Wollff t1_j6d2k6h wrote on January 29, 2023 at 2:14 PM

>But nonetheless, they think they have a clear shot to make programming a non labor intensive activity like farming is today.

Here lies the difference between agriculture and software.

Agriculture is there for the sole reason of "feeding people". The demand is capped. Once you have successfully "fed everyone", all the rest of agriculture is luxury.

On the other hand, what I see on the "demand side" of software, is a truly bottomless hole. After the current version of the software, there is a need for the next version of the software, with new and more and better features... Either you do it first. Or your competitor will.

It doesn't ever end.

When you can write double the code in half the time? I suspect that the result will not be: "We will write the same number of lines, and hire fewer people", but: "There shall be four times the amount of code written, beating everyone else to release!"

After all, even currently you always have the choice: Do you finish your software with half the people, in double the time? Or does it pay to hire someone, in order to get out more features, faster, better?

As I understand it, most software development is not "a single person, working long", but "many people working fast". So I see AI as shifting the balance toward "equally as many people, working all that much faster"

rogert2 t1_j6faloe wrote on January 29, 2023 at 10:52 PM

The argument against this logic is that most companies who employ developers are not in the business of making an arbitrarily large number of software products. Many companies have just one product (or service), which is often tied to a non-software product or service, e.g. banks, schools, hairdressers, etc. So, their development needs are very finite.

Yes, society as a whole has a much larger appetite for software, but society-as-a-whole doesn't hire developers: specific firms hire them, and they hire them to work on specific projects that theoretically have "finish lines" which could potentially be reached in the near term if the development they can afford were more productive -- which is what AI threatens to do.

And these firms only form around activities that they think can support a profit stream. But many of society's software needs might not lend themselves to harvesting a profit, for the obvious reason that many areas of human life are not mediated by financial transactions. And yes, AI devbots will probably make it easier to fill unprofitable gaps, but the reason people are concerned about AI coming for dev jobs is that people need jobs to pay for shelter and food. So, society's bottomless appetite for software is not going to salvage this situation.