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Comment by jscd | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the "would not exist if I hadn't created it" argument really works. If I delegate a project to someone else, and they do the project, does that mean I did it? In my mind, I could comfortably say I managed it, or I designed some parts of it, but I really couldn't take the credit for actually doing it. You wanted it to be done, so you asked someone to do it.

If anything, I would say your conclusion should be flipped: you didn't really do the "making," but you can still be proud of what you _did_ do: provide direction and a vision for a solution to a problem.

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You're honest, but you'd make a terrible CEO in this day and age.

Those two qualities tend to go hand in hand

What about a director of a movie. They aren't responsible for the creative performances but they are certainly given a heap of credit for having made the movie.

I ask 10 actors for 10 scenes and I combine them into a movie I wanted.

I ask 10 agents for 10 functions and I combine them into a program I wanted.

What's the difference and why is the guy who used agents not credited the same way as a director? Maybe all that's missing is a long list of credits for everyone involved -- so transparency in who did what?

10 agents for 10 function sounds like IT director. I see enterprises are full of those and they are getting credited appropriately for "AI led innovation" at workplace.

The difference with Movie director at least is in details. IT director most likely does not care about Python, bash, js, mermaid, performance characteristics and so many other things that AI agent might have used to solve the problem. The user of these AI innovation are not having much say. They are not going to be voting with their wallet or feet.

For movie director the details of process matters a lot. Unless of course I am shooting 2 min video on my Motorola phone, while my kid is cutting her birthday cake, and call myself a movie director while doing it.

So you're saying the difference is just in how many details are specified or how deeply the director cares about the details?

i.e. if you have a DSLR and you point it at a subject and press the shutter button, that doesn't make you a "photographer"; but if you do the same while adjusting all the knobs and such using knowledge from your brain to get an intended result, that's what makes you a "photographer", despite in both cases the camera is doing the same amount of work?

So in the AI prompting case, if you send out a prompt to "clone twitter", that doesn't make you a "software director" (or whatever we might call it); but if you do the same while specifying the system topology, the various transport protocols, the implementation language, the database schema, then you might be a "software director".

Is that what you're saying?

It's the level of effort and involvement (also if you listen to any director talk they will never say "I made", they will say "we made"). Similarly to AI, nobody gives credit to the guy who "thought of the idea for the movie", they give credit to the leadership of the movie who worked alongside the crew. Directors dont just give an outline of a movie and then step away from set, they put real effort in to every aspect.

> Directors dont just give an outline of a movie and then step away from set

But I don't think people using AI to write software give an outline of the software and then just step away? It seems like a very iterative process to me with a number of decisions on the order of those needed to be made by a director of a movie.

The level of effort is minimal. It's not a quantitative definition, its qualitative. Also absolutely in no way shape or form is it anywhere near the level of decision making of a director. Your average director of some low budget B netflix slop is still making thousands of decisions per day, organizing teams, reading and writing documents, going over shot review with DP's. A director is the CEO of a film production, not some ideas guy. They require and utilize a technical understanding of all parts of the production.

The effort can be minimal but there’s a gradient as far as I can tell. At one extreme is what you said: write a prompt and walk away. At the other end you could actually instruct the agent to write every character of the program, and that would be more effort than typing it out yourself. Then there’s the in-between state of writing half and letting the agent fill in the other half. People are using it at all levels of effort, I don’t see how you can presume everyone uses the minimum level.

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