The only prediction that I think is robust is: Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.
Same situation with internet, we saw a bubble but ultimately those that changed their business around it monopolized various industries where they were slow to react.
Some jobs will be replaced outright but most will use AI tools and we might see reduced wages/positions available for a very long time coupled with economic downturn.
> The only prediction that I think is robust is: Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.
That's not a robust prediction. Many people who don't use AI today simply don't do so because they've tried it, and found it subtracts value. Those people will not be replaced tomorrow, they will merely reevaluate the tool and start using it if it has started to add value.
Identifying the 1% of ai use cases that are useful and refusing to have your attention stolen by the 99% that is mild melting garbage will be the key ai skill for the ai future
> The only prediction that I think is robust is: Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.
And I make the inverse prediction.
I work for a FAANG and I see it, from juniors to senior engineers, the one who use AI generate absolute slop that is unreadable, unmaintainable, and is definitely going to break. They are making themselves not just redundant, but an actual danger to the company.
> The worse thing about this parasitic trend is that most of the time it’s basically a dude who wants to appear visionary and so he makes a prediction of the future.
This is basically an entire genre of low effort Hackernews posts.
The biggest growth industry in AI is people doing podcasts and writing blog posts about the implications of AI or predictions of AI. It seems like >90% of articles from major media sources mention AI somewhere.
I pretty much agree but using "As an AI engineer myself" or a variation of that in your blog post should get you ridiculed. Who exactly are you trying to impress/differentiate yourself from?
OP here. I should've added that clarification but it was to say as someone with the "most to gain" financially or professionally from AI becoming more important, I'm still against this content trend and find it is unproductive.
> Now, I should clarify: I am not against talking about the impact of AI. It is a truly transformative technology after all.
This is how I feel. You see so many articles prognosticating and living in the world of hypotheticals, meanwhile AI is transforming industries today and article tracking those changes feel rare. Are they on an obscure blog?
None of the predictions have any substance. It's always vague. Where are the ideas around which algorithms will be next after Transformers? Why is there no thought around the real planning on HBM memory and what we will do with the increased throughput? The forecasts, as the author aptly mentioned, are for the headlines.
Algortithms: State space models, diffusion models, KANs, hierarchical attention. There are no shortage of ideas. Determining what works well is a process that is going on right now.
The question on planning on HBM is too vague to really address, but people are separately working on providing more bandwidth, using more bandwidth, and figuring out how to not need so much bandwidth.
This has already been discussed so many times. No good discussion will come out of this - and it'll just be people moping.
There's much better content on Show HN, one of which won't hit the homepage because this has more votes. It's a problem that HN has to fix - people upvote because they agree, and that vote carries the same weight as another which required far more effort (trying a product, looking at code etc).
I’ve felt the same. Also the AGI outcome for software engineers is:
A) In 5 years no real improvement, AI bubble pops, most of us are laid off.
B) In 5 years near—AGI replaces most software engineers, most of us are laid off.
Woohoo. Lose-lose scenario! No matter how you imagine this AI bubble playing out, the musics going to stop eventually.
> On the weekend, I hack around with ML & AI to build cool stuff.
Stopped reading this rage-bait when I saw this. The company he works at is starting to go all in on AI and prediction content themselves the very same thing that he is opposing. [0]
> But even myself, as an AI engineer, I am just soooo sick of that type of content. It’s the same generic stuff. It appears we have become the LLMs, regurgitating what’s already out there as if it was new ideas.
The author is not an AI engineer™ (whatever that means these days). Just yet another "dev".
I suspect that a part of this unusually-long discourse over the same, admittedly tired issues, stems from deeper societal concerns than mere technology posturing alone. That’s why it continues retreading the same ground, over and over again, trying to build armies for a given “side”.
If we break down every single AI post over the past two years, we get the same conclusions every single time:
* Transformer and Diffusion models (current “AI”) won’t replace jobs wholesale, BUT-
* Current AI will drastically reshape certain segments of employment, like software development or copywriting, BUT-
* Likely only to the point that lower-tier talent is forced out or to adapt, or that bad roles are outright eliminated (slop/SEO farms)
As for the industry itself:
* There’s no long-term market for subscription services beyond vendor lock-in and users with skill atrophy
* The build-out of inference and compute is absolutely an unsustainable bubble barring a profound revolution in machine learning that enables AI to replace employment wholesale AND do so using existing compute architectures
* The geopolitical and societal shifts toward sovereignty/right-to-repair means the best path forward is likely local-inferencing, which doesn’t support the subscription-based models of major AI players
* Likely-insurmountable challenges in hallucinations, safeguards, and reliable outputs over time will restrict adoption to niche processes instead of general tasks
And finally, from a sociological perspective:
* The large AI players/proponents are predominantly technocrat billionaires and wealthy elites seeking to fundamentally reshape societal governance in their favor and hoard more resources for themselves, a deeply diseased viewpoint that even pro-AI folks are starting to retch at the prospect of serving
* The large resistance to AI at present is broadly coming from regular people angry at the prospect of their replacement (and worse) by technology in a society where they must work to survive, and are keenly aware of the real motives in Capital eliminating the need for labor in terms of power distribution
* Humans who have dedicated their lives to skilled and/or creative pursuits in particular are vocally resistant to the mandate by technocrats of “AI everywhere”, and continue to lead the discourse not in how to fight against AI (a losing battle now that Pandora’s Box is open), but in building a healthier and more equitable society where said advancements benefit humans first/equally, and Capital last
* The “creator” part of society in particular is enraged at having their output stolen/seized by Capital for profit without compensation and destroying their digital homes and physical livelihoods in the process, and that is a wound that cannot be addressed short of direct, substantial monetary compensation in perpetuity - essentially holding Capital accountable for piracy much like Capital holds consumers accountable (or tries to). This is a topic of ongoing debate that will likely reshape IP laws at a fundamental level for the century to come.
There. You can skip the glut of blogs, now, at least until any one of the above points substantially changes.
riazrizvi|3 months ago
telesilla|3 months ago
User-Agent: AI-Bot
Disallow: /ai-bot/
agentifysh|3 months ago
Same situation with internet, we saw a bubble but ultimately those that changed their business around it monopolized various industries where they were slow to react.
Some jobs will be replaced outright but most will use AI tools and we might see reduced wages/positions available for a very long time coupled with economic downturn.
bigstrat2003|3 months ago
That's not a robust prediction. Many people who don't use AI today simply don't do so because they've tried it, and found it subtracts value. Those people will not be replaced tomorrow, they will merely reevaluate the tool and start using it if it has started to add value.
IncandescentGas|3 months ago
shkkmo|3 months ago
Unless they let their skills atrophy by offloading them to AI. The things they can do will be commodified and low value.
I suspect there will be demand for those who instead chose to hone their skills.
righthand|3 months ago
Those who use AI as tool today will be replaced by those that aren't tomorrow.
risyachka|3 months ago
AuthAuth|3 months ago
wslh|3 months ago
iLoveOncall|3 months ago
And I make the inverse prediction.
I work for a FAANG and I see it, from juniors to senior engineers, the one who use AI generate absolute slop that is unreadable, unmaintainable, and is definitely going to break. They are making themselves not just redundant, but an actual danger to the company.
nathan_compton|3 months ago
This is basically an entire genre of low effort Hackernews posts.
saltcured|3 months ago
:-)
mwhitfield|3 months ago
paulpauper|3 months ago
Avicebron|3 months ago
quirkot|3 months ago
frenchmajesty|3 months ago
Seattle3503|3 months ago
This is how I feel. You see so many articles prognosticating and living in the world of hypotheticals, meanwhile AI is transforming industries today and article tracking those changes feel rare. Are they on an obscure blog?
kittikitti|3 months ago
Lerc|3 months ago
The question on planning on HBM is too vague to really address, but people are separately working on providing more bandwidth, using more bandwidth, and figuring out how to not need so much bandwidth.
hyperhello|3 months ago
jeswin|3 months ago
There's much better content on Show HN, one of which won't hit the homepage because this has more votes. It's a problem that HN has to fix - people upvote because they agree, and that vote carries the same weight as another which required far more effort (trying a product, looking at code etc).
sodapopcan|3 months ago
hollasch|3 months ago
raincole|3 months ago
Always have been.
Anyway, complaining about them doesn't add any value either. And complaining about complaining... well you get the idea.
nalekberov|3 months ago
adrianbooth17|3 months ago
dinobones|3 months ago
A) In 5 years no real improvement, AI bubble pops, most of us are laid off. B) In 5 years near—AGI replaces most software engineers, most of us are laid off.
Woohoo. Lose-lose scenario! No matter how you imagine this AI bubble playing out, the musics going to stop eventually.
aj_hackman|3 months ago
zeroonetwothree|3 months ago
rvz|3 months ago
Stopped reading this rage-bait when I saw this. The company he works at is starting to go all in on AI and prediction content themselves the very same thing that he is opposing. [0]
> But even myself, as an AI engineer, I am just soooo sick of that type of content. It’s the same generic stuff. It appears we have become the LLMs, regurgitating what’s already out there as if it was new ideas.
The author is not an AI engineer™ (whatever that means these days). Just yet another "dev".
[0] https://www.medbridge.com/educate/webinars/ai-in-healthcare-...
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
stego-tech|3 months ago
If we break down every single AI post over the past two years, we get the same conclusions every single time:
* Transformer and Diffusion models (current “AI”) won’t replace jobs wholesale, BUT-
* Current AI will drastically reshape certain segments of employment, like software development or copywriting, BUT-
* Likely only to the point that lower-tier talent is forced out or to adapt, or that bad roles are outright eliminated (slop/SEO farms)
As for the industry itself:
* There’s no long-term market for subscription services beyond vendor lock-in and users with skill atrophy
* The build-out of inference and compute is absolutely an unsustainable bubble barring a profound revolution in machine learning that enables AI to replace employment wholesale AND do so using existing compute architectures
* The geopolitical and societal shifts toward sovereignty/right-to-repair means the best path forward is likely local-inferencing, which doesn’t support the subscription-based models of major AI players
* Likely-insurmountable challenges in hallucinations, safeguards, and reliable outputs over time will restrict adoption to niche processes instead of general tasks
And finally, from a sociological perspective:
* The large AI players/proponents are predominantly technocrat billionaires and wealthy elites seeking to fundamentally reshape societal governance in their favor and hoard more resources for themselves, a deeply diseased viewpoint that even pro-AI folks are starting to retch at the prospect of serving
* The large resistance to AI at present is broadly coming from regular people angry at the prospect of their replacement (and worse) by technology in a society where they must work to survive, and are keenly aware of the real motives in Capital eliminating the need for labor in terms of power distribution
* Humans who have dedicated their lives to skilled and/or creative pursuits in particular are vocally resistant to the mandate by technocrats of “AI everywhere”, and continue to lead the discourse not in how to fight against AI (a losing battle now that Pandora’s Box is open), but in building a healthier and more equitable society where said advancements benefit humans first/equally, and Capital last
* The “creator” part of society in particular is enraged at having their output stolen/seized by Capital for profit without compensation and destroying their digital homes and physical livelihoods in the process, and that is a wound that cannot be addressed short of direct, substantial monetary compensation in perpetuity - essentially holding Capital accountable for piracy much like Capital holds consumers accountable (or tries to). This is a topic of ongoing debate that will likely reshape IP laws at a fundamental level for the century to come.
There. You can skip the glut of blogs, now, at least until any one of the above points substantially changes.
poopiokaka|3 months ago
[deleted]