alt Hacker NewsMy hunch is that AI tools are probabilistically good enough to deceive most casual users in the beginning, so beliefs are built on these foundations. LLMs handle simple tasks reasonably well so their perceived 'intelligence' is easily convincing for many users (often managers and executives).
However, this illusion immediately falls apart during actual stress-testing like writing code for a complex, battle-tested production environments. Non-technical folks can effortlessly spin up simple web apps or tweak a frontend so now they conclude that software engineers are becoming redundant.
And even if there are obvious examples of all of this backfiring no one believes it...
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I could not disagree more. You must have used the better models by now. Even if you only lightly use them for a question from time to time, it must have become clear that these things are pretty damn good and aren't going away?
When doing hard things I need to be 100% in the loop, but I don't have to do anything menial anymore. Imagine being in some CIA control room with 10 emplyees, and you're directing the team. You're still on top of things, just not bogged down with bulky minutiae.
There are a lot of simple web apps out there that haven't been built because of the cost and many more that have been built but cost a lot to maintain. AI seems to work on those and fill in a pretty large space.