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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Their best model to date and they won’t let the general public use it.

This is the first moment where the whole “permanent underclass” meme starts to come into view. I had through previously that we the consumers would be reaping the benefits of these frontier models and now they’ve finally come out and just said it - the haves can access our best, and have-nots will just have use the not-quite-best.

Perhaps I was being willfully ignorant, but the whole tone of the AI race just changed for me (not for the better).

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Man... It's hard after seeing this to not be worried about the future of SWE

If AI really is bench marking this well -> just sell it as a complete replacement which you can charge for some insane premium, just has to cost less than the employees...

I was worried before, but this is truly the darkest timeline if this is really what these companies are going for.

Of course it's what they're going for. If they could do it they'd replace all human labor - unfortunately it's looking like SWE might be the easiest of the bunch.

The weirdest thing to me is how many working SWEs are actively supporting them in the mission.

The day I start freaking out about my job is the day when my non-engineer friend turned vibe coder understands how, or why the thing that AI wrote works. Or why something doesn't work exactly the way he envisioned and what does it take to get it there.

If it can replace SWEs, then there's no reason why it can't replace say, a lawyer, or any other job for that matter. If it can't, then SWE is fine. If it can - well, we're all fucked either way.

> If it can replace SWEs, then there's no reason why it can't replace say, a lawyer

SWE is unique in that for part of the job it's possible to set up automated verification for correct output - so you can train a model to be better at it. I don't think that exists in law or even most other work.

What is the automated verification of correct output and who defines that?

But before verification, what IS correct output?

I understand SWE process is unique in that there are some automations that verify some inputs and outputs, but this reasoning falls into the same fallacies that we've had before AI era. First one that comes to mind is that 100% code coverage in tests means that software is perfect.

Right, and that's why it's only part of the job. The benchmarks they're currently doing compose of the AI being handed a detailed spec + tests to make pass which isn't really what developing a feature looks like.

Going from fuzzy under-defined spec to something well defined isn't solved.

Going from well defined spec to verification criteria also isn't.

Once those are in place though, we get https://vinext.io - which from what I understand they largely vibe-coded by using NextJS's test suite.

> First one that comes to mind is that 100% code coverage in tests means that software is perfect

I agree.. but I'm also not sure if software needs to be perfect

Enthusiastically supporting them. It’s quite depressing to watch over the last few years. It’s not like they’re being coy about their aim…

Agree. Anthrophic in particular have been quite clear in what they are trying to do. Every blog post about every new model almost dismisses every other use case other than coding - every other use case seems almost a footnote in their communication.

Don't worry – if you're lucky they might decide to redistribute some of their profits to you when you're unemployed =)

Of course this assumes you're in the US, and that further AI advancements either lack the capabilities required to be a threat to humanity, or if they do, the AI stays in the hands of "the good guys" and remains aligned.

This is the playbook since GPT2

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