<story><title>Thoughts on the Future of Software Development</title><url>https://www.sheshbabu.com/posts/thoughts-on-the-future-of-software-development/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>visarga</author><text>&amp;gt; 1) Those tasks that it is still currently only possible for a human to do. 2) Those tasks which are easier and cheaper for a human to do.&lt;p&gt;I agree, but &amp;quot;1&amp;quot; must include all tasks where a mistake could lead to liabilities for the company, which is probably most tasks. LLMs can&amp;#x27;t be held responsible for their fuckups, they can&amp;#x27;t be punished, they have no body. It&amp;#x27;s like the genie from the bottle, it will grant your three wishes, but they might turn out in a surprising way and it can&amp;#x27;t be held accountable.&lt;p&gt;The same will apply for example for using LLMs in medicine. We can&amp;#x27;t afford to risk it on AI, a human must certify the diagnosis and treatment.&lt;p&gt;In conclusion we can say LLMs can&amp;#x27;t handle accountability, not even in principle. That&amp;#x27;s a big issue in many jobs. The OP mentioned this as well:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  even when AI coders can be rented out like EC2 instances, it will be beneficial to have an inhouse team of Software Developers to oversee their work&lt;p&gt;Oversight is basically manual-mode AI alignment. We won&amp;#x27;t automate that, the more advanced an AI, the more effort we need to put in overseeing its work.</text></item><item><author>empath-nirvana</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t really think that thinking of LLMs and related technologies as &amp;quot;Artificial Humans&amp;quot; is the right way to think about how they&amp;#x27;re going to be integrated into workflows.  What is going to happen is that people are going to be adopt these tools to solve particular tasks that are annoying or tedious for developers to do, in a way similar to the way tools like Ansible and Chef replaced the task of logging into ssh servers manually to install stuff, and aws replaced &amp;#x27;sending a guy out to the data center to setup a server&amp;#x27; for many companies.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s going to be done piecemeal, not all-at-once.  Someone will figure out a way to get an AI to do _one_ thing faster and cheaper than a human and sell _that_.  Maybe it&amp;#x27;s automatic test generation, maybe it&amp;#x27;s automatically remediating alerts, maybe it&amp;#x27;s code reviews.  The scope of work of what a software developer does will be reduced until it&amp;#x27;s reduced to two categories:&lt;p&gt;1) Those tasks that it is still currently only possible for a human to do.
2) Those tasks which are easier and cheaper for a human to do.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t even really need to think about LLMs as AIs or conscious or whether they pass the turing test or not, it&amp;#x27;s just like every other form of automation we&amp;#x27;ve already developed.  There are vast swathes of work that software developers and IT people did a few decades ago that almost nobody does any more because of various forms of automation.  None of that has reduced the overall amount of jobs for software developers because there isn&amp;#x27;t a limited amount of software development to do.  If you make software development less expensive and easier than people will apply it to more tasks, and software developers will become _more_ valuable and not _less_.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wongarsu</author><text>&amp;gt; I agree, but &amp;quot;1&amp;quot; must include all tasks where a mistake could lead to liabilities for the company, which is probably most tasks&lt;p&gt;If you hire a junior programmer and they make a mistake, they aren&amp;#x27;t held liable either. Sure, you can fire them, but unless there&amp;#x27;s malice or gross negligence the liability buck stops at the company. The same can be said about the wealth of software currently involved in producing software and making decisions. The difficulty of suing Microsoft or the llvm project over compiler bugs hasn&amp;#x27;t stopped anyone from using their compilers.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see how LLMs are meaningful different from a company assuming liability for employees they hire or software they run. Even if they were AGI it wouldn&amp;#x27;t meaningfully change anything. You make a decision whether the benefits outweigh the risks, and adjust that calculation as you get more data on both benefits and risks. Right now companies are hesitant because the risks are both large and uncertain, but as we get better at understanding and mitigating them LLMs will be used more.</text></comment>
<story><title>Thoughts on the Future of Software Development</title><url>https://www.sheshbabu.com/posts/thoughts-on-the-future-of-software-development/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>visarga</author><text>&amp;gt; 1) Those tasks that it is still currently only possible for a human to do. 2) Those tasks which are easier and cheaper for a human to do.&lt;p&gt;I agree, but &amp;quot;1&amp;quot; must include all tasks where a mistake could lead to liabilities for the company, which is probably most tasks. LLMs can&amp;#x27;t be held responsible for their fuckups, they can&amp;#x27;t be punished, they have no body. It&amp;#x27;s like the genie from the bottle, it will grant your three wishes, but they might turn out in a surprising way and it can&amp;#x27;t be held accountable.&lt;p&gt;The same will apply for example for using LLMs in medicine. We can&amp;#x27;t afford to risk it on AI, a human must certify the diagnosis and treatment.&lt;p&gt;In conclusion we can say LLMs can&amp;#x27;t handle accountability, not even in principle. That&amp;#x27;s a big issue in many jobs. The OP mentioned this as well:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  even when AI coders can be rented out like EC2 instances, it will be beneficial to have an inhouse team of Software Developers to oversee their work&lt;p&gt;Oversight is basically manual-mode AI alignment. We won&amp;#x27;t automate that, the more advanced an AI, the more effort we need to put in overseeing its work.</text></item><item><author>empath-nirvana</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t really think that thinking of LLMs and related technologies as &amp;quot;Artificial Humans&amp;quot; is the right way to think about how they&amp;#x27;re going to be integrated into workflows.  What is going to happen is that people are going to be adopt these tools to solve particular tasks that are annoying or tedious for developers to do, in a way similar to the way tools like Ansible and Chef replaced the task of logging into ssh servers manually to install stuff, and aws replaced &amp;#x27;sending a guy out to the data center to setup a server&amp;#x27; for many companies.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s going to be done piecemeal, not all-at-once.  Someone will figure out a way to get an AI to do _one_ thing faster and cheaper than a human and sell _that_.  Maybe it&amp;#x27;s automatic test generation, maybe it&amp;#x27;s automatically remediating alerts, maybe it&amp;#x27;s code reviews.  The scope of work of what a software developer does will be reduced until it&amp;#x27;s reduced to two categories:&lt;p&gt;1) Those tasks that it is still currently only possible for a human to do.
2) Those tasks which are easier and cheaper for a human to do.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t even really need to think about LLMs as AIs or conscious or whether they pass the turing test or not, it&amp;#x27;s just like every other form of automation we&amp;#x27;ve already developed.  There are vast swathes of work that software developers and IT people did a few decades ago that almost nobody does any more because of various forms of automation.  None of that has reduced the overall amount of jobs for software developers because there isn&amp;#x27;t a limited amount of software development to do.  If you make software development less expensive and easier than people will apply it to more tasks, and software developers will become _more_ valuable and not _less_.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>politician</author><text>How do you negotiate for a salary when the role is to be ablative armor for the company? &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m excited to make myself available to absorb potential reputation damage for $CORP when the AI goes off the rails.&amp;quot;</text></comment>