One thing I think a lot AI boosters get wrong is that they think AI will be good at creating new, quality information while, at the moment, the only thing it has shown utility at is organizing existin
This is arguably one of the most important videos of the historical moment. It's crazy to see the breadth of speculation we need to contain and optimize these new technologies, and humbling to realize how little we really know about our trajectory
As someone who has developed code for 40 years, I only spend 20% of my time “creating” code and yes 20% is generous, I wish it was as high as 20%. The rest of my time is spent maintaining code, and a lot of that,most, isn’t my own code. I also spend a lot of time figuring out the “why” of systems. Looking at old code (and by old it can be just a mere five years) I can easy tell you WHAT it is doing, just as AI can, but not so easily tell you WHY, and this is where I can see AI collapsing a bit. People will use AI to create enormous amounts of code and as changes happen (inputs, requirements change over time) and code stops working, the details, the why would have been long forgotten, and the maintenance (the 80% of my job) will go through the roof.
The same thing happened about 50 years before Jevon when the cotton gin was created. People thought the automatic de-seeding of cotton would make slavery essentially irrelevant, but the opposite ended up happening.
Corrections!!
People have pointed out that the word "paradox" does indeed mean "counter-intuitive thing" rather than the a logical paradox like "this sentence is false." I have been laboring under the illusion that "logical paradox" and "paradox' are the same things! This is a disaster. Point for Jevons!
By far the best piece of speculation I've seen is Tom Scotts "2030: Privacy is Dead" talk that he did in 2015. Considering it was written before LLMs, it's felt almost scarily accurate so far.
My husband is a video engineer, he uses AI to code everyday. He was optimistic at first that using it would help take some work off his plate, but he works just as hard now if not harder because people on his team are demanding more features, and all the AI is doing is making more bugs more quickly. It’s like that comic “I’m doing 1000 calculations per second and they’re all wrong”
I'm a software engineer. I specialize in developer efficiency, workflow automation, code quality, tools, reliability, etc. Force multiplier stuff. So this feels very directly relevant to me.
I think it's important to keep in mind that there's the cost to write code, but separately there is the cost to maintain code. Code is tech debt the moment it's written. It rots and breaks, kind of like all the aging bridges all over the USA.
The world of software is changing a lot with AI, but I believe AI is still just one more tool, and we've spent decades using code to create tools to write code, and they help, but there are still serious limitations. AI lets us generate code, but that generated code tends to be a complex buggy mess, no matter how much people claim otherwise. And complexity itself is tech debt that slows everything down.
AI makes prototyping much, much faster. But actually building reliable systems doesn't feel that much faster than Pre-AI, so far. It's more like having advanced Google, where I can work more broadly outside my SME areas and still be somewhat effective.
I've been experimenting a lot with using AI. It is powerful for a lot more than just directly writing
Near the end you asked, “What am I doing with my life?”
For what it’s worth, you’re helping at least one person rediscover hope, curiosity, and delight. I’d gotten to a place where those things felt pretty far away, and your videos have been gently but persistently reminding me that the world is still fascinating, that no effort is wasted, and that where I place my attention shapes how I feel, what I care about, and how I experience the world.
As Hank becomes more efficient, we will use more of him. All as Jevon has commanded
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The worst curse on the discworld
People have pointed out that the word "paradox" does indeed mean "counter-intuitive thing" rather than the a logical paradox like "this sentence is false." I have been laboring under the illusion that "logical paradox" and "paradox' are the same things! This is a disaster. Point for Jevons!
Me, a computer scientist: wait... no that's actually really hard.
I think it's important to keep in mind that there's the cost to write code, but separately there is the cost to maintain code. Code is tech debt the moment it's written. It rots and breaks, kind of like all the aging bridges all over the USA.
The world of software is changing a lot with AI, but I believe AI is still just one more tool, and we've spent decades using code to create tools to write code, and they help, but there are still serious limitations. AI lets us generate code, but that generated code tends to be a complex buggy mess, no matter how much people claim otherwise. And complexity itself is tech debt that slows everything down.
AI makes prototyping much, much faster. But actually building reliable systems doesn't feel that much faster than Pre-AI, so far. It's more like having advanced Google, where I can work more broadly outside my SME areas and still be somewhat effective.
I've been experimenting a lot with using AI. It is powerful for a lot more than just directly writing
For what it’s worth, you’re helping at least one person rediscover hope, curiosity, and delight. I’d gotten to a place where those things felt pretty far away, and your videos have been gently but persistently reminding me that the world is still fascinating, that no effort is wasted, and that where I place my attention shapes how I feel, what I care about, and how I experience the world.
So… that’s one thing you’re doing with your life.
Thank you!