We already learned this lesson once in infrastructure: you can automate yourself into a very resilient catastrophe machine. Systems can appear healthy by local metrics while globally becoming incomprehensible. Bug reports can go down while latent risk explodes. Test coverage can rise while semantic understanding falls. Changes happens so fast that nobody notices the underlying architecture decaying.

I worry.

Source: Mitchell Hashimoto (@mitchellh@hachyderm.io)

I recommend reading the replies here, even if you are heavily AI-pilled especially if you are heavily AI-pilled.

Hearing the feelings in this rant, which does touch a nerve, I can’t help think about how different the developer community reaction to the LLM push might be if the focus were on quality instead of efficiency.

Source: Paul Cantrell: “RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mitc…” - Mastodon

I can image a developer parallel to the first, too: the human still using all their skills and experience, but with the machine catching mistakes, providing context and validation and vigilance that is •orthogonal to• testing and type checking and code crafting and — the big one! — actually •thinking• about the problem.

That’s a regime I imagine developers would feel a lot better about. And I know there are people out there pursuing it! But they’re not the ones dominating the conversation.

Source: Paul Cantrell: “I can image a developer parall…” - Mastodon

AI—at the end of the day—is a tool. It’ll be wielded by rational and fanatic people; by capital and labour; by empaths and by sociopaths. Some people will keep their footing using it, with it or entirely without; and others lose their marbles.

I want to remain open about both the promise, its usage and its affects. Even though, accepting this reality, means fanning the current flames of fanaticism.

Actually, I remain open optimistic. The current rush drives a massive compute build out, which will find some interesting (and hopefully humanity serving) companies and services.

I will admit that I am not knowledgeable enough to predict if a specific side wins. I see all types of companies getting built - some to remove the unpredictability of the human, others to leverage its strength, often towards the same end. Still others are using the opportunity to simply make bank. More power to all.