and services [1]. This is a meaningful difference.
Uber didn't invent anything. But they did pull ridesharing out of a hat.
LLMs have already changed how software can be written and a thousands of other business/consumer usecases, these companies are just battling it out and finding the most profitable niches. It will be a major business for a long time and the technology will mature and plateau pretty quickly. If R&D doesn't scale economically, it will just slow down and existing models will be heavily optimized to be cheaper to run.
The dot com boom resulted in very few real industries and comparing the two is not very useful.
Ummm taxis aren't everywhere like NYC or something. Broadly speaking Uber will pick you up in an arbitrary place and take you anywhere.
So the question, at least to me, is how these AI companies will find a product or service that makes them profitable. Other than becoming actual monopolies in their current domains.
It's still quite possible that Uber doesn't make that up in the near future.
Why three? Will you ever be in a position where one will do it for you?
> and most of my team is also paying money for various AI stuff.
And what are they using it for?
> Sounds like a real industry to me.
Sounds like early adopter syndrome to me. We'd have to know more about your business to take this out of the realm of hazy anecdotes.
I believe LLMs will be niche tools like databases, you pay for the product not 'gpt' vs 'claude'. You choose the right tool for the job.
I have a feeling coding tool with be separate a niche like Cursor, which LLM it uses doesn't matter. It's the integration, guard rails, prompt seeding, and general software stuff like autocomplete and managing long todos.
Then I pay for ChatGPT because that's my "personal" chat LLM that knows me and knows how I like curt short responses for my dumb questions.
Finally I pay for https://www.warp.dev/terminal as a terminal which replaced Kitty terminal on macos (don't use it for coding) which is another niche. Cursor could enter that arena but VSCode terminal is kinda limited for day-to-day stuff given it's hidden in an larger IDE. Maybe a pure CLI tool will do both better.
These companies are burning cash to support the current formulation of AI services.
These services will survive because they are useful but probably not at its current cost
The lie is that LLMs are the product itself rather than the endless integration opportunities via APIs and online services.
For example:
- Dotcom bubble. Of course making website was and is a real industry.
- Japanese real estate bubble. Of course building houses was and still is a real industry. It's so real people call it real estate, right.