alt Hacker NewsBit of a humbling/jarring moment when I realized that people are doing real paid work using LLMs that they could not otherwise do. I mean, it's quite obvious I suppose. But up until now I just assumed it was only a (massive) catalyst for things people would already be able to do with enough time. But nope -- it seems people are right now employed in roles that they would not be able to fulfil the tasks within if AI wasn't there telling them what to write/say/produce. Nobody is really going to come out and say that ... it's not something the less-AI-literate superiors would take kindly to.
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I mentioned this then other day, my university class had maybe 80% of people who could not code. No joke. And a lot have gone onto to code professionally.
AI is a godsend to this cohort of code monkies.
Edit: we graduated in 2006.
But if the AI has a blindspot then they will fail hard since they rely on the LLM for everything.
All those programmers who could not write fizzbuzz can ship something now.
aka there are a lot more bullshit artists around these days
i know of several engineers who produce absolute slop and who probably would have produced nothing at all in pre AI times (which would have been preferable) and probably let go or never hired (even better).
they impose such an enormous drag on productivity that they more than wipe out any gains from people using the tools responsibly.
Sure, with LLMs, one can naturally tailor this much closer to the current need (or at least the need one thinks they have) and iterate ("spew") faster, but it's not a new phenomenon in general.