Comment by svachalek
6 hours ago
We've gone through this with chess, and the days when a human can do anything to help AI there are long past; the human can only drag it down. It seems to me to be a form of the bitter lesson. I expect this will happen in every field where we don't add guardrails to require humans in the network. I have a hard time seeing regulation happening around this in the US but vanity may also serve, will CEOs be satisfied ruling armies of virtual assistants, or do they need big buildings full of human thralls?
Well, maybe. But most fields of human endeavor aren't very much like a board game with clear, unchanging rules and a single, unambiguous objective.
Have we really though?
This is not a silly question, because it's kind of silly:
Has an AI ever actually gone through all of the steps necessary to become a chess master? Go to competitions, raise in the ranks, take a plane to the masters, organize support and all the real life details necessary? Playing chess is just the small formal part here, and all of the obvious things humans obviously do, well...
I don't agree.
Chess is a perfect information game with objective, easily measurable outcomes.
Show me a software business that looks like that and I'll agree with your hypothesis.
Otherwise I don't believe your metaphor proves much of anything.
Another thing is, I have been playing Chinese chess a bit lately and, yes, Pikafish is stronger than any human player, but if you actually share a board state or list of moves with an LLM they will fail to accurately interpret the state of the board, let alone give good advice on what moves to make. Doesn't really prove or disprove the claim that LLMs will replace human programmers but it does show that the word "AI" is papering over a lot of specifics of particular technologies.
At some point the whims of the CEOs don’t win. The shareholders demand more growth.
Demand from whom, if not the CEO?
The board, presumably
Of course the demand will be directed at the CEO and they will have to provide results or be replaced.
> the days when a human can do anything to help AI there are long past; the human can only drag it down.
I disagree, currently a human guiding an AI agent is far better (more productive for less money) than an AI agent with very loose non-technical guidance and The Ralph Wiggum Loop.
I don't know how much longer humans have, but I don't think they can be cut out of the loop entirely just yet.
In chess? That ended in ~2017.
Sorry, I thought we were talking about Human + LLM agent for software development. I misinterpreted your initial statement.