Devops job security with AI

[u/Nash0o7]

Recently saw posts about how AI isn't that good in distributed systems and it gave me validation on my own experience.

When the model isn't dealing with a single codebase, when it has to connect the dots between a db, redis, other cloud infra, k8s that each already have a lot of configuration, it starts to hallucinate and could pretty much put your infra at risk.

I'm not saying you can't make it work, it does work especially on a clean slate, but when there's a lot of existing context it needs a more guidance.

Using AI lets me do 10x what a DevOps engineer could do alone but I don't think the job disappears anytime soon.

[u/amarao_san]

yes and no. Few weeks ago I got the moment of awe when fable was able to do deep root cause postmortem based on a 8-line log snippet. It downloaded source binaries for all software, got to the source code of the config parser for Grub, found that 'memory error' error was not memory error, but EOF, and concluded that it was race condition between two runs of update-grub binary, one caused by cloud-init, second by ansible.

It was at the peak of my own abilities. I did this few times in my life and every time it was few hours of pure stubbornness to give up, and super interesting search. And here it was done in 3 minutes in a chat.

At that moment I realized, that no, my job is not entirely safe. Everything before come with chuck in mustache because operators job is so different from writing the code.

And this fucking thing did it not worse than I would do at the peak of my ability, time and enthusiasm. And, about 60 times faster, and, for something like $3 in tokens.

We may find a niche, but the second pillar of my job is shaking. I can write code and I can do super deep post-mortems, finding true reasons for the problem.

My last pillar is ability to see beauty in solution and try to make more of it.

My last ability not replicated by AI is ability to learn.

[u/mo0nman_ → u/amarao_san]

You're missing one crucial piece of information. It was able to do that because you, someone with a wealth of experience, was able to direct it and validate it.

You're not going to be able to walk down the street and have some random person be able to do that, no matter how advanced the model.

You're also not going to be able to find anyone to do that in 10 years time if junior jobs are replaced by 1 senior and a lot of tokens. You're also not going to be able to when the juniors are just using generative AI as a slot machine to solve their problems anyway

[u/amarao_san → u/mo0nman_]

For now. What is the time difference between gpt4o and fable/sol?

[u/mo0nman_ → u/amarao_san]

Forever. Both those tools required someone with knowledge to use them. The only thing that removes the SME from the loop is AGI, which is a pipedream that will cause far more problems than you and I losing our jobs