boring-human

Could this be countered by wearing wire-mesh patch clothing, perhaps in randomized stylish arrangements?

I agree that there's not a lot of value in your example, but it's the wrong example. AI writing code and humans refining it and maintaining it is probably an inferior proposition, more so if the project is FOSS.

The model I'm referring to is: "if it walks like software and quacks like software, it's software." Its writers and maintainers are AI. It has a commercial purpose. Its value comes from fulfilling its requirements.

There will be human handlers, including some who will occasionally have to dig through the dung and fix AI-idiosyncratic bugs. Fewer Ferrari designers, more Cuban 1956 Buick mechanics. It's an ugly approach, but the conjecture that, economically _or_ technically, there must be something fundamentally broken with it is very hand-wavy and dubious.

I agree that there will be less code-level innovation overall, just like artistic value production took a big hit when we went from portraits to photographs.

> In my opinion this is equivalent to telling people not to learn to drive five years ago because of self driving

Self-driving has different economics. We're reading tea leaves, true, but it's also true that software has zero marginal cost and that $20K pays for an engineer-month in SF.

> Every single line of code produced is a liability.

Do you have a hard spec and rock-solid test cases? If you do, you have two options to a working prototype: 2-6 engineer-years, or $20K. The second option will greatly increase in quality and likely decrease in price over the next few years.

What if the spec and the test cases are the new software? Assembly programmers used to make an argument against compiled code that's somewhat parallel to yours: every instruction is a (performance) liability.

> without humans in the loop

There will be humans, just fewer and fewer. The spec and test cases are AI-eligible too.

> safe, secure, and compliant software

I'm not sure humans' advantage here is safe, if it even exists still.

People focused on the flaws are missing the picture. Opus wasn't even trained to be "a member of a team of engineers," it was adapted to the task by one person with a shell script loop. Specific training for this mode of operation is inevitable. And model "IQ" is increasing with every generation. If human IQ is increasing at all, it's only because the engineer pool is shrinking more at one end than the other.

This is a five-alarm fire if you're a SWE and not retiring in the next couple years.

Can a hacked phone (such as one that was not in Lockdown Mode at one point in time) persist in a hacked state?

Obviously, the theoretical answer is yes, given an advanced-enough exploit. But let's say Apple is unaware of a specific rootkit. If each OS update is a wave, is the installed exploit more like a rowboat or a frigate? Will it likely be defeated accidentally by minor OS changes, or is it likely to endure?

This answer is actionable. If exploits are rowboats, installing developer OS betas might be security-enhancing: the exploit might break before the exploiters have a chance to update it.

En-shoring?