I work in a space where I get to build and optimise AI tools for my own and my team's use pretty much daily. As such I focus mainly on AI'ing the crap out of boring & time-consuming stuff that doesn't interest any of us any more, and luckily enough there's a whole lot of low hanging fruit in that space where AI is a genuine time, cost and sanity saver.
However any activity that requires directed conscious thought and decision making where the end state isn't clearly definable up front tends to be really difficult for AI. So much of that work relies on a level of intuition and knowledge that is very hard to explain to a layman - let alone eidetic idiots like most AIs.
One example is trying to get AI to identify security IT incidents in real time and take proactive action. Skilled practitioners can fairly easily use AI to detect anomalous events in near real time, but getting AI to take the next step to work out which combinations of "anomalous" activities equate to "likely security incident" is much harder. A reasonably competent human can usually do that relatively quickly, but often can't explain how they do it.
Working out what action is appropriate once the "likely security incident" has been identified is another task that a reasonably competent human can do, but where AIs are hopeless. In most cases, a competent human is WAAAY better at identifying a reasonable way forward based on insufficient knowledge. In those cases, a good decision made quickly is preferable to a perfect decision made slowly, and humans understand this fairly intuitively.
I started coding in the 70s, loved it then, still love it now and LOVING the emergence of Gen AI tools.
For perspective, the IT industry went through a similar change with the emergence of search engines ~30 years ago. At that time, a big part of the value of a software "expert" was in their ability to remember and recall lots of info (most of it of dubious value, to be fair). These experts usually had shelves of well-thumbed books on all sorts of topics, and could recall obscure info from these books seemingly at will. With the emergence of AskJeeves, AltaVista and eventually Google, suddenly nobody needed to remember anything OR even know where to find it - with a simple search, you could get nearly all the info you needed.
I can still remember the panicked response to this brutal change from the senior IT people I worked with at the time...
Did the demand for skilled developers dry up? No
Nor did it end with
- introduction of COBOL (designed so that non-coders could write code),
- PCs (surely leading to the end of systems programming as a career),
- spreadsheets (so accountants no longer needed programmers),
- 4GLs (designed to greatly simplify coding; report writing in particular),
- Visual BASIC (so the world would no longer need C programmers; anyone could learn to write BASIC),
- Microsoft SQL Server (nobody would need mainframe databases any more, so all those mainframe jobs would disappear)
- object oriented coding (all those code reuse possibilities! Very quickly programming should devolve to just glueing together other peoples' code),
- open source (because inevitably any tool of value would soon have a competitor that was free, destroying the value proposition of companies that wrote software to sell),
- Linux (how could Windows compete with free? Shed a tear for all those soon-to-be-unemployed Windows experts)
- NoSQL (because the need for "legacy" databases like Oracle, DB2, Postgres, MySQL etc. would surely go away)
- etc., etc., etc.
The reality is that you still need a grounding in software development to do coding well, even with AIs. I'm absolutely loving how quickly I can create solid code with the assistance of Gen AI - lots of tasks that used to take me a week I can now knock over in a few hours.
I also notice how many people are struggling with how to use Gen AI tools for coding tasks - my take is there's 2 distinct skills you need: knowledge of how to do software development well, and knowledge of how to use Gen AI tools for coding. Having the first doesn't automatically lead to the 2nd - you have to put in the time to learn about Gen AI, THEN work out how to fit Gen AI tools around your current workflow, THEN work out how to optimise the way you work with your new idiot savant buddy that has perfect recall.
That whole process (new tool appears -> learn about it -> work out how to fit it into my current workflow -> optimise my workflow) has basically been my entire career in a nutshell.
People have been predicting the demise of programmers for my entire career (40+ years now), and so far they've been wrong every time. For each new disruption that appears, the key has been to embrace it and adapt how you work accordingly.
Gen AI may indeed be different and kill off all programming careers overnight, but so far I'm not seeing it
> Gen AI may indeed be different and kill off all programming careers overnight, but so far I'm not seeing it
Well, we're only ~5 years into the current hype cycle, so it's difficult to predict the long-term impact of the technology.
That said, I do think it is substantially different from the examples you mentioned.
For one, it is generally applicable. It's not an iterative or generational improvement over what came before—it is a paradigm shift in many ways: how software is produced, by whom, the quality of the product, the time, effort, and cost needed to produce it, etc.
Secondly, while it might not lead to the demise of all programming careers, and certainly not overnight, it will significantly impact the market value of traditional programming in the short-term, and, like any new technology, it will also open doors to new careers and specialization for humans. We're seeing this play out today.
But there are a few problems with this:
- Since software is turned into a commodity and the skills and resources required to produce it are much lower, there will be a flood of poorly made software, and the average quality will go down. Picture SEO scams and spam dialed up to 11, and encompassing every part of our existence, not just on the web.
- Those new careers for humans are highly specialized. All jobs will essentially involve being an assistant to the "AI", and specializing in related technologies. A "systems engineer", "frontend developer", "designer", "data analyst", etc., will all boil down to a role revolving around "AI" instead. People who don't like this type of work? Tough luck. Go sell your artisanally made programs to the niche group of people crazy enough to care about it, and good luck making a living out of it.
- Those new careers for humans are only temporary. Once "AI" gets capable enough to require less manual steering and intervention from humans, the market value for that type of work will collapse as well. The only human jobs then will be to actually create "AI". And once "AI" is self-sufficient to improve itself, we get the singularity, and then pick your favorite sci-fi scenario from there. It's debatable whether this will come to pass, and whether we're on the right track for it with the current tech, but that's certainly the goal we're aiming for.
So, yeah, I don't buy the argument that this is the same as any other tech. It's much, much, different, and it's frankly troubling that it's getting downplayed as just another step on the technological ladder. The long-term impact of this is something that should concern us all, and the worst thing we can do is to give free reign to companies to decide that future for us.
> Most authors do not support a way to pay them directly.
I think this is the problem that should be addressed.
Musicians went through a similar process in reverse order: first Napster ("piracy") then streaming services (analogous to Kindle/Amazon, where a huge 3rd party inserts themselves between content creator & consumer). Eventually some musicians twigged that they were getting screwed every way, so they set up ways for fans to pay them directly or via a less money-hungry intermediary (e.g. Bandcamp).
Not a perfect solution by any means, but if book authors feel their situation is bad enough, they could look into how musicians are dealing with it.
I'm probably not alone in thinking I'd far rather pay an author directly than Amazon or book publishers.
As with music, the final product you consume involves a lot more work/expertise/people than just “writing it“. You can see the quality differences when you compare self-published print on demand to quality publishing.
Naturally. And the editors, typesetters, designers, proof readers, etc. should get paid for their work.
It is just a question of ownership and power imbalance.
The problem with the current mainstream system (both in books and music) is that the publisher often effectively owns the work - not the author.
While I've done more than enough Powerpoint presentations telling clients what they already knew but didn't want to say out loud, there are some circumstances where bringing in a consultancy is a very good option.
Some examples:
As a software/cloud/data/AI/cyber guy (I wore a few different hats over the years...), I regularly caught up with buddies working in legal, tax, audit, retail, space travel(!!) etc. for coffee chats. It's surprising how often those of us who specialise in one domain had breakthrough moments from offhand chats with specialists in other domains. Very few people get the opportunity to have these sorts of conversations, and it's amazing how often you learn something relevant for your own work situation over a quick coffee.
When I needed expertise in one of those domains into one of my projects, I could send a message and almost always get someone on a call within a few hours. Very few organisations could get e.g. a high-ranking ex-NASA official on a call quickly to pick their brains, but I could.
Lots of times organisations don't have the deep expertise and/or available people to deliver on their internal projects. When a major rail transport provider needs to work out how to going to deal with new government critical infrastructure regulations for their IT systems, it's consultancies who can pull all the right skills together to help them out.
When there's a critical shortage of available IT skills in the marketplace, companies use consultancies to top up their workforce. Here in Australia, there were nowhere near enough GCP experts to go around for the last 4-5 years, so companies could either try to hire the very few people around at exorbitant rates, or tap a consultancy for resources.
Big 4 consultancies in particular throw high-quality training at their technical staff like nowhere else I've seen. One reason: quality training = billable hours. I had people around me burn out from too much training, and I'm pretty sure regular companies don't have that problem. For all the pointless Powerpoint presentations we did, there's a sh1tload of technical expertise sitting in Big 4 consultancies, waiting to be tapped.
Companies are always struggling with how to use the latest IT shiny tools properly. Right now it's AI - how can I use it to save costs or increase productivity? What are the ethical and legal implications that come with AI, and how can we deal with them? How can we deploy AI solutions securely? Which of our business problems are the best fit for AI solutions? How do we train our ops staff to keep these AI solutions running? - the list goes on and on.
Now a lot of people here in HN know how to do these things, but how does a regular business tap into that expertise and filter out the bullshitters? The answer is they go to a consultancy that (they feel) they can hold accountable.
On that point, sometimes execs in a company simply need someone to shield them from blame for unpopular decisions like mass layoffs. It's pretty well know that consultancies do a lot of that type of work, and they (justifiably or otherwise) cop a lot of crap over it so some exec can say "I didn't do it".
I'm probably coming across as a huge fanboy of consultancies, but remember - I'm an ex Big 4 guy. I think their influence is too large, particularly in government policy making; I've encountered way more sociopaths in Big 4 leadership roles for it to be down to chance; by any measure staff turnover and burn out is very high, and I'm convinced that's by design.
> A Sony Walkman-style device that you can give to children so they can ask questions to an LLM. It should be voice-first, and focused on explaining things. There shouldn’t be a single screen on the device. Offline-first would be a plus.
My grandkids (5 and 3) spent about 2 minutes learning how to use it, then bombarded it with "tell me a story about a unicorn named Bob", "can dogs be friends with monkeys?" and so on. In every case it gave a reasonable answer within a few seconds.
I'll be amazed if these things don't wind up embedded inside toys by Xmas. When they do, I'll be in the queue to buy one
Right now, DeepSeek feels like it comes from the most trustworthy source, which is not something I would've said a few months ago.
In the short term I'll keep using OpenAI, Llama, Claude and Perplexity for what each does best. In the mid term, I'm looking for replacements for all 4
At first glance I questioned your choice of bash over something like Python, but you're right - bash is everywhere and every competent Linux admin knows how to use it. There's a zillion unprotected Linux servers out there where this would be very handy.
In terms of next steps, it might be worth documenting more about the notification framework and some simple examples of how we might use it. I can see you've mentioned integrations with email, Slack and webhooks in the tech paper, but I can't spot anything about how to use them
I work for a consulting company in Melbourne Australia.
The Melbourne city council has started petitioning the government to force govt employees to return to the CBD for work. Their reasoning is that CBD-based businesses are somehow entitled to pre-COVID customer levels, which means employees need to start coming into the CBD more often. Apparently this is getting serious consideration.
It's not like we home-based workers stopped going out to buy lunch on workdays. We still go to the local shops most days for coffee and food; as those shops aren't paying CBD-type rents, their food and coffee is generally cheaper and/or better quality, the service is friendlier and the local school kids have a lot more job opportunities. The past 4 years has seen a real community feel spring up around where I live, whereas before it was just another dormitory suburb where nearly all the workers disappeared during the day.
From my perspective, we moved from pre-COVID, in-office work arrangements to post-COVID, remote arrangements, and that genii is now out of the bottle. We've all conclusively proved we can be productive working from home, and any attempt to roll that back is going to hit resistance in one form or another. It's gonna take a recession where the supply of workers exceeds the demand for everyone to come back into the office each day, and even then I don't think it'll stick long term.
> Their reasoning is that CBD-based businesses are somehow entitled to pre-COVID customer levels
It's more like downtown property prices are based on those levels, and property is leveraged, and if banks collapse do to commercial property prices plummeting, you're in for a bad time.
Also, although downtown is a very small part of the city - in many cities, downtown property taxes make up a relatively large chunk of total property tax revenues.
You either death spiral downtown property prices by keeping taxes steady while values decline, or you increase tax everywhere else to make up the difference.
Either of those options leads to a bad time for politicians.
Here in Canada the federal government has started forcing federal public servants back to the office. Everybody thinks it's just to prop up the capital city businesses and commercial landlords. Their union has actually called for them to buy local in their neighborhood rather than in downtown. Ottawa has a pretty terrible downtown with many businesses having awful hours like 8a.m-2p.m M-F because they got so used to relying just on civil servants.
That same federal government, who wants to put tens of thousands of employees on the road in commutes to their offices, is simultaneously communicating to the public that carbon fuelled climate change is an existential threat and that carbon consumption is immoral and wrong, thus requiring end use carbon taxes, and even going so far as the current party's health minister saying that families taking summer road trips is sacrificing "the future of the planet". [1]
The internet has allowed remote work for a long time, and in office work was dead walking until the pandemic finally put it in the ground. It needs to stay dead. These local shops don't deserve to lose their business either. if the CBD businesses want to compete, then they need to move. This is a sunk cost. You don't throw good money after bad
This is such corporate welfare BS. I especially don’t get it for tech companies whose employees eat lunch on campus.
With big tech, I think it has more to do with real estate holdings being part of the portfolio and they would have to write down the value. Then the hedge funds where executives invest would also have to write down their real estate holdings and lose value.
I am dying for commercial real estate to be written down so hard in the US that the Federal Housing Administration buys it and converts it to public housing.
I bought a Moaan Plus to see if it would work for me - basically, is a phone-sized eInk ebook reader something I'd keep using?
3 months on: I love this little thing and carry it everywhere. Although it's just slightly smaller than my Pixel 8 Pro, it feels close to weightless. It's small and light enough that I can just drop it in a pocket and head out for the day, then pull it out and read when I'm e.g. waiting in a supermarket queue. I find it hard to imagine a better form factor for reading in these types of ad-hoc situations that come up several times a day.
Battery life is fine - given how I use it, I drop it on a charger for a few minutes each day and it never goes flat. No idea how many days the battery would last if I didn't do that, but I don't use it the same way as I use my 7" ebook reader so it's not a concern.
Similarly although it's notionally an Android tablet, I don't think it would work as a replacement for a typical tablet or phone. FWIW, I currently have 700+ apps installed on my Pixel 8 Pro, and just 6 on the Moaan Plus:
- F-Droid (essentially a replacement for the Google Play store)
- KOReader, which meets all my reading needs in combination with Calibre on laptop and Wallabag
- Koofr, so I can access all my ebooks whenever I can sync via an Internet connection
- Markor, for capturing notes in Markdown
- DuckDuckGo, because eventually I'll need a browser at some point
- Simple Keyboard, to replace the supplied Chinese keyboard app which is useless to me
Downsides of the device:
- it's Android 11, which may or may not be a concern for you (given how I use it, it's not a concern for me)
- no Google Play, so you're going to have to install software from somewhere else. F-Droid is a pretty good substitute, but doesn't have all the apps you might want. The big one missing for me is Zotero, which I'd love to have on this device
- no fingerprint or facial recognition, which would concern me if this thing didn't live in my pocket 99% of the time
Upsides:
- it's small enough that you can carry it with you anywhere, and close to weightless compared to a phone. If you're someone who reads a lot, this can be a game changer as you can carry a bunch of books in just about any situation
- it's about half the price of a Boox Palma
- 2Gb RAM and 64Gb of storage, more than enough for ebooks
- fast enough
- eInk screen, which is way easier on the eyes than reading on a LCD screen
- limited set of features, which means I'm not tempted to install more apps on it to try to make it do more than I need
Agree this approach seems to be worth investigating further, but as a citizen of a non-US country, I'd like to see a solution that wasn't based on a US-centric set of controls and governance bodies.
These days, with nationalism and populism rampant across the world, I think we need a solution where no one country (or country's leader) can simply decide to turn off critical infrastructure for the rest of the world and/or hold the rest of the world to ransom. Then you run into questions of "do we really want (insert bad country) to be able to expose IOT source code to their evil hackers?".
This is a really difficult problem to solve, but ultimately I think ownership of the "keys" to unlock escrowed code needs to reside with (winging it here...) a body such as IEEE or ISO. Or possibly something like a global council where e.g. any 5 countries out of 7 can collaborate via a sharing of keys to release source code, but no one country is able to do so.
I completely agree that such a thing should not be US-only. There would need to be a clear distinction between one-gov't backdoor and voluntary regulatory certification, because ultimately the goal would be for other countries to follow suit and provide similar/identical certifications. You could look to standards bodies to provide standard implementation details on what "firmware escrow" is, what exact formats and files must be included, etc. IEEE, ISO, JIS, DIN, and all of them could write or adopt the document. But actually running the service and providing the certification is a little closer to a patent office than organizing standards which is why I propose doing it federally. Think Energy Star (which is a US gov't program based on EPA standards) which has been implemented successfully outside of the US.
I work in a space where I get to build and optimise AI tools for my own and my team's use pretty much daily. As such I focus mainly on AI'ing the crap out of boring & time-consuming stuff that doesn't interest any of us any more, and luckily enough there's a whole lot of low hanging fruit in that space where AI is a genuine time, cost and sanity saver.
However any activity that requires directed conscious thought and decision making where the end state isn't clearly definable up front tends to be really difficult for AI. So much of that work relies on a level of intuition and knowledge that is very hard to explain to a layman - let alone eidetic idiots like most AIs.
One example is trying to get AI to identify security IT incidents in real time and take proactive action. Skilled practitioners can fairly easily use AI to detect anomalous events in near real time, but getting AI to take the next step to work out which combinations of "anomalous" activities equate to "likely security incident" is much harder. A reasonably competent human can usually do that relatively quickly, but often can't explain how they do it.
Working out what action is appropriate once the "likely security incident" has been identified is another task that a reasonably competent human can do, but where AIs are hopeless. In most cases, a competent human is WAAAY better at identifying a reasonable way forward based on insufficient knowledge. In those cases, a good decision made quickly is preferable to a perfect decision made slowly, and humans understand this fairly intuitively.