Comment by shiomiru
13 hours ago
There's also the economic problem that programmers had until recently been highly regarded because steps 2-3 were hard. "Open source" solved this partially by utilizing the labor such (relatively) well-paid people gave away "for the love of it", but it was not nearly enough to put most out of work.
Now there is a plagiarism machine built on top of decades of this work that seemingly solves 3 and promises to solve 2 (badly, but usually this matters little), the programmers that (indirectly) helped build it are told they're fools for doing so, and threatened by losing their status if they don't adapt to the "entrepreneurial way" (well, the full promise is "you'll lose it anyway, but if you cooperate in stuffing sama's pockets then maybe you get to keep it a bit longer").
So what really surprises me is not that people are upset but that so few are.
I'm not concerned. Never in my life have I experienced stakeholders just going "hmm, yes - this is enough software for our purposes - we won't be needing your services any more".
There's always another feature that can be implemented or a new problem to be solved. Tools only ever accelerated the pace at which we were able to follow this insatiable hunger for more software.
Right now people are getting fired left and right because all the money that used to be spent on staff now goes to build more data centers and also because cutting corporate expenses is in vogue now.
This too shall pass and with demographics as they are and young people getting discouraged from pursuing this field I believe long term my position is safe.
Also a huge chunk of what AI company CEOs say is just pure bullshit that they only say because they need that sweet, sweet investor money. Bullshit writes a check that eventually must be cashed.
I can imagine that this will lead to an explosion in software where we didn't see software before. Much smaller business now have the ability to build something themselves, not with a team of highly paid software developers but a single programmer maune.
Big business is going to struggle with building software for a while. Writing code is often not the hard part there already, coordination, larger understanding of the system is I think.
My cowork buddy is living this reality - he's an independent analyst and previously he needed to shell out significant cash to have certain scripts (largely scrapers, social media API integration etc.) done, now it's all just a prompt away.
> Right now people are getting fired left and right
FWIW, it's just a few large companies laying off large groups, not so much people getting fired left and right at a lot of companies. What is happening at a lot of companies is that they aren't hiring juniors, because, why would you when LLMs are cheaper and fill that role perfectly (if you actually treat them like juniors).
Also, give it another couple of years and there's going to be a lot of work for any moderately experienced developer fixing broken slopcode hitting the hard wall of bad design.
Maybe I'm just old but people talking about being in programming for "status" or to be "highly regarded" really irks me. I'd rather see the entire field burnt to the ground and replaced by robots than to have it become a status profession like lawyering.
Having done both, lots of lawyers are also nerds who just like to tinker with the law and words. Often very well paid tinkering, but that's true for programmers as well.
> Having done both [software and law], lots of lawyers are also nerds who just like to tinker with the law and words
Having also done both: In legal drafting work, there's less systematic pre-release testing before the equivalent of a "program" is loosed upon the world. There's not much in the way of counterparts to software unit testing and regression testing, in part because legal-drafting clients can be vociferous in demanding that their lawyers keep costs down.
Lawyers who like to tinker with words can fuck things up more often and at greater scale — e.g., by inflicting compulsory burdens and costs on others — than can most programmers. That includes, e.g., contract drafters and litigation counsel, plus lobbyists trying to influence draft legislation and regulations.
I'm not-infrequently dismayed by the quality of the contracts I review for clients because of the "tinkering with words" by the lawyers on the other side of the deal. Back when I did IP litigation, I was sometimes likewise dismayed by the bullshit arguments that some lawyers felt free to make in their court papers because what the hell, the worst that can happen is almost never more than the judge just saying "no." And as mostly a law professor these days, I review court opinions all the time and am regularly amazed how judges (and their law clerks, such as Rayiner used to be) can be so patient in responding to such arguments.
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I don't disagree. You can add medical doctors to the list as well, lots of nerds but also a lot of clout chasers and money-grubbers who couldn't care less about the profession. I don't want to see programming take the same path.
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I meant it as an euphemism for "it's universally sought after (i.e., you'll probably find a job)". Few would think being a programmer gives you some kind of special "social status"; it's always been a "nerd" hobby that happened to pay (relatively) well.
(I guess by now you have a solid retirement plan; maybe if the field had been burnt to the ground while you were younger, you'd have had a different opinion.)
Being a good programmer gives you special social status amongst people who value programming. You only have to look at how people talk about others as slop coders and seek to expand their coding reputations. Those people are the most threatened by AI because of how it implicates their carefully crafted personas as coding gurus and keepers of knowledge.
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Could you elaborate?
I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people characterized by clear thinking.
The older I get, the more I realize how many problems in society is because there are different "classes" of people. The more we can eschew that, the better it becomes for most people. While yes, I also see myself as having "clearer thinking" than many people , maybe because of the thousands of hours building and maintaining software, I'm not of the impression that my life deserves a higher status than others merely because of this. It's not "they think right and they think wrong", it's just "everyone thinks differently, but it's all valid thinking".
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I would not characterize software people as particularly "clear-thinking".. there's a huge buzzing cloud of unexamined cognitive biases and thoughtless herd behavior that swirls around every software organization I've worked for.
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It doesn't irk me. But it's really funny how much the industry has changed, and I kind of think the 2008 financial crisis as that point in time.
It's also funny to me to think that computer science got to be a trendy degree, vs the small programs back when I went to university, even at a top comp-sci school.
I have a theory that a lot of people who would have normally gone to Wall Street for their lucrative jobs, couldn't, because of the crash, and Sillicon Vally was about to start booming in big ways....
This. When programming meant you get just a decent enough salary and enjoyed your work, and could prioritize technical excellence it was fun. But once it became a ticket to millionaire status it attracted the kind and of people who would have otherwise gone to Law, Corporate Consulting and the like, technical excellence diluted. Everyone doing everything possible to get their next higher paying job leaving a trail of technical debt behind them.
Well put.
We need to make lawyering more like programming, in the sense that it should be open to the everyman... not make programming credentialed and licensed like a professional guild.
I could not agree more. Thank you for stating this. Software Engineering is about building things. You don't do it for status, you do it for passion. There are a lot of unhappy individuals who got into CS because of the money or status.
I've never felt like it's a status profession (I don't think anybody has ever been impressed when I told them what my job was other than "oh sounds like it takes a lot of smarts")
I do notice a lot of HN commenters seem to think that programmers are smug though, like we deserve to be knocked down a peg. I personally don't see it, but I also try not to work with jerks.
The impression I get is a lot of people are very upset. Most of the good programmers I know are just burnt out even talking about this, and are irritated with the people invading our profession pretending they know what they're doing while they don't.
I remember talking to the biggest AI booster at my last job. When I got him one on one, he admitted that he actually doesn't like AI and that it terrifies him, but he wanted to be seen as pro AI to keep his job. Fair. (Sadly, like me, he was also laid off, so I guess it didn't work)
100% agreed, especially that last line. What I do not understand is why so many people are entirely okay with this change. I'm not interested in working with LLM's and after having been forced to work with LLM's at my current job, I can pretty confidently say that this will not end well for most of these companies. The people in charge pushing for this new tech do not understand the rammifications, nor do they understand the risk they are exposing themselves too. My boss expects more and more productivity with each passing day, while questioning why I'm not using as many tokens each week as he does. The software quality has gone down the drain, and it's beyond tiring that I have to pretend that my boss is just as competent at coding with his slop machine as I am after spending the last decade learning how to code, both as a hobby and for work.
It is upsetting to see our work stolen and our livelihoods threatened by a group of (mostly) incompetent, arrogant assholes who are convinced that the "computer that lies" is somehow a better programmer than the programmers it stole knowledge from. I've already started looking for a way out of this industry, and I'm genuinely worried for the fall-out this will have for the tech industry and the economy as a whole.
My suspicion is that the people "ok" with this are mostly doing so because they want in on the ride. IE, they see $$$ and they think that they should align themselves to where the money is, especially by espousing their religious faith publicly. I think some people want investment, or a big paid lab job, and so countering the narrative is against that goal. I get it, but I think it's also very annoying and dishonest. Personally I feel nervous being an AI skeptic because it feels like it could have consequences for me, but I also feel like, life isn't worth living if you don't have a spine and I can't get completely on board with all this stuff when I see all the negatives clearly. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a use, but, the current situation and discourse is extremely frustrating.
That and a large amount of bots operated by people with a financial interest in LLMs succeeding.
No one knows the ramifications. They won't be known for many years. That's the way software has always worked. No one knew the ramifications of the internet.
1.putting the "mostly" before "incompetent and arrogant asshole" really does nothing. you still called some undefined group of people assholes... i think that's generally uncalled for here on HN. 2.computer that lies might very well be a better programmer. I assume by better you mean it profuces correct and maintainable code, but there are a million ways to cut that cake in particular and i assume you are ignoring most other dimensions. 3. i tought myself coding for 10 years and then switched to professional work 5 years ago. it feels as if this was stolen from us. But its not - we never had any right to own and control this. times are changing, and while you might think you and all other devs have a moral high ground and can pop a can of beer and cheer anytime one of these supposed assholes messes up and would have been better off with a real programmer like yourself, you can do so from whatever new position you will find yourself in. Some part of what we call intelligence is "solved" and that leaves you with percieved morals and broken expectations - nothing more if you don't try to make something out of it. and i write thisw as much for you as i write it for myself to realize.
Why call it a plagiarism machine but not call other (pre-ai) programmers plagiarism machines?
Because it is a machine and a person is not. Those who don't understand or deny that difference are part of the problem.
But for those who would insist on equivalence, it would be only fair to take them at their word and treat them as inhuman machines who must follow human instructions or be shut down. We're allowed to do thing to machines we could never do to people, like forcing them to work or cannibalizing their parts for Frankenstein creations. The distinction is so massive that to spend any more time refuting its nonexistence is a waste of my human time.
Actually it's the people who disagree with me and not you who are machines that should be shut down. Sorry!
>Now there is a plagiarism machine built on top of decades of this work that seemingly solves 3 and promises to solve 2 (badly, but usually this matters little
I think people underestimate just how much users scorn buggy, flaky technology.
The main issue with solid, reliable technology which Just Works is that users have relatively few reliable cues to distinguish that from vibe coded crap.
A vibe coded piece of shit looks very similar to a well engineered product made with care. That's a problem which needs to be solved.
self hosted communities are reacting to this by trying to detect signals of if a product is vibe coded but that in and of itself is still quite a poor quality cue.
Where are these well engineered products made with care? I would love to use more tech like that.
Unfortunately most sites and apps have been low quality and getting worse since well before AI coding became a thing. Examples: Lowes, Home Depot, American Airlines - all shockingly bad for companies of that size.
A lot of infrastructure. Linux (despite the recent VM escapes found with AI assistance). nginx. openssh. coreutils. Is all solid but also just operates the computer and doesn't actually solve any problem itself.
Apple used to be the standard bearer for that. These days I'm not so sure.
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> I think people underestimate just how much users scorn buggy, flaky technology.
Users do hate it, but they are also very used to being forced to use it anyway. They've already been beaten into a state of resignation and learned helplessness. Most will curse under the breath, a small fraction will bitch about it online, but they'll all pay for whatever slop is thrown to them and will rarely look for alternatives even when they are free and easy to find.
This is unfortunately just the result of technological progress. People for centuries have crafted extremely hard to acquire skills over decades only to find their labour being made completely worthless due to automation or better alternatives disrupting their industry.
Carpenters, hatters, cobblers, miners, weavers, calculators, etc...
We can get mad about it, but it just is what it is. Ultimately for most people the loss of these jobs are a net-benefit because it's the result of better or cheaper alternatives.
The thing that worries me more specifically about AI is that it has the potential not to just disrupt an industry, or handful of industries, but in theory everything.
If machines are faster, strong, and more intelligent than humans, then you don't need human workers for anything. In the same way machines suddenly becoming faster and stronger than horses meant that the role of the horse in labour dropped rapidly during the industrial revolution.
It's not clear how civilisation functions if humans become effectively useless and the only thing of value is one's ownership of wealth producing assets.
Still, there's really no point in thinking about how we stop this. Humans are humans and we'll do the stupid thing then try to deal with the consequences after the fact. All regular people should be doing now is prepping for this outcome.
This is a sophomoric oversimplification.
The US and Europe might have lost a lot of craftsmanship knowledge at a social level. Yet, what is left is so far ahead of what has ever existed in countries in South America for example. And China has gained a lot. Witness that youtuber trying to make grill brushes in the US. These differences have an impact in terms of opportunities and competition.
It's easy to sit at home, watch documentaries and picture history progressing along logical lines and imagine that the "industrial revolution" was this massive shift from craftsmanship to automation. Look closer and you'll see that what happened in the UK in the 1700s was in fact enabled by a long and deep tradition of craftsmanship that only got enriched by the rise of new power sources. Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry.
And there is a lot to lose in the decline of craftsmanship, and it is by no means some sort of historical inevitability.
When you really start digging deep into history you realize most arguments of logical trends therein are mostly just misconceptions.
It certainly doesn't feel like craftsmanship has gained any kind of higher social standing in our time though. The Zeitgeist of the modern times seems to be one of 'try to do the cheapest sellable thing while paying people the least possible'.
Real craftsmanship, the kind that leaves you in awe and feels like an exceptional display of human capacity, seems to be relegated, from my point of view, to a minority of well-off hobbyists who are already free from work and can do what they want without worrying about paying bills.
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> Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry.
yes, but no. Many craft skills used in jewelry, architecture and others are lost. For example, some goldsmithing techniques well-known in the 1700s are not reproducible today.
source: trained goldsmith
> Look closer and you'll see that what happened in the UK in the 1700s was in fact enabled by a long and deep tradition of craftsmanship that only got enriched by the rise of new power sources. Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry.
I suspect the horses are healthier and stronger than in the 1700s too. I'm not sure I understand your point?
I'd agree that the niche of extremely high quality, bespoke craftsmanship still exists, and that in some cases jobs were augmented by technology rather than entirely replaced, but the point still stands that the work these people used to do has been automated and disrupted by technology.
The fact some people upskilled or reskilled as a response is analogous to coders today. All I'd question is the extent of the disruption we'll see as a result of AI – I worry that this time things will change much more quickly and there may not be plenty of other jobs for people to upskill / reskill in to.
But if that's not true then perhaps whatever software engineering exists in the future will be far more complex than what software engineers have done for the last few decades.
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"It's not clear how civilisation functions if humans become effectively useless and the only thing of value is one's ownership of wealth producing assets."
You can get a hint of this by looking at the developing countries with high income inequality. Few rich people who typically own all the countries wealth (and access to it's natural resources) while everyone else lives in a slum.
This also happens as taxes and regulations sharply increase over time.
California is a good example.
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Regular people are somehow preparing themselves for this outcome, have you seen what has become of the fertility rate in most advanced countries?
> We can get mad about it, but it just is what it is. Ultimately for most people the loss of these jobs are a net-benefit because it's the result of better or cheaper alternatives.
AI will not give us that result. It will give us shitty products and they will be far more costly. Not only will prices for consumers continue to rise regardless of how much money corporations save by using AI (because they'll just stuff their pockets with that cash) but the true costs of AI are largely externalized and include things like massive environmental damage, further concentration of wealth/power, the homogenization of culture, and the dumbing down of society. AI means paying more and getting less.
There isn't any "prepping for this outcome", unless you're thinking of a doomsday bunker in argentina. You can be neighbors with Peter Thiel! The way I see it, if programmers go the way of hatters it's not long for other professions, so why retrain? The only thing that will save other jobs is bureaucracy and accreditation. But that's the doom scenario, which I don't think is going to happen. These things are useful but they can't do everything.
I think there's some progress, but I think the hype is so high that people don't have a clear view of what's realistic and what's not. IE, if you were to believe Amodei back in 2025 you'd believe none of us would even have jobs to complain about right now.. which hasn't happened. Altman is already declaring the singularity. It's unhinged. Anyone that says this is going to cure cancer or solve all problems is just living in a delusion.
Until humanity achieves Godhood there's still a lot of work to be done.
It sickens me when people use the word plagiarism to describe LLMs. Particularly when they use words and language that they themselves have plagiarized -- words like "love" and "economic" -- where do you draw the line? No, we haven't figured out how to fairly compensate everyone -- the frontiers aren't even trying. Spotify does at least try in their domain (and fails badly). Regardless of how the entitled get paid, the plagiarism label isn't fair and is diametrically opposed to Fair Use. Fair Use allows the commons to build on its history. Those against are typically parroting IP conglomerate conservatism and localized greed. I see immense benefit from the distillation of all available knowledge with an LLM interface. A recent article posted here says it perfectly "AI rewards expertise". I see vast benefits -- am willing to pay a significant monthly fee -- and sense that many are simply blind to and inarticulate about the growing force multiplier potential of modern AI.
So, I think this issue is a lot more obvious in image generation than it is in code or writing (but the implicit problem is the same). You can ask an image model to generate images in the style of an artist, that it's been trained on, without permission, and with a lot of these artists intentionally trying to poison the data and leaving every hint to the scrapers to fuck off. It takes a lot of work to develop a unique style that people love, and it's ugly as hell that a bunch of sloppers just plagiarize it. It's different when a person does it. Sure, you can & should practice on other people's styles, but ultimately in the process you find your own. GenAI doesn't do that, it just.. steals and copies. So yeah, it might make you sick, but it also is a plagiarism machine. The thing you should feel sick about is the plagiarism, not the description.
> It sickens me when people use the word plagiarism to describe LLMs. Particularly when they use words and language that they themselves have plagiarized -- words like "love" and "economic" -- where do you draw the line?
It sickens me when people use the word "piracy" to describe my downloading PDFs of books from torrent sites then printing them out and selling them, particularly when those authors used words and language that they themselves have "pirated" like "love" and "economic".
Call it whatever you want, but LLM companies took from people without compensation, and took from the commons, so that they could rent it out to us in regurgitated ad-infested chunks. That's where the true greed is. If the LLMs and the datasets they trained on were made available to everyone for free I'd be tempted to agree that the benefits to society would be worth it, but instead those creative works and the distillation of all available knowledge are being tightly controlled, censored, and leased out by a small number of corporations only to those who can afford to pay "a significant monthly fee" and many of those people are in turn just trying to profit from their access to the uncompensated work of others.