There is an obvious shift in sentiment amongst users, at least here in the US. I feel it myself, even as a proponent of AI tools, the bloviating and language that these companies use in these release articles are starting to wear thin on my patience.
Its possible we might just be witnessing a shift in fashion, where this type of sentimentality was more acceptable when it was novel and new, but now it just appears out of touch.
Watch Christopher Olah bloviate at the Vatican during the Magnifica Humanatis launch. It's truly nauseating. I've never seen such a ridiculous speech in my life. Between him and the CEO, I'm starting to understand the level of arrogance these people are capable of.
I don't agree at all for these coding models. Even the most anti-AI people from last year seem to be giving in to using them.
I think there is an exception for tooling around the models/integrating the models with tooling. That seems to have been very well received in this last year.
My take from going through comments on HN is that many people are being mandated to use them, not that they are just giving in. Maybe I'm misreading, but that was my impression.
Both can be true, even for the same person.
For example, it's being pushed pretty hard where I'm at, though not quite on the tokenmaxxer level. I started skipping related meetings cause it was nauseating. I can only tolerate so many platitudes.
At the same time, I just used the ever living snot out of Opus 4.6 for hours, grinning like an idiot throughout. Automated a whole bunch of enterprise cross-system drudgery away.
Fairly constant over time as well. Expressed a similar sentiment not too long ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48154277
Why are you people so stoked to replace labor? You're up next.
So much so that if you re-read my comment, you may notice that I was automating away exactly my own work there. Work that sucked and was grossly high overhead. It's just nice when things stop sucking, and even nicer when it doesn't require one to act a hero for that to happen. Not sure what else do you expect to hear.
Would you rather e.g. your doctor prioritized their wealth over your health? Popular conspiracy, but I'm not sure many health professionals follow in it. Not sure why you think this field would be much different. If this job is gone, it's gone. I can enjoy recreational programming on my own time, I don't feel entitled that my interest remains a money maker.
What worries me - and it does - is a further and accelerating shift in wealth (and thus capability) asymmetry. But for that, I look out for the performance and requirements of self hostable models instead, rather than reenact some sort of luddite, or lie to myself and others about the state of this technology.
If you want safety for country sovereignty, get a nuke. If you want safety for knowledge work, get a local model.
Having your career automated away and being okay with that is a massive luxury most don't have. The rest of us need an income to get by. If you look at the history of other people losing their careers to automation, the average person never gets even close to their previous peak.
Which will suck for me all the same, I have a very finite amount of that luxury too, probably less than most on this forum. It just doesn't sit right with me to expect the world to act as a job programme for me instead. Maybe it should, and this is really not the time for pride, I don't know. Even then, doing so dishonestly would and does still leave a very poor taste.
Aside from the aforementioned local models path though, this whole productivity angle (which the above poster loves to shit on btw) also serves to retain jobs. Current data suggests that rather than letting people go, companies are banking on extracting more productivity out of workers, partly because the models are admittedly overhyped, partly because it's the sane other option to mass layoffs, and partly since these models still need and strongly benefit from in-context steering. And they forever will: the human experience is human by definition, we're the "oracles" to it. How much that will continue to justify employments is still out there though, of course. I do expect a crunch phase, provided there was any actual productivity gain realized to begin with, which in itself is very loosely supported if at all.
Regardless, I don't see the point in not using these, or lying about how good they are, or willfully hating on them. Never helped anyone. Early and quality information however, very much so. If I know the time has come or is actually coming, I can take action accordingly. If I listen to every random social media thread I come across instead, not so much. According to social media, software engineering has been over for 3 years now already. The wolf was not only cried, but turned into a whole musical outright.
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