As a point of data for your statement, Jassy has repeatedly said that teams that have higher AI adoption are safe from layoffs. Use AI or lose your job is the blunt message
What a wild business metric. Apparently not measuring productivity, profit, or even vague "impact." Just "AI adoption." Imagine your boss said that your job was safe if you switched over to using Python instead of whatever language you're currently developing in.
For sure, my org adopted KPIs for 95% AI usage measured weekly, and it was reviewed. Not 95% rolling weekly average, 95% each and every single week. I personally witness managers being called out why their team of 8 one week suddenly had only 7 people using AI that week. Take a vacation and your manager had to answer for it. Use an AI tool that they couldn't track, well, your manager had to answer for that too and probably had to harass you to use a measurable tool.
It was complete nonsense. Wound up leaving, partly over it. Nobody wanted to hear the emporor had no clothes and it made more sense to get out before that made my a layoff or URA target.
Something I've noticed is that companies don't really promote intelligent people up the chain of command. Socialism failed because it was a less effective economic system than capitalism, and lots of its issues are neatly replicated within capitalist companies:
- having friends is more important than making output, which means that people above certain level just play politics instead of actually managing the company
- managers who miss targets get more people assigned which makes them climb the hierarchy, which means all levels below top level have the incentive to be inefficient
- saying "no" to the ruling party, no matter how stupid the idea is, is the second-easiest way to get replaced. The easiest is to offend the wrong person
- planning periods misaligned with the economic reality
An intelligent person will either be optimized out of the system, or will learn how to game it to their own advantage.
I wasn't making an argument. It was a prediction that all major software, (including the major linux distros) will eventually be majority (>50%) AI generated. Software that is 100% human generated will be like getting a hand knitted sweater at a farmers market. Available, but expensive and only produced at very small scale.
On what reasoning do you make this prediction? Just because corporations are mandating their employees to use AI right now does not mean it will continue.
Any new software developers entering the field from this point on will have to know how to use and be expected to use AI code-gen tools to get employment. Moving forward, eventually all developers use these tools routinely. There will be a point in the future where there is no one left working that has ever coded anything complex thing from scratch without AI tools. Therefore, all* code will have AI code-gen as all* developers will be using them.
* all mean 'nearly all' as of course there will be exceptions.
So eventually, doesn't the KPI move from "more code" to "better code"? The pendulum will have to swing the other way eventually; seems like microsoft is just accelerating that process
> doesn't the KPI move from "more code" to "better code"?
I would love for this to be true. But another scenario that could play out is that this process accelerates software bloat that was already happening with human coded software. Notepad will be a 300GB executable in 2035.
And this will cause what I'm talking about -- When nobody can afford memory because it's all going into the ocean-boiling datacenters, all of a sudden someone selling a program that fits into RAM will have a very attractive product
> resulting in overly expensive and incompatible systems
This can occur even with a more integrated market. The problem is that military suppliers deliberately make as many things 'sole source' as possible so they can be the only supplier and hence charge even higher rates. I'm don't mean the big items like tanks and planes, but the little consumable stuff like lubrication oils, fasteners, gears, etc. that are made to be non-compatible with other systems on purpose. Harder to fix because of the usual corporation-military-lobbying feedback loops and because it requires standards which can be technically intensive to develop.
Good point, but sure, I didn't say it would solve all problems with humanity. But at least it would be a giant step forward from the lose-lose situation.
If there is one body on earth that is able to cut with standards and regulation through enterprises, it is the EU I think, so even that is not hopeless. But large capital flows through the mil.industry comes with risks, yes.
Agreed, they do have to start somewhere. I'm not trying to put out the 'if the solution isn't completely perfect, then we should do nothing' type argument. Only that compatibility/interoperability is a much deeper problem that stems from financial incentive not just for military application but civilian ones as well. Just look at printer ink. But the EU did standardize phone chargers, so its possible to some extent.
The EU seems very willing to pass a law to end widespread corporate silliness, at least more than the USA, and it's a breath of fresh air when it happens!
And this is where standardization and regulation should show up. It can start from details like only standardized bolts and screws with standardized heads are allowed to be used all the way to jet engine must have exactly these dimensions and these inputs and outputs in these positions so it is possible to use same jet engine in Rafale, Eurofighter or Gripen.
They have this to some degree in NATO, the problem is that you have to allow for some exceptions. For example, a design requires a special bolt head because the standard one just won't work. No standard can be absolute and still allow for innovation. Military suppliers just milk this loop-hole and claim they need an exception even when they don't. Being able to evaluate when an exception is warranted and when the design could be altered to accommodate a standard would require enormous technical oversight.
What role does access to health care have I wonder. Canada and Australia (well, ALL other developed nations) have universal healthcare. I know that in the states past 65 they do, but not getting proper health care before then surely puts people at risk of dying earlier. Also, what is the venn diagram of people who are obese and don't have affordable access to healthcare - double whammy.
The American demographic with the highest rate of being uninsured, Hispanics, have life expectancies comparable to the UK average. So access to healthcare probably plays some role, but it seems like there are lots of other confounding factors.
It also doesn’t seem to vary that much by state level healthcare differences. States vary quite a bit by geography, but states that didn’t do Medicaid expansion, like Wisconsin and Wyoming, seem to have similar rates to neighboring states that did.
Given the ubiquitous CCTV coverage the UK has and has had for some time, I would suspect they've had nationwide facial recognition for a while already. Just on the down-low.
For me, the email interface works great. I treat it as a self-populating to-do list. The 'one thread per contact' wouldn't work because I organize by project/topic and often have multiple of these with the same contacts.
IM threads have a place of course, but regular email works for me and is actually an important structural element of my work flow.
The other part of the preceding comment was about citizens united. A concrete action would be to pass a law that explicitly excludes corporations from the definition of people and restricts the kind of lobbying/legalized-bribery that currently empowers the powerful.
CEO: Put AI everywhere/
Engineering Staff: There's a lot of places where it doesn't make sense to do this.
CEO: Do it or find somewhere else to work.
The problem of pushback at the lower levels is that it is completely ineffective when the top levels are set on something.
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