I don't have any problem with Waymos having a human in the loop for assistance, but sending all of our jobs to other countries is destroying the United States.
There was a debate with Mike Dukakis when one of the moderators asked if he would want the death penalty for someone who killed his wife. He gave some cold blooded answer.
The real answer was probably - I shouldn't be the one who decides what happened to the person who killed my wife.
In the same way - It shouldn't be up to me if I get fired or my job gets shipped overseas or done by an AI. If we're in a free market it's up to all the people who are buying what I'm making. If there's a cheaper way why wouldn't they take it?
I noticed a photo of the Kalshi founders on the new homepage. I remember when Kalshi launched I thought it was so bad, and that those founders must be the very bottom of their class... they're billionaires now!
I agree with this. My bosses boss thinks that AI is going to end up doing 95% of our work for us. From my experience (so far) AI coding follows the 80/20 rule, it can get you 80% of what you want for 20% of the time/effort. And the ratio might be more like, it'll get you 80% of what you want IMMEDIATELY, but it can't get you the last 20%, it needs a human to get it over the finish line.
It's super impressive in my opinion, but if you think it's going to straight up replace humans right now, I think you probably aren't a software developer in the trenches cranking out features.
I'm sort of a Neanderthal when it comes to understanding AI, but I don't think AI in it's current form works like a human. Right now, it kind of just cranks out all the code in one fell swoop. A human on the other hand works more iteratively. You write a little bit of code then you run it and look at an iPhone simulator, look at Figma designs, and see if you're getting closer to what you want. AI doesn't appear to know how to iterate, run code, look at designs, and debug things. I imagine in 100 years it will know how to do all that stuff though. And who knows, maybe in 1 year it will be able to do that. But as of right now, September 28th, 2025 it can't do that yet.
It depends on which application you're using. Applications like "RooCode", which is a free extension for VSCode, have several "modes" which allow the user to create an outline of the project using an "architect" LLM, followed by coding the project with a "Coding" LLM, followed by debugging the project with a "Debugging" LLM if there are bugs. There's also an LLM that answers questions about the project. Only the coding and the debugging LLMs do actual coding but you can set it so you have to approve each change it makes.
I agree about the 80/20 part. On the workflow front, there’s been enormous progress from Copilot to Cursor to Claude Code just in the last 2 years. A lot of this is down to the plumbing and I/O bits rather than the mysterious linear algebra bits, so it’s relatively tractable to regular software engineering.
This tracks with my AI usage as well. I often use AI to get the first 80% of the work done (kinda like a first draft), and then I finish things off from there.
As a consumer (even a corporate or government consumer), you have to watch out for this in a capitalist system. My ex's family asked me to take my son to this specific water park this weekend. When I went to buy the tickets this morning, it was going to be $250 to go to the swimming pool! I live in Austin, TX and we have the coolest pool in the world and it's $5 ($8 or something like that if I take my son).
Businesses will try and trick people into thinking $250 is an acceptable price to charge to visit a swimming pool. They'll do the same shit with firetrucks if nobody is paying attention.
Excellent article, and great to see someone pointing this out. Prices will climb out of control if people are suckers and believe the lie of "you get what you pay for." It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Extended rant... my ex once wanted to pay $500 for a f*cking vacuum cleaner. People are stupid. Had we listened to Henry Ford they'd still be making some version of the Model T and you could buy a new car for $6,008.85 (inflation adjusted price of a Model T).
> It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.
Who wouldn’t? Aren’t people usually proud of minimizing their work to pay ratio, whether it’s earning more and more to sit at a desk and browse HN or selling a firetruck for a new high price.
When it's companies preying on impulse buying, brands, trends, temporary demand spikes like a popular water park on a popular weekend then it's understandable to see people paying more than they "should" have (according to one's own high and mighty objective standards), and perhaps blame "capitalism" or believe there should be some regulation to protect consumers. Sure.
But when it is government bureaucrats spending public money procuring multi million dollar equipment, the problem is more likely to be government corruption or at best incompetence.
My $350 Soniclean is way more than 3x better a shitty $100 vacuum from Target. (Also seems better than everything they sell, including for a lot more...)
General Motors was in the lead then they just quit. It was stunning to see all of their incredible self driving Cruise cars vanish and then overnight see them all replaced by Waymos. It was like watching the downfall of Xerox PARC.
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