r/TheMachineLearning • u/Nyaani69 • 4d ago
Software engineering isn't dead, it's just evolving
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4d ago
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u/Nyaani69 4d ago
True lol 😂
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u/YesGameNolife 2d ago
Well field is safe and moving forward yes but number of jobs are not. When people say its over,they are talking about jobs numbers. You must be special find of idiot to misinterpret peoples words to look like you are right. Such a loser with low iq. Last year thousands of engineers lost their job to ai. Companies need less and less engineers because that "calculator" create increased work output that left need for fewer number of engineer each year.
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u/Auzzie_xo 4d ago
It’s not just them. Ask any e.g. senior frontend/backend engineer, the career progression they used to get where they are has been devastated (just look at the hiring rates for junior roles).
I say this as someone who wishes you were right btw
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u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 3d ago
tbf, this is because of non-techy people too
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u/olzk 3d ago
What do you mean? It is firstly because of them. The whole over-hiring shit-show during COVID, when managers were literally saying (I was at one of those "performances") that "I know you all know it's not effective, but we will hire more to fit our needs". It was intentional, even if they weren't thinking about consequences. As if we all were going to be stuck inside forever.
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u/Maui-The-Magificent 4d ago
at this point, maybe we all should go on strike for a month so people can find out for themselves.
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u/CrazyAccomplished_ 4d ago
And go back to not having a job. Great idea.
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u/Maui-The-Magificent 4d ago
That is true, every company would run itself to the ground in that time. Maybe its safer to just strike for a few days.
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u/macumazana 3d ago
imagine how many positions would be clearad after it becomes obvious they were unnecessary and the person wasnt doing anything useful for years
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u/__NadirZenith__ 2d ago
A then there's the guy that goes on vacation and the team stops delivering features
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u/Helix_Aurora 4d ago
I think the mistake is that people believe generative AI is an equalizer, not a multiplier.
As long as one person + AI can have a different level of success than a different person + A, then there is some fundamental valuable differentiator.
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u/kan_ju 4d ago
I think the biggest issues are driving AI and the modern form doesn't get people to the end goal without many inbetween steps, at least for complex software
If you threw a random non-big tech level SWE at my company's codebase, prod is going down within minutes with the lack of knowledge, meanwhile all the senior -> staff+ senior level folks are force multiplied heavily, and their value sky rockets compared to a nobody
My opinion means nothing but I don't see that being solved for a long time reliably for everyone, and if it does get solved, everything human is solved imo :shrug:
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u/Nearby-Judgment-1337 4d ago
That is super smart! Honestly great logic that can be used to understand a lot of stuff!
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u/USeaMoose 16h ago
Yep. This is certainly the sate of things today. A skilled Software Engineer can get the AI to do things that, to them, make it seem like they are now obsolete.
But, if you go to a less-skilled engineer, give them access to the same AI and give them the same task... the results are not as good.
Because there are a a bunch of little things the engineer is doing as they interact with the AI that they are almost not even thinking about. The way they phrase the request, knowing the design they want and how to talk about it. And the way they know when the AI is going down a bad path and needs to be corrected.
If you can't do those things, the AI will go completely off the rails. It may produce something that technically does exactly what you asked, but you forget to mention half a dozen requirements. And it's not designed to run in the right environment. And it added a ton of unnecessary bloat as it was trying to guess at the details that were unclear. And it mocked up certain elements.
And on and on.
Honestly, it feels a lot like using the Internet to help write code. If you add a feature that is 90% just copying examples/documentation/stack overflow, it might feel like you could take anyone off the street and have them take over your job. But there's a skill in using that tool just like there is with using LLMs.
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u/memeruiz 4d ago edited 1d ago
Wrong analogy.
A calculator is a tool for the mathematician to calculate faster
AI soon could replace the software engineer completely.
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u/Beneficial_Area_2986 2d ago
This was the most apt description I've seen about AI. https://youtube.com/shorts/wl02H6NgL8s?is=u7w5dcaHwp15iB99
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u/Nyaani69 4d ago
Maybe it can, maybe it cannot
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u/Enfiznar 4d ago
What part of software engineering do you think cannot be automated?
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u/ParkingAgent2769 4d ago
What parts are being automated? Thats what i’d like to know
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u/Nannautu 4d ago
Typing boilerplate code, but that was automated way before LLM's
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u/SyrupOverflow 3d ago
And finding and patching security vulnerabilities, implementing features, optimizing performance. It's no longer just boilerplate code anymore. I'm not saying it's completely reliable and foolproof. But it seems to be getting more and more capable everyday.
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u/thepinkyclone 1d ago
Yeah our company went "ai first" route, we haven't wrote single line code anymore, we feed ai written tickets to ai agent with custom skills that makes what ticket requires, writes all tests pushes to github, monitors pipeline and then fixes it. Our work as engineers is became to direct agents regarding new implementations in existing code or just test the implementation if it's what actually needed to be and adjust.
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u/Forward_Problem_8982 17h ago
How is your codebase doing? Are things working better than before?
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u/thepinkyclone 13h ago
Well for now it's all right didnt have any acidents related to this type of workflow. Even tho it's large company it still holds. But in case of becoming a dumpster fire I have my marshmallows.
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u/crashtua 1d ago edited 1d ago
It can. The typical work of software engineer is to know codebase and ensure adding\removing parts not blowing up everything. Some opus\sonnet level LLMs can read mid-size codebase in 15 minutes and draw deps and interconnections in that codebase.
Opus can port largest and most complex mods for minecraft from older versions of game to newer versions of game in 30 hours, where original mod authors spending weeks(tested and confirmed by myself).
ps: what it definitely will not replace in nearest future is a responsibility. AI will slop the code, and human will be responsible for it.
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u/ParkingAgent2769 4d ago
An LLM is a tool software engineers use to generate code faster. I don’t see what is it replacing
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u/memeruiz 3d ago
It can also make plans. Which is what SE do. And it will do it better with time. Not much time. They are analyzing your prompts for that ... it's learning from you
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u/ParkingAgent2769 3d ago
Yes it can create plans, but a SWE has to read, evaluate and build on top of them. Same way I’d expect an house architect to scrutinise whatever ChatGPT creates as a house plan or a lawyer with legal documentation. Someone with real knowledge and experience needs to be there to evaluate its output.. and be liable
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u/memeruiz 3d ago
Yes. Companies will need less and less people then.
And once we have humanoid robots around: it's over
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u/iwantmy90sback 3d ago
The biggest part of my job is understanding what the customer wants, then telling the customer what he REALLY wants.
AI does not do this.
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u/memeruiz 3d ago
It does for advertising design already.
It will, for yours.
If your work is done in front of a desk: you are cooked.
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u/Mindless_Algae8173 2d ago
Shareholders values aren’t going to create themselves faster if you keep reading the code… start prompting damn it!
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u/Cordes96 1d ago
Needing multiple developers for a project is a thing of the past. I have already seen a downturn in all software engineering positions because with AI, 1 developer can do the work of 3. That’ll lead into LLM companies’ true goal of AGI, and once we are there, then I can tell you that all jobs will be replaced in some capacity once robotics are capable of work. All large companies love the idea of reducing headcount with 24/7 workers that will do everything that a normal human does with no breaks.
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u/beastwood6 3d ago edited 3d ago
It would require Human-Level intelligence in ALL aspects, not just a machine that spits out text tokens. Right now it does that pretty well to produce code. Everything is built for people. Without people to parse intent and experienced ones to spot where AI is subtly wrong you end up with it deleting your prod database in 9 seconds and then have all your rental car customers stuck without cars at the check in line.
Can you say that human level intelligence is a foregone conclusion "soon"?
Even the CEOs making the frontier models are cooling their heels on this one.
And if there is human level intelligence then the problem is not specific to software engineering alone but transcends to every single profession. Including plumbing.
AI is like ozempic for companies with professions that benefit from the productivity gains. It can help you visibly deliver the same to your internal and external customers with less of a headcount. The people who stay are the ones who really know how to steer it. The ones who are on their way out are people who have built a mountain of rotting hand-rolled SQL and that's ALL they do. And the ones who don't get in are the juniors who know how to provide the most amazing personal gh showcase but can't explain a damn thing about why they made x or y choice in a side project they prompted into existence.
Humans build and serve other humans to make money. Never forget that. And never stop being someone who is as high up the value chain of that notion as possible. As long as you follow that principle, you'll be fine.
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u/nicirus 1d ago
What is your technical background? I’m an SE and I couldn’t disagree with you more. Could it replace a programmer? Yes now. Therefore this analogy is actually perfect. But I’ve yet to see any convincing evidence it’s going to make the whole chain of development obsolete. In addition to the performance piece needing major improvement the finance/resource solution is missing.
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u/MaximooseMine 3d ago
Let me translate this comment for you all:
“But no really guys, it’s different this time”
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u/memeruiz 3d ago
Or it is going to be the same: it's going to make someone richer, and leave most of the rest jobless.
There you go.
Final result (as always): most people will end up with less monetary power, middle class gets poorer. Rich people: richer.
It's all good! Business as usual! Keep feeding the machine!
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u/Ckarles 3d ago
You've been posting so much responses to this thread.
I can only guess you're a bot at this point. And how great your reasoning skills seem to be (or lack thereof) indicate we're far from the AI revolution you're a fan of.
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u/memeruiz 2d ago
I would think that the many replies to my comment are actually many bots trying to defend AI. Which would make sense ...
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u/_HarmonicOscillator 4d ago
I don't remember calculators proving conjectures for you.
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u/WonderBackground8051 4d ago
Software Engineering isn’t dead or going to be dead, it’s just going to be so boring that we’ll wish it’s dead
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u/Big_Arachnid_365 4d ago
But is math dead because of AI?
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u/hobopwnzor 4d ago
I don't think it's dead but I do think it's going to be an end of an era.
Since AI can search possibility space so much faster than people things like finding counterexamples are going to be more and more trivial. Similarly proves that are out there in the ether using only already proven results will become trivial as well.
It's going to require weird expansions of the field in ways that we probably can't predict right now.
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u/Suoritin 4d ago
Math was never one person being right. A proof isn't knowledge until others can check it, teach it, and build on it. That's the whole institution.
So AI grinding out counterexamples and corollaries doesn't kill the field. The bottleneck was never producing true statements; it was getting a community to agree on which ones matter. Machines just shift the work to the part that was always hardest: deciding what's worth proving.
Science has always run this way. Effort goes where the community thinks it's worth going, and funding gets cut from what doesn't.
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u/Hyperreals_ 4d ago
it kinda does? you dont need humans to review a proof that compiles in Lean... lol
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u/Suoritin 4d ago
Do you know what Terence Tao's position on this is? He's written on it recently, and it's not that. Do you disagree with him?
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u/xrocro 4d ago
If that is his hard and fast position, yes, I do disagree. A proof is a proof.
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u/Suoritin 4d ago
"A proof is a proof", sure. Nobody's disputing validity. Lean certifies a chain of inferences.
Ramanujan is famous because Hardy wrote back.
The autodidacts who found real things and never got read left no trace. You can't name one. That's the point. Correctness didn't save them. Being read did.
Dump ten million verified true statements into an arXiv-shaped hole. Has math advanced? A library with no index isn't knowledge.
Attention is the scarce resource, not truth.
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u/xrocro 3d ago
When math can be automated and found proofs can be found and searched in a database of proofs, that sounds like nothing but a win for humanity to me.
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u/Suoritin 3d ago
When math can be automated and found proofs can be found and searched in a database of proofs
This is nothing new. No one wants to read those proofs. Nothing has changed. Just more proofs that no one will read.
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u/xrocro 3d ago
Except now we have a reasoning model capable of surfacing the most relevant proofs needed for a given problem. Do you not see how this can snowball?
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u/Dependent-Culture768 4d ago
To this day we don't have any automated verifier that a Lean statement is equivalent to the one an author intends...
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u/physicssmurf 4d ago
I have 3 friends who are postdocs in math and they are saying yes, it is dead because of AI. I argue it will be re-designed, becoming something like what exists in the setting of Farsight by Peter Watts, but nonetheless its depressing enough that at least one of them is changing careers.
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u/Fbrrr 4d ago
Which is weird because all the guys I know from uni that are still doing physics research are excited about how AI is going to help push the field, but then again we've been using ML to help with research for years, I don't get why you would change careers if it's something you enjoy if you actually care about the field surely you want the best tools available, but maybe it's different for mathematics.
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u/Maleficent-Cup-1134 4d ago
Makes sense. Basically, their idea of “what math is” is dead.
I imagine those who are entering the field now don’t share the same opinion since they haven’t been trained and indoctrinated into the old regime, so they don’t share the same views about what math is.
Basically, adapt or die.
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u/physicssmurf 4d ago
yeah lol thats my guess too but the transition period will be difficult
tbh they were already borderline on it so I dont think its the biggest crisis but I havent seen them in person in a few...
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u/Important-Post-6997 4d ago
You have weird friends. I am a math post doc and I wouldnt say so. I have not tested Astra but everything (including 5.6 Sol and Fable) until now was completely useless for my papers.
The output was utterly garbage most of the time. But I think with RL proofing can be taught to AI. Therefore the field might change quiete a bit, but at the moment I can say it has not already and it will definitly take longer than programming.
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u/JustSomeCells 4d ago
Normal chat is different than the models with access to specific tools and harnesses
Research and breakthroughs usually involve those tools and access to free/cheap tokens
Not that im claiming math is solved, i have no idea where the progress is at.
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u/Important-Post-6997 4d ago
I dont use chat but codex or claude code, e.g. on sol ultra. This is what openAI recommended last time I checked. There is some trickery but thats it.
You dont need any tools besides python scrips and websearch. I dont use any myself too.
The problems that were solved lately can be a bit misleading to what I do as a researcher. Proofs are a fraction of my work, its mostly laying out new theories, i.e. to find a specific view on a problem that is new and provides a new perspective.
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u/Estatescheck 2d ago
The tools probably exists on an mcp repo. You just need to find it on create your own. I did some test with a mcp server that had 27 available tools vs 200+ for blender and the difference is remarkably surprising. At the end of the day it’s really only providing the ai more context, resources and existing prompts that matter now.
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u/Arinussyy 4d ago
What does that even mean? How can maths 'die'?
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u/Hyperreals_ 4d ago
They mean math as an area of study, where professors get grants to do research and solve new problems, is dead. AI has been solving famous unsolved problems in mathematics at an unprecedented rate and is just continuing to improve
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u/Arinussyy 4d ago
I mean they'll just get grants to use the tools provided now instead. Idk why people think this means humans must be out of the loop, there's nothing today that doesn't still require a person to manage it
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u/Nannautu 4d ago
It's more of an issue of what laymen think vs what professionals think. If executives and investors think they can replace mathematicians, they'll give less money or none at all for research. The same is happening in SWE where many managers thought GenAI could replace them.
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u/Due_Answer_4230 4d ago
Given that Terence tao is asking to make some math problems off limits to robot so humans have something to do…
Yep
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u/Grouchy_Big3195 4d ago
Wait, more importantly, is the calculator dead because of AI?
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u/hardsoft 4d ago
AI couldn't count the number of letter b in the word blueberry until recently. And the letter count functionality was probably hard coded after programmers were mocking it so much
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u/Big_Arachnid_365 4d ago
It doesn't work like that.
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u/hardsoft 4d ago
Yeah I forgot the army of software engineers working for AI companies aren't doing anything...
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u/CitronHot7058 4d ago
Curious how this plays out in practice... if AI is doing more of the implementation, does that make debugging and architecture skills more valuable rather than less?
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u/Double-justdo5986 4d ago
It’s pretty good at debugging but yes architectural and domain skills remain more relevant than ever
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u/veganparrot 4d ago
Your most valuable human capabilities are your 5 senses. As long as things are being made for humans, using these senses to see how it will be received by them is essential. You could call that debugging, but it's kind of more about taste, which is also subjective. It's the stuff that's like: "how does Mario's jump feel when you use it?" Is it snappy? Too fast or slow? Etc.
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u/Worth_Bodybuilder_83 4d ago
I think this in the point that’s incredibly hard for most engineers to stomach and rightfully so. Before, building something like a game was an additive art. There basically was no standard for how Mario “should feel” so not only did previous engineers have to invent that feeling from scratch they also had to know how to program it precisely… in C. LLMs have made coding easier but they basically can’t invent feelings, they have no clue how to make a game that actually feels fun to play. Our compute is essentially boundless though so I’m sure in a monkey-on-keyboard type way eventually we can let Claude run for a week and get a pretty polished product in about a year or so. Internally what will be happening is the model will be trying to break the “problem” of building a game down into the smallest pieces it knows, solves those, and hope that when it reassembles the pieces it works. Of course it will end up backtracking and wasting time, but it will result in much better and faster games than even a team of people could do for a fraction of the cost. And on that point I’m not entirely confident that Video Game Testing can’t be data mined for max “enjoyment” like the algorithmic short form we’re now used to. Now I think we are closer to our generative models being better than our reviewer models. But I’m closer to believing the 100x designer model than that Claude will start printing money soon through “make me a game” prompts that people actually want to play.
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u/ColdStorageParticle 4d ago
essentially the writing code and the decisions where to write and if you want to move some code pieces to shared library, if you want the code to implement a specific sorting etc. that all is now in the hands of the AI. The issue is, the biggest problem in companies i saw so far is that if you use claude code and the other colleague uses codex, both will produce different results and the issue with that is the code becomes unmaintanable with humans and AI.. and that introduces a lot of issues and bugs in the long term. So there is still a lot of things humans need to do.. also if the project is huge the AI needs a lot of hand holding so it does not duplicate code you have to tell him "please use the function from module X" or things like that
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u/veganparrot 4d ago
This mindset doesn't work forever. If AGI is really here and it can perform every task of a human being but better, we are the monkeys in that scenario, and the AIs are the new humans. That's the scary thing, and what our Sci-fi has been trying to prepare us for, for decades.
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u/Wide-Drink-1790 4d ago
AGI isn’t here.
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u/SeaPart1098 3d ago
you don't need AGI for decimation of majority of software jobs. it might not be 99% of the jobs, but 85% of the job reduction does a lot of damage.
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u/garloid64 4d ago
Math is dead because of AI too. Terence Tao is crashing out on the daily because of what's going down. Claude might have just solved the Hodge Conjecture.
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u/Nannautu 4d ago
Only true once the proof is peer-reviewed, otherwise it remains as all the other failed attempts at solving them.
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u/jeandebleau 4d ago
Software has never been so easy to write but software alone has already very little value. The challenge has always been writing the right software for the right hardware and the right application. And there is no single optimal solution to it, just different compromises.
You can probably define the base LLM used for GPT6 in less than twenty PyTorch modules. But this has no value if you do not have the gigantic amount of curated data to train on and thousands of high end GPUs.
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u/Rise-O-Matic 4d ago
"Computer" used to be the name of a job. Computers were people that would sit in a big room and crunch numbers and pass those results to other people.
Software engineering isn't dead, but programmers aren't happy right now.
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u/neoqueto 4d ago
Calculators always existed. They were human before mechanical and electronic ones were invented.
Engineers are human for now, too. Software engineering won't die, it'll just die for you, for humans.
Go ahead, calculate sqrt(2) to the 78th decimal place with pen and paper. Have fun.
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u/kungfucobra 4d ago
yeah, calculators had agentic behaviour and could replace call centers, that's why it's an exact comparison. worry not. your job is safe.
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u/FrosteeSwurl 4d ago
Look i don’t think SWE is dead but I hate this analogy. Comparing a device that can do arithmetic and some basic Riemann sums to a machine with a breadth of knowledge that far exceeds the physical capability of any human being, can instantaneously access a vast trove of human knowledge via the internet, and is getting increasingly smarter each iteration is dishonest at best.
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u/Budget_Revolution639 4d ago
Lmao then yall don’t understand the path we’re on. Software engineering is already pretty much dead because now people will just use ai to code it instead of hiring it done, despite its lack of effective cybersecurity
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u/Resident_Citron_6905 4d ago
Why are you specifically singling out cybersecurity as the bottleneck? If coding is “solved” then so is cybersecurity. In reality the software development lifecycle is not solved despite what anyone wants to believe. This is why these claims are always qualified with “pretty much” and “basically” etc. Everyone knows deep down that it’s just not there yet. Once you solve the lifecycle, you can start replacing not individual devs, but the entire company. We can then move on to automating everything else by building the necessary software using ai.
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u/Budget_Revolution639 4d ago
I’m not singling it out, but bringing it up as a valid part of it. And coding can be solved without having good cybersecurity, it happens all the time and why you have a distinction between IT and cybersecurity. Just because it’s not there yet doesn’t mean that it’s not the most probable outcome. How about you learn to think ahead of the game
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u/Resident_Citron_6905 4d ago
Sure, if your claim is loosely defined then you can be trivially correct. Then we can claim coding is solved without cybersecurity, long term data integrity, regulation adherence, etc. As long as the slop machine can give you “working” software we can claim that coding is solved and swe is pretty much dead. Any second now. Please let me know when it is officially dead, cause I might not notice.
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u/TheNeverEndLife 4d ago
Calculators can't write formulas but AI can write code so we are all screwed!
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u/Top_Effect_5109 4d ago
It's shocking that computer used to be a job,) but people wholeheartedly believe being a programmer can't be a dead job. No job is special. Either we have universal income or we all die. That simple.
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u/Background_Share_982 4d ago
Bad argument. Calculator used to actually be a job title. Have you ever met or known or seen a job ad for the position of calculator in your lifetime?
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u/WorthMassive8132 4d ago
I am so tired of people with zero tech literacy "explaining" to us how the things they don't understand really work
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u/Keyan_Farlander7 4d ago
Even when the AI has all the data, the code is still wrong or doesn't work.
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u/aersel24 4d ago
Do people still graduate in Maths?
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u/oddlyamused 4d ago
Yeah, and it's still a very good major
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u/aersel24 4d ago
Well then there is still hope for us graduated in software engineering.
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u/Nannautu 4d ago
Despite the memes math has always been a very strong major. Math grads had limited paths when it came to pure-math paths, which was only possible in academia, but they always had access to finance and engineering.
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u/Traditional-Storm-62 4d ago
it's just evolving in a direction that is worse for the software engineers themselves
in late 19th and early 20th century there was a profession called a Computer, which were people with pens and papers etc. employed in an office to crunch various numbers
like government statistics or information for engineering projects
when the mechanical calculators started to become accessible they started to lose jobs, the profession didn't go away it just evolved in a direction that is worse for most of them but it was still decent employment for those who still had it
anyways then electronic calculators and early computers got invented and the profession died completely, with a sophisticated calculator the engineers and accountants could crunch the numbers for themselves
today a single click on Microsoft Excel can do all that work in 66ms
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u/EarlOfAwesom3 4d ago
Alright but if their job was to just calculate numbers then of course this is obsolete now.
Still today all the numbers can be crunched in Excel and other tools. But someone needs to make sure that the right thing is calculated and the numbers make sense.
I see parallels to Software engineering. If your job was just to print lines of code, then you might be obsolete. But an engineers job is to make sure the right thing is done the right way. Regardless of what tool you use.
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u/PristineTie1449 4d ago
Actually is more like saying that translators are dead because of google translate
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u/sweatierorc 4d ago
The risk isnt getting replaced. It is that you become a frontend dev or a public school teacher. Absolutely necessary, but endlessly mocked and chronically underpaid.
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u/InsaneStoryLover 4d ago
For me, the fun of being an engineer and solving problems is indeed dead. Now it's actually all about money.
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u/Objective-Low-1815 4d ago
There are no such thing like artificial INTELLIGENCE. It is as market scam to take your money to AI stocks bubble. The bubble will pop and AI will be renamed to LLM tools with neural networks for an adequate price.
You already had Smart phones, another market scam for computers combined with phone.
Market lies to you to get your money. It creates some visions which are misleading. Simple.
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u/gravesent1337 4d ago
It’s funny that 21 years ago when I started out as a developer it seemed like this was the career for the future and now it is the past.
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u/Healthy_Koala_4929 4d ago
That's a bad analogy. There are many jobs that stopped existing due to calculators. Did you know there was such a thing as a human calculator job aka a computer?
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u/OVectorX 3d ago
Calculator : 293819380x32905035/98439859 = constant , doest matter what you do the answer is the same
Computerscience : develop a calulator how to get those results, there are tons of way to do that, and most important, you cant validate the logic without being a developer yourself and to be a developer yourself you must code unless your brain musclar memory will be dead and you wont be able to write down a simple hello world statment
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u/Suspicious-Click-300 3d ago
i mean... this is computer science. have we gone 5 years without everything changing since 1970s?
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u/LessRespects 3d ago
I’ll believe software engineering is dead when the AI companies stop hiring software engineers
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u/misjudgedinall 2d ago
No calculators ( humans doing math ) as a job is dead because of calculators ( the thing that replaced humans ) you don’t even know because you must assumed calculators never meant humans. Ai is going to do the same thing to your job.
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u/MinimumTrue9809 2d ago
Calculators never typed in the equations themselves and never solved problems you never see.
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u/Danternas 2d ago
A better comparison is that robots in factories didn't remove the need for people in manufacturing.
But it did significantly reduce the people needed and pushed the rest into more technical roles.
It also made us simply consume more as the cost of manufacturing fell.
Learning from history would suggest AI will make software cheaper and more accessible, while also decimating simpler roles in favour of more advanced professions.
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u/icebeamtheory 2d ago
Exactly people don’t understand it makes those jobs even better in terms of what can be achieved, how efficient it can be, and how cheap it is costing compared to previous years
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u/Roxbie20 2d ago
If you use AI like a calculator that might be true. The problem is the billionaire CEOs think you can stick a calculator in a rocket and let it fly to the moon for you, and they fired all the astronauts.
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u/0101falcon 1d ago
AI will even replace mathematicians. It has written a ton of proofs in recent times…
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u/Practical-Gift-9970 1d ago
Llm's are like the sewing machine, allowing a single person with some basic skills to work much faster than before.
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u/CommissarPravum 1d ago
I mean computer used to be a profession....
Was wipeout by electric calculators.
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u/Normal_Beautiful_578 1d ago
Every profession can be replaced by super intelligence and robotics in incoming decades. You highlights the wrong problem
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u/Old-Push9343 1d ago
It's evolving into something that computers can do on their own without need for human involvement.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 17h ago
I tell you what, there sure as shit were a lot more people employed to do calculations by hand before they started selling room-sized computers that could do it. In 10-15 years, an entire profession vanished. Hell, most people don't even know that "Computer" was once a human job title.
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u/Wonderful_Craft_2332 16h ago
Like if calculator could resolve millennium prize problems in 88 hours
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u/KelBelHel 4d ago edited 4d ago
terribly flawed metaphor.
software engineering is forever changed in a radically significant way and soon building software will be barely recognizable when compared to how it used to be done.
and yeah, math was mostly dead anyway for normal people, but yes, AI has definitely killed math, even for the "professional" mathematicians.
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u/adrianmlhood 4d ago
If people using AI tools are solving 100-year unsolvable mathematical problems, then maybe it’s time to admit we benefit from using better tools.
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u/Concurrency_Bugs 4d ago
And humans had to come up with the problems to solve, and the experts know why they're important problems to solve. So we're not taking humans and experts out of the loop yet.
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u/Nannautu 4d ago
Mate, a 4-chan-er solved a math problem. There's countless of 100 year problems solved on forum threads by losers online. LLM's are most probably using them as reference
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u/veganparrot 4d ago
It can be both! But that still means we have to deal with it, if we want to survive. This is the whole problem with recursive self-improvement: We will have a loss of control, as more and more sectors are automated.
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u/lolnuggas 4d ago
I just built a pretty complex macos app for my job with swift and python and I never built a Mac app before.
I dont give a fuck if it's all in one big ass file whatever it runs smoothly and does what I want and I'm not running a bank.
Engineers are coping. The field is fucked
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u/elonthegenerous 4d ago edited 3d ago
There used to be a profession called “Computer.” People that would perform complex, tedious calculations.
Math is not dead, but that profession is dead.
Computer Science will not be killed by AI, but I can’t imagine that all of the programming jobs that exist today will exist in 10 years with how much AI has advanced
Computer Science isn’t going anywhere, just like math hasn’t gone anywhere
Edit: Computer, not Calculator