I remember a video where they went through scyscrapers zooming into a room, where life was moving on and there was a screen inside a room and there was something running on it. I never understood how this was tanked. It was revolutionary.
But how much of current day software complexity is inherent in the problem space vs just bad design and too many (human) chefs in the kitchen? I'm guessing most of it is the latter category.
We might get more software but with less complexity overall, assuming LLMs become good enough.
I agree that there's a lot of complexity today due to the process in which we write code (people, lack of understanding the problem space, etc.) vs the problem itself.
Would we say us as humans also have captured the "best" way to reduce complexity and write great code? Maybe there's patterns and guidelines but no hard and fast rules. Until we have better understanding around that, LLMs may also not arrive at those levels either. Most of that knowledge is gleamed when sticking with a system -- dealing with past choices and requiring changes and tweaks to the code, complexity and solution over time. Maybe the right "memory" or compaction could help LLMs get better over time, but we're just scratching the surface there today.
LLMs output code as good as their training data. They can reason about parts of code they are prompted and offer ideas, but they're inherently based on the data and concepts they've trained on. And unfortunately...its likely much more average code than highly respected ones that flood the training data, at least for now.
Ideally I'd love to see better code written and complexity driven down by _whatever_ writes the code. But there will always been verification required when using a writer that is probabilistic.
His point is obviously to try and downplay what is happening in Iran, otherwise he could have just actually be a journalist and figure out what is happening in Iran to prove or disprove the reports.
There is zero journalistic integrity to be found in his post.
Q: You know what investors and shareholders love more than having 1 billion dollars?
A: Having 2 billion dollars. And with all the money being burned on AI, having 2 billion is better than 1.
If mass layoffs causes the stock to go from 1 to 2, then guess what's gonna happen?
In the ZIRP era companies would hire needlessly to get the stock up because that signaled growth to investors. Now it's the opposite, you trim because that gets the stock up, not because they conspire together to lay off people.
Why is the highest and best use of a company's free cash paying the least productive employees, instead of returning cash to shareholders or investing it in something more productive?
Counter point - If one person can now do the work of an entire team the level of communication skills required will actually be simplified.
So now instead of needing to manage multiple stakeholders and expectations of 10 different middle managers you'll probably just have a 1:1 with a single person.
RIP Stadia.
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