A cursory scroll on X, LinkedIn, etc... will show you.
That seemed to me be to be the author's point.
His article resonated with me. After 30 years of development and dealing with hype cycles, offshoring, no-code "platforms", endless framework churn (this next version will make everything better!), coder tribes ("if you don't do typescript, you're incompetent and should be fired"), endless bickering, improper tech adopting following the FANGs (your startup with 0 users needs kubernetes?) and a gazillion other annoyances we're all familiar with, this AI stuff might be the thing that makes me retire.
To be clear: it's not AI that I have a problem with. I'm actually deeply interested in it and actively researching it from a math's up approach.
I'm also a big believer in it, I've implemented it in a few different projects that have had remarkable efficiency gains for my users, things like automatically extracting values from a PDF to create a structured record. It is a wonderful way to eliminate a whole class of drudgery based tasks.
No, the thing that has me on the verge of throwing in the towel is the wholesale rush towards devaluing human expertise.
I'm not just talking about developers, I'm talking about healthcare providers, artists, lawyers, etc...
Highly skilled professionals that have, in some cases, spent their entire lives developing mastery of their craft. They demand a compensation rate commensurate to that value, and in response society gleefully says "meh, I think you can be replaced with this gizmo for a fraction of the cost."
It's an insult. It would be one thing if it were true - my objection could safely be dismissed as the grumbling of a buggy whip manufacturer, however this is objectively, measurably wrong.
Most of the energy of the people pushing the AI hype goes towards obscuring this. When objective reality is presented to them in irrefutable ways, the response is inevitably: "but the next version will!"
It won't. Not with the current approach. The stochastic parrot will never learn to think.
That doesn't mean it's not useful. It demonstrably is, it's an incredibly valuable tool for entire classes of problems, but using it as a cheap replacement for skilled professionals is madness.
What will the world be left with when we drive those professionals out?
Do you want an AI deciding your healthcare? Do you want a codebase that you've invested your life savings into written by an AI that can't think?
How will we innovate? Who will be able to do fundamental research and create new things? Why would you bother going into the profession at all? So we're left with AIs training on increasingly polluted data, and relying on them to push us forward. It's a farce.
I've been seriously considering hanging up my spurs and munching popcorn through the inevitable chaos that will come if we don't course correct.
That seemed to me be to be the author's point.
His article resonated with me. After 30 years of development and dealing with hype cycles, offshoring, no-code "platforms", endless framework churn (this next version will make everything better!), coder tribes ("if you don't do typescript, you're incompetent and should be fired"), endless bickering, improper tech adopting following the FANGs (your startup with 0 users needs kubernetes?) and a gazillion other annoyances we're all familiar with, this AI stuff might be the thing that makes me retire.
To be clear: it's not AI that I have a problem with. I'm actually deeply interested in it and actively researching it from a math's up approach.
I'm also a big believer in it, I've implemented it in a few different projects that have had remarkable efficiency gains for my users, things like automatically extracting values from a PDF to create a structured record. It is a wonderful way to eliminate a whole class of drudgery based tasks.
No, the thing that has me on the verge of throwing in the towel is the wholesale rush towards devaluing human expertise.
I'm not just talking about developers, I'm talking about healthcare providers, artists, lawyers, etc...
Highly skilled professionals that have, in some cases, spent their entire lives developing mastery of their craft. They demand a compensation rate commensurate to that value, and in response society gleefully says "meh, I think you can be replaced with this gizmo for a fraction of the cost."
It's an insult. It would be one thing if it were true - my objection could safely be dismissed as the grumbling of a buggy whip manufacturer, however this is objectively, measurably wrong.
Most of the energy of the people pushing the AI hype goes towards obscuring this. When objective reality is presented to them in irrefutable ways, the response is inevitably: "but the next version will!"
It won't. Not with the current approach. The stochastic parrot will never learn to think.
That doesn't mean it's not useful. It demonstrably is, it's an incredibly valuable tool for entire classes of problems, but using it as a cheap replacement for skilled professionals is madness.
What will the world be left with when we drive those professionals out?
Do you want an AI deciding your healthcare? Do you want a codebase that you've invested your life savings into written by an AI that can't think?
How will we innovate? Who will be able to do fundamental research and create new things? Why would you bother going into the profession at all? So we're left with AIs training on increasingly polluted data, and relying on them to push us forward. It's a farce.
I've been seriously considering hanging up my spurs and munching popcorn through the inevitable chaos that will come if we don't course correct.