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All the above is also true (though perhaps in different proportions) of humans writing code! But here’s the big difference:

When humans write the code, those humans are •thinking• about the problem the whole time: understanding where those flaws might be hiding, playing out the implications of business assumptions, studying the problem up close.

When AI write the code, none of that happens. It’s a tradeoff: faster code generation at the cost of reduced understanding.

2/

The effect of AI is to reduce the cost of •generating code• by a factor of X at the cost of increasing the cost of •thinking about the problem• by a factor of Y.

And yes, Y>1. A thing non-developers do not understand about code is that coding a solution is a deep way of understanding a problem — and conversely, using code that’s dropped in your lap greatly increases the amount of problem that must be understood.

3/

Increase the cost of generating code by a factor of X; increase the cost of understanding by a factor of Y. How much bigger must X be than Y for that to pay off?

Check that OP again: if a software engs spend on average 1 hr/day writing code, and assuming (optimistically!) that they only work 8 hr days, then a napkin sketch of your AI-assisted cost of coding is:

1 / X + 7 * Y

That means even if X = ∞ (and it doesnt, but even if!!), then Y cannot exceed ~1.14.

Hey CXO, you want that bet?

4/

@inthehands The bet that a lot of these CXOs are making implicitly is that this will be like the transition from assembly to higher-level languages like C (I think most of them are too young and/or too disconnected to make it explicitly). And I'm not 100% sold on it but my 60% hunch is that it's not.

@kevinriggle
Yeah, I’ve heard that thought too. It’s tantalizing nonsense. I could write about this at length, and maybe one day I will, but the very short version is that automation is not even remotely the same thing as abstraction.

@inthehands Yes! Yes. This is it exactly.

One can imagine a version of these systems where all the "source code" is English-language text describing a software system, and the Makefile first runs that through an LLM to generate C or Python or whatever before handing it off to a regular complier, which would in some sense be more abstraction, but this is like keeping the .o files around and making the programmers debug the assembly with a hex editor.

@kevinriggle
That’s exactly the line of thought, yes. And the thing that makes abstractions useful, if they are useful, is that they make good decisions about what doesn’t matter, what can be standard, and what requires situation-specific thought. Those decisions simultaneously become productivity boost, safety, and a metaphor that is a tool for thought and communication.

@kevinriggle
What happens when the semantics of your abstractive model are defined by probabilistic plagiarism, and may change every single time you use it? That might be good for something, I guess??? But it doesn’t remotely resemble what a high-level language does for assembly.

@inthehands One could imagine using a fixed set of model weights and not retraining, using a fixed random seed, and keeping the model temperature relatively low. I'm imagining on some level basically the programming-language-generating version of Nvidia's DLSS tech here. But that's not what people are doing and I'm not convinced if we did that it would be useful

@kevinriggle
The primary job of a development team is the creation and maintenance of a shared mental model of what the software does and how it does it. Periodically, they change the code to implement changes to the mental model that have been agreed upon, or to correct places where the code does not match the model. An LLM cannot reason and does not have a theory of mind and as such cannot participate in the model process or meaningfully access that model — written documentation is at best a memory aid for the model — and thus cannot actually do anything that matters in the process. The executive class would prefer that other people in the org not be permitted to think, let alone paid for it, and therefore willfully confuses the output with the job.
@inthehands

@inthehands @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus This is interesting. I have another concert: what if the goal of the GenAI narrative was mostly an accounting goal? Meaning, tech is / was worth investing in because the huge promise of future growth enables to boost the balance sheet & enables to pay nice dividends every year. So you have to regularly renew the narratives that justify promises of future growth. GenAI is just that, it doesn't even *need* to be a real productivity boost.

@inthehands @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus This could explain why I can feel like an old man yelling at cloud when trying to explain by logic how productivity gains will not be met. It can and certainly does seem completely irrelevant to someone with an accounting goal driven by narratives. We use common words, but we are evolving in completely separate universes: we will not find common ground.

@sroccaserra @inthehands @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus Oh I mean _absolutely_. They’re going around telling everyone it will kill us all and destroy the world because that gets them more VC funding

@sroccaserra @inthehands @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus And they need the funding because they believe that the more money they have to spend on it, the more likely it is to make them unimaginably wealthy and powerful

@kevinriggle @inthehands @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus I am not sure it is a belief, I think it is real: promises of huge future profits can turn into immediate dividends for share holders (no waiting, no risk), by way of the balance sheet and at the price of more enterprise debt (justified by promises of future profits). The enterprise can go under, the money has already gone to share holders. They are only accountable for their initial investment, not the accumulated dividends over the years.

@kevinriggle @inthehands @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus Disclaimer: this is not my field of expertise, I'm sorry if I state the obvious, or if I'm completely wrong, please check by yourself if you can.

@sroccaserra @inthehands @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus _Theoretically_ they are prevented from cashing out before everyone else is, although as you might imagine there are, uh, loopholes. It works that way more often than it doesn’t tho

@sroccaserra @inthehands @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus This is absolutely what it is and what we've been telling folks it is for years. Of course they won't listen. See: my display name.

@dalias @sroccaserra @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus

A shockingly large portion of the world’s current problems trace back to an excess of investment money desperate for more things to invest in.

@inthehands @dalias @sroccaserra @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus I'm not sure if the problem is excess money or an inefficient market (lots of dumb ideas get lots of funding while lots of good ideas don't.) Or maybe the problem is that we have lots of money but we're insufficiently creative with respect to how we allocate it?

Probably, an issue is that people with control of capital chase returns for their own sake, instead of being a byproduct of doing something useful

@jawnsy @inthehands @sroccaserra @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus The problem is excess money combined with wanting obscene returns on it, and without driving down the value of other holdings. This necessitates perpetual scams.

@jawnsy @inthehands @sroccaserra @dymaxion @kevinriggle @jenniferplusplus For example a prosocial business activity to do with obscene amounts of money would be building ultra affordable housing at scale and renting or selling it at minimal profit. At scale this would still be very profitable. But it would drive down value of the billionaire class's assets.

@dalias @jawnsy @inthehands @sroccaserra @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus unfortunately all the money in the world can’t override a zoning board and a couple old busybodies with too much time on their hands

@kevinriggle @dalias @inthehands @sroccaserra @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus Don't the busybodies still happen, even for megaprojects that get pushed through somehow? So it seems like the money is part of it, that the developers will be more persistent about figuring out how to get stuff done if there enough money behind it

@jawnsy @dalias @inthehands @sroccaserra @dymaxion @jenniferplusplus afaict it’s down to how annoying and expensive local zoning laws allow the busybodies to be relative to the profitability of local development than anything. As well as how many alternative sites are available to developers with fewer expensive (meaning White) busybodies to deal with