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Posted

OpenAI could easily start to price their non-base ChatGPT models at a per transaction (token) level. that's how it works with agents. You can set it up to auto-refill your balance, along with a monthly maximums.

Heavy ChatGPT users will complain. However if their ChatGPT usage is creating a work product, tough that their workforce will cost them more than $200 per month. 

not to mention that OpenAI can keep going back to the private markets to raise more funds. I imagine that we won't see OpenAI come close to an IPO until they're out of their heavy growth phases. The IPO era is over but that's a separate topic.

Posted
3 hours ago, Ted Lange said:

I asked ChatGPT how much they were losing...

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So, how long is this sustainable?   

How long before it becomes 100% subscription or it turns into google and the answers are designed to drive you to some advertiser that pays the most?

 

 

This is sustainable so long as we allow grifters to dominate our economy.  This is nothing new, as we've been gobbling up shitty tech for decades now with little to show for it outside of PE jags laughing all the way to the bank.   Profitability?  What does that have to do with anything anymore?

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Posted

I don't know if Mechanize is just an ambitious startup looking to make splashy headlines and get VC investments, or if there is actually some credibility to their goal of automating all jobs. Even if they fail, the idea of this happening has always been there and someone will always be trying to accomplish this unless society has the proper guardrails in place. Currently, the leadership of our country and China puts that in doubt.

Brisket loves a doom and gloom scenario but I think he's absolutely right to be concerned about this. We can't simply ignore it or write it off as science fiction, then cry about it in 10, 20, 50 years when it actually happens. If a company in the U.S. (or anywhere) has a stated goal of replacing all human jobs, that is obviously quite problematic for the future of the human race. Even if they are only 75% successful in the end, that's an incredibly different world to live in and probably not for the better.

I think with all disruptive technologies, there should be a type of hurricane forecast model that shows the most likely path as well as the extremes on either side. The best case scenario for AI is that it solves some complex problems like developing cures for cancer without too much collateral damage along the way. The worst case scenario for AI is quite terrible, and if we leave it up to the companies developing it to set their own rules, there will eventually be bad actors that will capitalize on the worst of what the technology is capable of. You could argue that there are currently more bad actors than good actors. There are more people motivated by greed, power, and personal glory than there are people motivated to cure cancer and solve the world's problems.

I fear that even in the best case scenario, we will have a future in which the human experience is significantly dulled as a result of pervasive AI. We will lose a lot of our critical thinking capabilities and our creativity. It will be far easier to ask AI to do things for us than to actually attempt to solve our own problems. It will be far easier to ask AI to write a story or compose music or paint a picture than it will be for a human to do it independently. There are already people in this thread saying they use AI to create recipes from their pantry. I'm not judging, but that could become the norm for future generations and people will have a significantly reduced ability to do a lot of the things that makes us human. People will get used to seeing AI generated content on social media that surpasses what they actually experience in real life, which could make the real world less exciting and spectacular.

The internet revolution is probably the best comparison, but there are a ton of negatives for society that people weren't dealing with 30 years ago. Social media is about 90% detrimental to society. Jobs have not been entirely eliminated by the internet, but many sectors were eliminated or significantly reduced. New jobs have been created, so that's a positive. The human experience, IMO, is generally worse by the fact that we are constantly staring at screens instead of doing things with other people.

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Posted
1 hour ago, wild_turkey said:

Brisket loves a doom and gloom scenario but I think he's absolutely right to be concerned about this. We can't simply ignore it or write it off as science fiction, then cry about it in 10, 20, 50 years when it actually happens.

I have a friend who has a real-estate company in the Austin area (she's got a franchise or however that works).  She can easily see the parent company, who already has a bunch of developers working on adding AI to all of their tools/websites, doing away with franchises, and just having a main corporate office, and a handful of employees in each city who handle any face-to-face stuff that's needed (final walk-throughs, etc.).  She said there is so much in the real estate industry that could be automated on the financial side (planning, mortgage work, etc.) or done online remotely (and some already is) and the research side.

That's a whole helluva lot of people who might go to D.C. in the future and try and stage an insurrection.

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Posted

The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to remove a moratorium on states regulating AI systems from the Republican “big, beautiful bill.” Legislators agreed by a margin of 99 to 1to drop the controversial proposal during a protracted fight over the omnibus budget bill, which is still under debate.
 

https://www.theverge.com/politics/695495/senate-drops-ai-moratorium-budget-bill

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Goredho said:

The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to remove a moratorium on states regulating AI systems from the Republican “big, beautiful bill.” Legislators agreed by a margin of 99 to 1to drop the controversial proposal during a protracted fight over the omnibus budget bill, which is still under debate.
 

https://www.theverge.com/politics/695495/senate-drops-ai-moratorium-budget-bill

Thom Tillis, the NC senator who just announced he's quitting, was the sole 'nay' vote. Weird.

Posted
16 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I have a friend who has a real-estate company in the Austin area (she's got a franchise or however that works).  She can easily see the parent company, who already has a bunch of developers working on adding AI to all of their tools/websites, doing away with franchises, and just having a main corporate office, and a handful of employees in each city who handle any face-to-face stuff that's needed (final walk-throughs, etc.).  She said there is so much in the real estate industry that could be automated on the financial side (planning, mortgage work, etc.) or done online remotely (and some already is) and the research side.

That's a whole helluva lot of people who might go to D.C. in the future and try and stage an insurrection.

I saw some guy talking on TV about how there was a blue collar uprising that ushered in the Trump era. He then went on to say that because of AI, the next uprising will be white collar due to AI job displacement.  

Posted
2 minutes ago, CTC2 said:

I saw some guy talking on TV about how there was a blue collar uprising that ushered in the Trump era. He then went on to say that because of AI, the next uprising will be white collar due to AI job displacement.  

I wouldn't worry.  We'll just find a way to blame mexicans for AI, too.

Posted
4 minutes ago, CTC2 said:

I saw some guy talking on TV about how there was a blue collar uprising that ushered in the Trump era. He then went on to say that because of AI, the next uprising will be white collar due to AI job displacement.  

White collar uprisings, historically speaking, are what we more commonly refer to as actual revolutions.  The idiots in charge, along with the tech bro asswipes, should be doing everything they can to steer away from that situation.  It hasn't ended well for their kind in the past. 

Posted (edited)
22 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

This is sustainable so long as we allow grifters to dominate our economy.  This is nothing new, as we've been gobbling up shitty tech for decades now with little to show for it outside of PE jags laughing all the way to the bank.   Profitability?  What does that have to do with anything anymore?

PE jags is right, if I hear another "he's a good guy" about a PE JAG with money I may make the mass shooter thread.*

 

 

*law enforcement, this is a figure of speech, instead I'll just keep my mouth shut and make my hourly rate on their way to the bank.

Edited by troph
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Posted

One of the most troubling moments in the new interview comes when Kennedy discusses the role that artificial intelligence is going to play in replacing or altering the VAERS system, which stands for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS allows doctors to report incidents when they believe a patient has been harmed by vaccines, but Kennedy isn’t happy with it. The secretary insists it was “designed to fail,” suggesting it’s not registering enough people who in his mind have been harmed by vaccines over the years.

“We’re going to absolutely change VAERS and we’re going to make it, we’re going to create either within VAERS or supplementary to VAERS, a system that actually works,” Kennedy said. “And, you know, right now, even that system is antiquated because we have access to AI.”

Kennedy told Carlson he was creating an “AI revolution” at the Department of Health and Human Services and was attracting the top people from Silicon Valley who “walked away from billion dollar businesses.” But Kennedy says these people don’t want prestige or power, they just want to make the healthcare system better.

“We are at the cutting edge of AI,” Kennedy said. “We’re implementing it in all of our departments. At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.”

------

The guy who doesn't believe in vaccines is using AI to accelerate drug approvals.

nodding smiling GIF

 

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Posted

I can at least somewhat understand the appeal of Trump to certain people, even if it's lost on me.  He says what they want to hear, has a certain kind of confidence, and has been a public figure for a long time, which carries weight for some people for whatever reason. In short, he's a populist.  It doesn't do it for me, but I can understand it and the tactic has been used successfully throughout the history of democracies.   What I will never understand is how these same folks are not concerned that someone like RFK Jr. has his hands in anything meaningful.  That man couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag if you gave him a knife.   How is this shit even possible?  Outside of the absolute dumbest motherfuckers alive, who listens to this man and thinks, "Yep, that's the guy for the job!"  I just can't wrap my head around it.

Anyway, back on topic.  Fuck AI, fuck tech bros, fuck private equity, and fuck anyone who profits from any of it.  Go find work that actually means something before your humanity is completely lost.  A fry cook adds more value to society for fucks sake. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

One of the most troubling moments in the new interview comes when Kennedy discusses the role that artificial intelligence is going to play in replacing or altering the VAERS system, which stands for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS allows doctors to report incidents when they believe a patient has been harmed by vaccines, but Kennedy isn’t happy with it. The secretary insists it was “designed to fail,” suggesting it’s not registering enough people who in his mind have been harmed by vaccines over the years.

“We’re going to absolutely change VAERS and we’re going to make it, we’re going to create either within VAERS or supplementary to VAERS, a system that actually works,” Kennedy said. “And, you know, right now, even that system is antiquated because we have access to AI.”

Kennedy told Carlson he was creating an “AI revolution” at the Department of Health and Human Services and was attracting the top people from Silicon Valley who “walked away from billion dollar businesses.” But Kennedy says these people don’t want prestige or power, they just want to make the healthcare system better.

“We are at the cutting edge of AI,” Kennedy said. “We’re implementing it in all of our departments. At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.”

------

The guy who doesn't believe in vaccines is using AI to accelerate drug approvals.

nodding smiling GIF

 

Is this an actual quote?

“We are at the cutting edge of AI,” Kennedy said. “We’re implementing it in all of our departments. At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.”

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Is this an actual quote?

“We are at the cutting edge of AI,” Kennedy said. “We’re implementing it in all of our departments. At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.”

What could go wrong?

"Hey Grok, is Elon's TeslaXSuperBrainJuiceCancerCureAndFlavorPacket safe for all desired uses, and will totally cure all cancers, baldness, and even mild cases of the dropsy?  What's that you say, "enthusiastic YES?  Well then....APPROVED!"

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Posted
3 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

White collar uprisings, historically speaking, are what we more commonly refer to as actual revolutions.  The idiots in charge, along with the tech bro asswipes, should be doing everything they can to steer away from that situation.  It hasn't ended well for their kind in the past. 

White Collar Uprising - sweet band name. 

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Posted
33 minutes ago, NoRagrets said:

White Collar Uprising - sweet band name. 

Some of those in exec offices, are the same that burn crosses

And now you do what they toldja

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Goredho said:

Is this an actual quote?

“We are at the cutting edge of AI,” Kennedy said. “We’re implementing it in all of our departments. At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.”

As someone who got to watch their dads Parkinson's progress dramatically faster due to a bad drug interaction on a trial for a drug that there's now lawsuits over.... That policy move is gonna kill millions of desperate Americans AND send them a bill for the privilege of picking up all the pieces after they move fast and break things

Edited by Captainant
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Posted

So, I’m now using the Ai sites (ChatGPT, grok, Claude) daily for anything I’m trying to do. I do a lot of financial analysis that requires some formulas that are a bit difficult to figure out. In the past, I would just sit down and try to hammer it out. Now I use these Ai tools to deliver the formulas for me.

For the latest one, it kept delivering wrong formulas over and over, with confidence. This made me wonder about something. If these ai tools are all being trained by the data they are fed, given that they are increasingly being fed incorrect or false information, and less new information is being created because people are just using AI to create information, how doesn’t the whole AI process implode upon itself? Training with less new information and more fake information seems like a recipe for failure. 

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Posted
2 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

So, I’m now using the Ai sites (ChatGPT, grok, Claude) daily for anything I’m trying to do. I do a lot of financial analysis that requires some formulas that are a bit difficult to figure out. In the past, I would just sit down and try to hammer it out. Now I use these Ai tools to deliver the formulas for me.

For the latest one, it kept delivering wrong formulas over and over, with confidence. This made me wonder about something. If these ai tools are all being trained by the data they are fed, given that they are increasingly being fed incorrect or false information, and less new information is being created because people are just using AI to create information, how doesn’t the whole AI process implode upon itself? Training with less new information and more fake information seems like a recipe for failure. 

This is a fascinating problem space in LLMs! A broadly trained foundational model is gonna be dogshit at mathematical reasoning, as its main corpus of knowledge is mainly general knowledge and writings. So it sounds right that it would have a lay-person's understanding of those subjects.

There are techniques called "fine tuning" where you take a base foundational model (like GPT4 or Claude 4.0 or whatever LLM is your fancy) and then do a differential training run on top and introduce in your own corpus of documents. It's SUPER expensive compared to just doing Retrieval Augmented Generation, however it results in a LLM that has a better "feel" for the "music" of the theory than a generalist LLM.

 

All that to say though - they're still pretty dogshit at correctness. To meaningfully improve upon correctness it would take a true Generative Adversarial Network where you're training both a generative model and a "judge" model (academically, it's called a "discriminator" model) that decides if the generated output is dogshit or not. It's can result in very finely tuned and believable generative models, however they have an extremely narrow domain of utility and still take a SHITTON of electricity to produce.

And to even start building a GAN architecture, it takes a mountain of data to train the generator and disciminator. Data that doesn't really exist as of right now, and as you correctly point out, is probably going to be generated with AI and result in a Hapsburg AI model

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Posted
On 6/30/2025 at 11:37 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

If someone's main role is working with transactions and/or dealing with customers via email/chat, start learning a new skill ASAP.

Yep. My department is very much trying to increase phone/zoom meeting interactions, partly for this very reason. 
 

Problem is, most customers are more comfortable with email/text interactions and it takes less time. 
 

Im going to start looking into other options soon. 
 

For any GIS people lurking, are GIS jobs going to meet the same fate with AI?  Would it be a waste of time to try and get into that world?

Posted
On 6/30/2025 at 11:37 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Been screwing around more and more with AI agents. Basic training classes that mainly demonstrate the potential. I know we mostly hear hype regarding them but they're the real deal. As soon as more major software packages and email systems embrace them, corp America is going be transformed. Given that I've never known a VP or CFO to not want to lower headcount/cost, they will quickly grab onto tech that will increase productivity per worker.

If someone's main role is working with transactions and/or dealing with customers via email/chat, start learning a new skill ASAP.

funny you say that 

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/29/ai_agents_fail_a_lot/

Posted (edited)

 

3 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

So, I’m now using the Ai sites (ChatGPT, grok, Claude) daily for anything I’m trying to do. I do a lot of financial analysis that requires some formulas that are a bit difficult to figure out. In the past, I would just sit down and try to hammer it out. Now I use these Ai tools to deliver the formulas for me.

For the latest one, it kept delivering wrong formulas over and over, with confidence. This made me wonder about something. If these ai tools are all being trained by the data they are fed, given that they are increasingly being fed incorrect or false information, and less new information is being created because people are just using AI to create information, how doesn’t the whole AI process implode upon itself? Training with less new information and more fake information seems like a recipe for failure. 

Garbage in/garbage out is not new, but the pressures from above to become AI fueled organizations is such that your scenario is a danger of being a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Do something disruptive and differentiating with AI -- or else.  Ok, here’s your agenetic product and I’ll present it to you with the same level of confidence with which AI presented it to me.  Because being able to tell who you answer to that you are doing something amazeballs with AI is all anyone gives a shit about anymore.

I mean, that RFK video is the average executive/board person right now.  The zeal superseded only by a lack of understanding, the pressure to adopt/get to market and void of consideration of consequence is very prevalent.

What will be interesting is the first AI black swan catastrophe.  I’m talking about something on the order of Chernobyl because someone rushed to rely on AI for something risky.  I guess some sobriety might be introduced then.

Edited by Goredho
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Posted
2 minutes ago, Goredho said:

 

Garbage in/garbage out is not new, but the pressures from above to become AI fueled organizations is such that your scenario is a danger of being a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Do something disruptive and differentiating with AI -- or else.  Ok, here’s your agenetic product and I’ll present it to you with the same level of confidence with which AI presented it to me.  Because being able to tell who you answer to that you are doing something amazeballs with AI is all anyone gives a shit about anymore.

I mean, that RFK video is the average executive/board person right now.  The zeal superseded only by a lack of understanding, the pressure to adopt/get to market and void of consideration of consequence is very prevalent.

What will be interesting is the first AI black swan catastrophe.  I’m talking about something on the order of Chernobyl because someone rushed to rely on AI for something risky.  I guess some sobriety might be introduced then.

Yeah.  I think for most companies it's just going to manifest as progressively worse results, as capable knowledge workers are replaced by overly generalist AI agents.  But at some point the AI capabilities will catch up and eventually supersede human capabilities for many tasks.  That point might be 20 years down the road, or it might be 10.  But it's almost certainly not 5, and the current rush to production is pushing for even sooner than that in many companies.

 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Goredho said:

I mean, that RFK video is the average executive/board person right now.  The zeal superseded only by a lack of understanding, the pressure to adopt/get to market and void of consideration of consequence is very prevalent.

What will be interesting is the first AI black swan catastrophe.  I’m talking about something on the order of Chernobyl because someone rushed to rely on AI for something risky.  I guess some sobriety might be introduced then.

It's fucking crazy how true this is. There's ZERO critical thinking in that class of person, all they see is dollar signs from cutting workers and they don't give a shit about the plummeting quality of product - whether that's customer service interactions, or more brittle and less secure code, or just generally trashing your market reputation.

Crazy thing is though - they're gonna be looooong gone before those chickens come home to roost. That's the MBA way, baby! Harvest short term benefits to get their bonuses and then skip town to a new firm before the long-term consequences are made apparent. 

3 minutes ago, utee94 said:

Yeah.  I think for most companies it's just going to manifest as progressively worse results, as capable knowledge workers are replaced by overly generalist AI agents.  But at some point the AI capabilities will catch up and eventually supersede human capabilities for many tasks.  That point might be 20 years down the road, or it might be 10.  But it's almost certainly not 5, and the current rush to production is pushing for even sooner than that in many companies.

I think this is true for really basic, reading comprehension stuff. GenAI is gonna absolutely destroy the data entry industry as it currently stands - but that doesn't mean there's nothing else those folks could do. In an information economy, machine learning is the steam or ICE engine. It's what lets us sift through the vast amounts of data.

But just because we came up with steam engines doesn't mean that we didn't need rail workers anymore driving stakes. John Henry could have done other jobs workin' on the railroad

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

It's fucking crazy how true this is. There's ZERO critical thinking in that class of person, all they see is dollar signs from cutting workers and they don't give a shit about the plummeting quality of product - whether that's customer service interactions, or more brittle and less secure code, or just generally trashing your market reputation.

Crazy thing is though - they're gonna be looooong gone before those chickens come home to roost. That's the MBA way, baby! Harvest short term benefits to get their bonuses and then skip town to a new firm before the long-term consequences are made apparent. 

I think this is true for really basic, reading comprehension stuff. GenAI is gonna absolutely destroy the data entry industry as it currently stands - but that doesn't mean there's nothing else those folks could do. In an information economy, machine learning is the steam or ICE engine. It's what lets us sift through the vast amounts of data.

But just because we came up with steam engines doesn't mean that we didn't need rail workers anymore driving stakes. John Henry could have done other jobs workin' on the railroad

Oh absolutely, totally agree.  And a more recent chain of linked examples are the typewriter, then the word processor, then networked computer systems, and eventually the internet.  All of these disruptors completely eliminated large segments of prior work, but they also created completely new areas of work.  Multifactor productivity growth is the lasting legacy of technological innovation and I see no reason for that to change.

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Posted

Regardless if AI takes away or evolves current job roles, that ship has sailed. Society has never rejected technology improvements due to increased productivity gains/job losses. Sure, a populist president/governor can stand tall to keep US jobs but that would only be a PR campaign. enough with CR.

 

 

Posted

What is already becoming manifest is that AI dev tools like Cursor or Copilot are very useful in the hands of already senior engineers, who know when to call it on its BS.  In my org, the senior devs who are using it basically have an incredibly fast junior dev at their disposal to help them get stuff done faster, which is all well and good.  But when the human junior dev uses it in the same way, they implicitly trust the output from the AI junior dev and thus there are no guardrails preventing the blind from leading the blind.  We just had a junior on my team send up code for review that while (thankfully) not completely wrong was done in such an over-engineered and complicated way that if it were to have been approved it would've been completely out of line with the best practices and general framework of our codebase.  Do this enough times and best case scenario you have a terribly unwieldy, spaghetti codebase and at worst a ton of bugs making it to production. 

 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, gurt said:

What is already becoming manifest is that AI dev tools like Cursor or Copilot are very useful in the hands of already senior engineers, who know when to call it on its BS.  In my org, the senior devs who are using it basically have an incredibly fast junior dev at their disposal to help them get stuff done faster, which is all well and good.  But when the human junior dev uses it in the same way, they implicitly trust the output from the AI junior dev and thus there are no guardrails preventing the blind from leading the blind.  We just had a junior on my team send up code for review that while (thankfully) not completely wrong was done in such an over-engineered and complicated way that if it were to have been approved it would've been completely out of line with the best practices and general framework of our codebase.  Do this enough times and best case scenario you have a terribly unwieldy, spaghetti codebase and at worst a ton of bugs making it to production. 

 

Yeah, we're using cursor, and it's definitely a productivity boon for people with a reasonable amount of experience.  Our organizational answer to the problem you describe is to just not hire juniors any more.

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Posted

Don’t know how many of you were in executive positions during the internet bubble of 1999, but it was eerily similar to what we are seeing now in terms of tech hype. The point when I really realized all these CEO’s were making ridiculous decisions was when Northern Telecom went out in 2000 and purchased more equipment from suppliers than would ever be needed in an entire lifetime. Executives started believing their own bullshit. At least the good news now vs then is that the overvaluation of tech companies now isn’t nearly as bad as then, although it’s still ridiculous. 

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Posted
21 minutes ago, gurt said:

What is already becoming manifest is that AI dev tools like Cursor or Copilot are very useful in the hands of already senior engineers, who know when to call it on its BS.  In my org, the senior devs who are using it basically have an incredibly fast junior dev at their disposal to help them get stuff done faster, which is all well and good.  But when the human junior dev uses it in the same way, they implicitly trust the output from the AI junior dev and thus there are no guardrails preventing the blind from leading the blind.  We just had a junior on my team send up code for review that while (thankfully) not completely wrong was done in such an over-engineered and complicated way that if it were to have been approved it would've been completely out of line with the best practices and general framework of our codebase.  Do this enough times and best case scenario you have a terribly unwieldy, spaghetti codebase and at worst a ton of bugs making it to production. 

 

In dev it's going to look like the housing market. All senior devs and hardly any freshers worth a dang. Like all $600k houses and no starter houses anymore.

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Posted
15 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

Don’t know how many of you were in executive positions during the internet bubble of 1999, but it was eerily similar to what we are seeing now in terms of tech hype. The point when I really realized all these CEO’s were making ridiculous decisions was when Northern Telecom went out in 2000 and purchased more equipment from suppliers than would ever be needed in an entire lifetime. Executives started believing their own bullshit. At least the good news now vs then is that the overvaluation of tech companies now isn’t nearly as bad as then, although it’s still ridiculous. 

It's because rule #1 of mediocre executives (which is to say, 80% of them) in a bubble-- never question or cause anyone to question the hype when you are leading.

Satya got a lot of credit (and flak) for doing just that recently, actually.

Posted
19 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Yeah, we're using cursor, and it's definitely a productivity boon for people with a reasonable amount of experience.  Our organizational answer to the problem you describe is to just not hire juniors any more.

Ii mentioned it earlier, but a funny meme last few weeks ago was the YC batch class and how it's all Cursor for XYZ:

r/AI_India - the c in yc stands for cursor

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Posted
39 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Regardless if AI takes away or evolves current job roles, that ship has sailed. Society has never rejected technology improvements due to increased productivity gains/job losses. Sure, a populist president/governor can stand tall to keep US jobs but that would only be a PR campaign. enough with CR.

 

 

The policy challenge isn't "stop some innovation from costing job categories X and Y."  The policy challenge is the pivot - fine, jobs X and Y are going away.  How are we going to equip our society, education systems, etc. to replace them . . . and if need be, during the transition period, soften the blow?

There's functionally zero interest or momentum for that.  We are all-in on enthusiastically fucking over society, and zero-in on doing anything that will actually help human society.  These are dark times.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

The policy challenge isn't "stop some innovation from costing job categories X and Y."  The policy challenge is the pivot - fine, jobs X and Y are going away.  How are we going to equip our society, education systems, etc. to replace them . . . and if need be, during the transition period, soften the blow?

There's functionally zero interest or momentum for that.  We are all-in on enthusiastically fucking over society, and zero-in on doing anything that will actually help human society.  These are dark times.

What we got ain't nothing new. Industrial Revolutions have always been hard on people. It ain't all waiting on white collar work to find a soft landing to keep up the creature comforts white collar workers have come to expect the last 50 years. That's vanity.

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

What we got ain't nothing new. Industrial Revolutions have always been hard on people. It ain't all waiting on white collar work to find a soft landing to keep up the creature comforts white collar workers have come to expect the last 50 years. That's vanity.

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Counterpoint: a strong middle class is exactly the thing that "made America great" that so many folks want to "make great again."

Post-war to the 1970s, that middle class was built on the back of America being a manufacturing powerhouse (auto industry etc.).  As that dwindled, we ALREADY created a massive and unhappy "working class," as they were getting disproportionately left behind.  Now, we're working on doing that with the next layer as well.  Following a path that will take the country to a two class country of oligarchs and serfs (with a handful of remaining necessary functionaries who work to funnel all remaining dollars from the serfs to the oligarchs)....well, that won't turn out well.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, gurt said:

We just had a junior on my team send up code for review that while (thankfully) not completely wrong was done in such an over-engineered and complicated way that if it were to have been approved it would've been completely out of line with the best practices and general framework of our codebase.  Do this enough times and best case scenario you have a terribly unwieldy, spaghetti codebase and at worst a ton of bugs making it to production. 

TBH what you're describing is what the start of my career looked like, only it was crappy brittle spaghetti code that came from TCS. Nobody in house could maintain it and my first big project was refactoring it into a documented and not dogmatically OOP'd codebase - crazy shit like hundreds of lines of class definition and factories just to enable basic operations on JSON objects. Management never wants to invest in good tech and talent, and will only begrudgingly do so after it's demonstrated THAT is what gives a market advantage. 

On the flip side, cleaning that mess up has been quite a nice career for me so far.

Edited by Captainant
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Posted (edited)
38 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Counterpoint: a strong middle class is exactly the thing that "made America great" that so many folks want to "make great again."

Post-war to the 1970s, that middle class was built on the back of America being a manufacturing powerhouse (auto industry etc.).  As that dwindled, we ALREADY created a massive and unhappy "working class," as they were getting disproportionately left behind.  Now, we're working on doing that with the next layer as well.  Following a path that will take the country to a two class country of oligarchs and serfs (with a handful of remaining necessary functionaries who work to funnel all remaining dollars from the serfs to the oligarchs)....well, that won't turn out well.

Oil tankers worth of ink has been spilled about how what you are describing as the idyllic middle class golden era was an artificially created construct from WWII and America not being a theatre of war and not losing a generation of young men and with an unscathed manufacturing base, that was always a temporary state and was never going to be sustainable, so I won't do it again here except to call it out and say:

If your ideal is hinged upon a mirage, it's going to hard to ever really be happy in the messiness of reality. You are chasing the dragon.

Edited by Vegas64
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Posted
2 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Oil tankers worth of ink has been spilled about how what you are describing as the idlyc middle class golden era was an artificially created construct from WWII and America not being a theatre of war and losing a generation of young men and with an unscathed manufacturing base, that was always a temporary state and was never going to be sustainable, so I won't do it again here except to call it out and say:

If your ideal is hinged upon a mirage, it's going to hard to ever really be happy in the messiness of reality. You are chasing the dragon.

Well, we were actually pulling off -- with middling success, but some success nonetheless -- a transition to a next phase of a functioning economy.  Yes, leaning on white collar employment.

Now?  We're being pitched one of two options: 1) eliminate most white collar jobs with AI, and/or 2) return to a mostly low-end manufacturing society (we're gonna bring back Nike factories so we can all stitch shoes for a living).  

I'm not chasing a dragon.  I'm suggesting that perhaps we shouldn't pursue a dystopian vision with such enthusiasm and fervor.

Posted
10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I'm not chasing a dragon.  I'm suggesting that perhaps we shouldn't pursue a dystopian vision with such enthusiasm and fervor.

If Star Trek is any guide, it'll take a nuclear war for people to back off that bugaboo

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Vegas64 said:

Oil tankers worth of ink has been spilled about how what you are describing as the idyllic middle class golden era was an artificially created construct from WWII and America not being a theatre of war and not losing a generation of young men and with an unscathed manufacturing base, that was always a temporary state and was never going to be sustainable, so I won't do it again here except to call it out and say:

If your ideal is hinged upon a mirage, it's going to hard to ever really be happy in the messiness of reality. You are chasing the dragon.

That’s ridiculous. The destruction of the middle class ( where middle is defined as non-serfs and nonoligarchs) is an extremely serious issue for the US because of the government policies the country has pursued over the last 30 years: tax policy, workers rights, etc. 

But, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and other countries have shown you can build a pretty successful country and living standard that doesn’t have such extremes of wealth inequality. And that’s been with far less private capital, a less culture of risk taking and innovation, etc. 

A US that can blend our unique strengths with a clear focus on not letting wealth inequality get out of hand would make us unstoppable as a competitive power. Unfortunately, wealth inequality trends are hurtling us towards a total implosion and losing our advantages to such screwed up countries as China, India, etc. 

Hell, we aren’t even practicing our core values anymore in government policy, ie the importance of education, ensuring a fair opportunity for all, honesty and integrity in actions, etc. 

Edited by Dbeasy
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Posted
1 hour ago, Captainant said:

If Star Trek is any guide, it'll take a nuclear war for people to back off that bugaboo

We'll get there.  Faster than you think.

We've already gone from "we need leadership that won't get us into any wars" to "fuck yeah, bomb em all, America fuck yeah!"  We're only accelerating towards the inevitable outcome.

2 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

Hell, we aren’t even practicing our core values anymore in government policy, ie the importance of education, ensuring a fair opportunity for all, honesty and integrity in actions, etc. 

Practicing those?  FFS, we have declared every one of those the enemy of all that is right and good, and downright un-American.

Posted
2 hours ago, Goredho said:

Our organizational answer to the problem you describe is to just not hire juniors any more.

Which means they never progress to seniors and you eventually run out. Doesn’t seem all that smart to me. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Dbeasy said:

That’s ridiculous. The destruction of the middle class ( where middle is defined as non-serfs and nonoligarchs) is an extremely serious issue for the US because of the government policies the country has pursued over the last 30 years: tax policy, workers rights, etc. 

But, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and other countries have shown you can build a pretty successful country and living standard that doesn’t have such extremes of wealth inequality. And that’s been with far less private capital, a less culture of risk taking and innovation, etc. 

A US that can blend our unique strengths with a clear focus on not letting wealth inequality get out of hand would make us unstoppable as a competitive power. Unfortunately, wealth inequality trends are hurtling us towards a total implosion and losing our advantages to such screwed up countries as China, India, etc. 

Hell, we aren’t even practicing our core values anymore in government policy, ie the importance of education, ensuring a fair opportunity for all, honesty and integrity in actions, etc. 

I fundamentally disagree, on most or all points, but recognize the ChatGPT AI thread is hardly the place to really drill into it (yet, again).

Bringing it back to the technology discussion-- how about that Mark Zuck, eh? That guy is competitive. 

Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

We'll get there.  Faster than you think.

We've already gone from "we need leadership that won't get us into any wars" to "fuck yeah, bomb em all, America fuck yeah!"  We're only accelerating towards the inevitable outcome.

Practicing those?  FFS, we have declared every one of those the enemy of all that is right and good, and downright un-American.

Most people do not think war and bombing stuff is good. Like 70% most. 

Posted
23 minutes ago, immamac said:

Most people do not think war and bombing stuff is good. Like 70% most. 

But not the 30% that are driving the bus.  That 30% is all that matters.  And they are in full-on Slim Pickens mode these days -- economically, socially, militarily....

-C3OmA.gif

 

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