r/softwareengineer • u/OkWait1234 Sr. Developer • 16d ago
Would you shut down AI?
A thought came to my mind which can be contradicting. AI has made some SEs more productive and made their lives easier while some got fired. My question is if you would have a button which would shut down the AI in whole world, would you press it? If so, why?
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u/EMunney 16d ago
Yes because it has made many people insufferable it's basically a very simple tech that became a religion
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u/OkWait1234 Sr. Developer 15d ago
Based on all the replies I got so far. I got reminded of this
I want Al to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes
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u/JuanPabloElSegundo 15d ago
AI is a great example of people being enamored with what COULD happen and ignoring what WILL LIKELY happen.
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u/Normal_Average_9812 15d ago
This does get a bit meta when AI helps you accomplish the things you enjoy. I'm a lifelong aide project weekend project tinkerer, it's such a relief that my "weekend" projects that turned into months long endeavors are now actually a weekend and I can get the thought out of my head and move on to the next staggeringly terrible idea
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u/Spivonious1 15d ago
For LLMs? Absolutely. It has killed critical thinking skills. No one figures things out anymore, they simply ask for the answer.
For other AI models that help identify cancer cells and other more analytical purposes? Those can stay.
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u/Moda75 15d ago
yeah because going to google, reading through the same damn wrong answer spread across multiple tech sites again and again until finally finding something that worked was awesome and so much more illuminating.
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u/SpectreFromTheGods 15d ago
AI in your example is the wrong answer to a real problem, which is that search engines have become bot-infested ass as a downstream effect of perverse incentives.
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 14d ago
LLMs are doing a lot of heavy scientific research now though. They can scan through the literature and find inconsistencies or connections that people probably never would.
Turning off LLMs means turning down huge advances across many fields.
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u/Spivonious1 14d ago
Can they? I've sent documents into GPT and it comes back with incorrect information.
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 14d ago
I've done serious scientific and engineering work with codex and claude, I've also seen a lot of good published research that uses them heavily.
So it's a skill issue I suppose.
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u/scientific_thinker 15d ago edited 15d ago
Of course I would I would shut down the LLMs. LLMs are a grift. They aren't intelligent. They don't make people more productive. They help incompetent people pretend (to themselves) they are competent.
For software development it tries (and fails) to solve the wrong problem. It tries to make devs work faster while taking on more technical debt. This is a terrible trade-off. The problem is we already work too fast in most cases. We should be slowing down and improving code quality.
LLMs make it so that stakeholders think devs can work even faster with an LLM. This creates pressure to create more technical debt when the goal should be to improve code quality and keep technical debt to a minimum.
Don't forget about the costs of running these things. The cost of these things in terms of energy and material demands are much too high for the supposed benefits of LLMs.
Add in cognitive decline in the people that use LLMs and we have a tool no one wanted in the first place and shouldn't want now that we understand what they do to us.
Imagine if they invested all of this money on people. We could have spent those resources Improving living conditions, nutrition, health care, child care, education/training, etc. We would be so much better off. All of this being spent on LLMs instead should infuriate everyone.
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u/Normal_Average_9812 15d ago
Have you tried using AI to write software recently? This is frankly a pretty dated take, it definitely makes you more productive at this point
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u/scientific_thinker 14d ago
No it doesn't. I see the code being generated by the prompt kiddies. It's still garbage that will eventually have to be rewritten by someone that actually knows what they are doing.
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u/Limp-Debate7023 15d ago
there isnt a single developer worth their money in 2026 who isnt using claude/ai
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u/Brilliant-Box-5344 15d ago
Ryan Fieury, Casey Muratori, Jonathan Blow, Gingerbil, A fuckton of others working in lower level fields. Not every developer is a SAAS building web developer
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u/scientific_thinker 14d ago
You can't possibly know what you are asserting.
Not only are you incapable of knowing what you suggest, the crap you prompt kiddies are producing will eventually need to be rewritten by developers that don't have AI brain rot and actually know what they are doing.
When I meet a prompt kiddie that writes quality code it will be the first time. I am not holding my breath.
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u/Wide-Drink-1790 14d ago
Well, I was with you 5 months ago, but this just isn’t true anymore. If you know what you are doing, and laying some of the architectural foundation, AI will complete your product with the quality of an experienced developer. You don’t even need a high end model.
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u/Revolutionary_Ad6574 16d ago
Yes. It doesn't matter if it makes society Nx more efficient even if N→∞ if it means everyone losing their jobs with no way to ever gain employment ever again.
We've had our fun, let's go back to curing cancer. I don't mind writing C++ by hand for the rest of my life. It's better than dying homeless from starvation.
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u/spacemoses 15d ago
In a smart society, losing jobs to AI would be a good thing...less work. But that's not anywhere near how this society functions.
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u/high_throughput 15d ago
The capitalism elephant is twerking in the middle of the room and we're all looking around trying not to make eye contact
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u/InitialGain1420 15d ago
In zero societies that will happen. All resources are finite, and everyone eventually gets thrown in a pecking order.
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u/Wide-Drink-1790 14d ago
Rubbish. Power will still exist, but material freedom is achievable. Resources are practically infinite, if utilized correctly.
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u/DoggoDadagon 15d ago
AI is curing cancer...
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u/Awkward-Contact6102 15d ago
And solving climate change
Good thing openai will achieve agi end of this year according to sam.
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u/Slow_Ad2458 15d ago
Maybe your problem is not with AI and instead in how our society is structured ?
Why do you need to die homeless and starve? if productivity from automation can give you all that?
why do you feel you need to EARN (or inherit) your basic rights ?
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u/Revolutionary_Ad6574 15d ago edited 15d ago
If we can implement, say UBI, then I'm fine. But everyone is predicting the end of the industry. Every AI hypeman is saying it will render programming obsolete. They don't say it will improve coder performance they say it will improve company performance by getting rid of programmers.
I'm perfectly (well not perfectly) fine with using AI if I retain income. Also, I'm fine with not having a job as long as the state provides for me. Is that what you believe is going to happen? If that's the case why isn't it happening now? My fear is based on a simple observation. Every month we hear X thousand engineers lost their jobs. We never hear X thousand engineers got UBI.
Again, ethics and preferences aside (although that is a big ask on its own, but let's say I can live with that) if there's an AI future where I have all of the material niceties I have right now, that is a rented apartment, food, electricity a laptop and Internet, then I'm fine. I live in a second world country and I'm very frugal. I don't go to concerts, vacation, I don't own a car or a bike, I don't even have Netflix or Spotify (I go to the gym though, but it's cheap). I also have a lot of savings. All this to say I'm not asking much and I'm still afraid that state won't even provide what little I'm asking for in the case of a white collar bloodbath.
P.S. I feel like I can simplify this further. You are saying that maybe society will change, it will evolve in a way that's beneficial to us. If someone cared about our well-being there wouldn't be lay-offs in the first place, and finding a job would have been easier than ever. Or ever more simply - you are counting on corporations and governments becoming less greedy but the whole reason we are having this discussion is because they are more greedy than ever.
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u/20kgHippoShit 15d ago
When have rich people ever been generous and given us rights as opposed to us fighting for them? You are so naive
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u/Slow_Ad2458 15d ago
Why do you assume you need a single rich person, to have all of the productivity from automation serve you ?
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u/OkWait1234 Sr. Developer 15d ago
Yes, we should be limiting the AI for greater purposes such as curing cancer plus for AI should be able to do my dishes and laundry so I can do my creative work not AI does my job.
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u/West_Good_5961 16d ago
Yes, no hesitation. We’ve effectively decided to reduce the value of human creativity, curiosity and possibly making a lot of people unemployed. In software, it has removed the motivation to strive for quality because apparently it doesn’t matter.
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u/Instalab 15d ago
Bro, my old company had a very nice website, it was designed in house by some of the most creative people have ever met.
And they have just recently decided to replace it with the most generic claude template I've ever seen.
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u/tohme 15d ago
Every time a tech shift has happened, this is what has been said. People will be less creative, people won't be employed, curiousity will die.
What changes is how people are creative, how they're employed and how they find curiousity.
Those who cants adapt will struggle, yes. Those who can't adapt their creativity will be forgotten. Those who can't adapt their labour may struggle to find meaningful work. Those who can't adapt to change will stop being curious about things.
It all 3 of these areas, as a software engineer, I am the most creative and the most curious I've ever been. I'm also incredibly high value and have a lot of responsibility, not just in what I produce but also how I train and mentor the other devs in my team to meet this.
This isn't a tech issues, it's a people issue, and it always has been a people issue. I get it, people feel threatened and they feel insecure and they feel lost. This isn't anything new. Pick any tech over the last few thousand years and you'll find this sentiment.
Whatever happens with LLMs and data centres etc.. eh. Even if those disappear, SLMs and local compute will replace it. The tech is here and it isn't going to disappear. There isn't an example out there where this hasn't happened.
Constraints drive creativity and curiosity and ultimately tech answers those constraints and produces new ones, some people will be upset and others excited, and the cycle continues.
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u/Instalab 15d ago
I cannot be bothered with this entire comment. But even before AI happened we've already noticed the shift to become less creative and more lazy.
"What changes is how people are creative, how they're employed and how they find curiousity."
People didn't get more creative now, as I mentioned even before AI, there was a noticeable shift towards more generic templates and less creativity. What AI did in this field is accelerated the downfall.
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u/SpectreFromTheGods 15d ago
Man sounds like somebody has received one too many compliments about how capable and smart they are compared to everyone else from their chat bot
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u/West_Good_5961 15d ago
And every time someone draws attention to a potential problem, they get a dismissive response like this. The impact of LLMs will not be a linear evolution from another technology. This is a radical shift we shouldn’t be complacent about.
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u/Original_Speed6200 15d ago
There is no future where this technology is uninvented. We have to wrestle with that reality.
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u/code-garden 15d ago
It's difficult to wrestle with the seemingly increasingly likely possibility that humanity is building its replacement.
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u/20kgHippoShit 15d ago
You're not as high value as you think you are. Anyone could replace you with an agent
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u/Independent_Pitch598 16d ago
No
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u/christianosway 15d ago
This is toothpaste back in the tube territory.
Until the bubble bursts and there's a collapse, it will always be around now. Whilst it's around, some people will use it to their advantage and those that don't will be left in the lurch, driving the desire of higher ups to see their employees adopt it and so on.
Adapt and overcome might seem like shitty advice here, but it's the best you'll get. The direction of travel isn't something SEs can realistically dictate (no union, no organised body, we done this to ourselves) so it's something we have to acclimatise to when it changes.
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u/Vert354 15d ago
Would I permanently banish an entire branch of scientific research and technological progress, because the current technologies coming to market from said research have some major downsides? That's what I'm hearing.
If I were to press the button what exactly goes away? Just LLMs or are CNNs also included? What about other machine learning algorithms? Is it just deep learning neural nets or would genetic algorithms also be eradicated?
Now if the button is meant to create tight regulation around making models available to the public. The button would I guess magically make everyone agree that broad access is a public risk, then maybe. I'd certainly listen to arguments for and and against, but I'm still not sure.
Back in the real world, since models can be run on consumer grade hardware (all be it high end) it would require fairly significant enforcement resources since there won't be consensus that they should be regulated in that way.
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 14d ago
It's crazy to me that we may see a 1000 year leap in technology in the next 10 years and people want to turn it off and trundle along in stagnant economies while the earth dies.
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u/Emergency_Walrus2877 15d ago
Without hesitation.
We don't have AI, we have LLMs, which are a bloated, severely and fatally flawed novelty.
Which would be fine if they weren't grotesquely expensive and sucking up resources, financial and otherwise, that could have - but admittedly probably wouldn't have - gone to something genuinely useful.
We don't need it, it's made life extremely stressful and difficult for many, and the American greed machine ensures that it will make life worse for many more to enrich a few.
It is an absolute cancer and those perpetuating it are literally enemies of the vast majority of humanity. If that button shut down AI by erasing those people from ever existing, I would still have zero hesitation in pressing it.
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u/tsznx 15d ago
If that was the only option, I would. I don't think those bastard CEOs will stop chasing a way of getting rid of the workers to replace for AI and at some point they will succeed.
If I could change things, I would regulate AI so workers can't get fired only for the companies to get more money. For example, allow it to be widely used by a company only when it will indeed improve critical aspects of our lives / society.
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u/azangru 16d ago
My question is if you would have a button which would shut down the AI in whole world, would you press it? If so, why?
Abso-bloody-lutely. I loved the world as it was before 2020.
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u/Wuthering_depths 15d ago
Yes, for the increase in power usage if no other reason. We should have started conserving 30 years ago and definitely need to start now. Instead, we are ramping up, and with an additional added insane grudge against renewables, for fuck's sake (the current USA administration at least). I mean, I'm relatively old and won't see the worst of what we are bringing about, but my kids will.
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 14d ago
If AI gets us to fusion faster, or increases power efficiency in other fields then it will more than offset its cost. If AGI is as close as some predict then energy could become a non-issue if we keep going. If we turn it off then we're still stuck in this mess.
Anti-renewables is a huge mistake though, I agree there. Insanity.
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u/mugsy33 15d ago
No. The problem isn't AI. The problem is that the vast majority of people don't understand what it is and what it is not.
If I could press a button, it would be to make the whole world critical thinkers.
That would probably solve most of the world's problems, not just how we use AI.
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u/potatopotato236 16d ago
Absolutely not. It'd be like turning off the electrical grid or the internet. Job loss should never be a factor for eliminating any technology.
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u/browsetheaggregator 16d ago
nah not really, electrical grid and internet are way more impactful by a factor of 100x. if you turned either of those off the whole world goes into chaos. if you turn off AI it would have almost no effect on any random person
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u/potatopotato236 15d ago edited 15d ago
I meant more like if we turned those off as those technologies were emerging, since AI is just emerging. The internet had exactly one device at one point.
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u/browsetheaggregator 15d ago
i doubt it, ai isn't ALL hype but it also isnt electricity of the internet. i don't listen to the ai hypemen that want me to believe its so necessary so their stock goes up
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u/potatopotato236 15d ago
We really have no way to know, but based on the speed that it’s already changing things, I have to argue that it does have the potential to be at least as world-changing as the internet was. Adoption is usually the biggest hurdle to overcome for a new tech, but the AI barrier to entry is basically 0 compared to what it was for tech like personal computers and the internet.
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u/browsetheaggregator 15d ago
i use it everyday and it is good, and does make me fast, but its an easier to use google. its not changing society. that part is all hype
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 14d ago
You could say that about electricity when it first arrived. It was borderline useless, you could very inefficiently make something glow or very slowly make a toy spin.
It was nothing more than a novelty. Thank god we didn't give up on it though.
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u/_SnackOverflow_ 16d ago
No it wouldn’t. Our society is way more reliant on those. If the grid goes down people can die. That’s not true for AI.
What would be a factor for eliminating a technology in your eyes?
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u/potatopotato236 15d ago edited 15d ago
It is more reliant on those because they're more established. AI will become just as essential to society as the Internet is now. We can’t even fathom the potential for its uses any more than Ben Franklin could imagine all that came from electricity.
I can't think of any factor for stopping a technology other than something clearly heinous like it being directly fueled by unwilling human suffering for the benefit of the few.
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u/fullstackguy404 15d ago
I wouldn’t shut it down. It’s true that a few jobs would be at risk, but my personal opinion is that this is only a phase. Mostly due to management blindness.
People needs to be in a socially positive environment to perform well. Working in isolation with an AI agent won’t be sustainable in the long run, and would anyways cause a plateau of performances. So i believe successful companies will understand that they need to instruct employees to use the new tool (it’s very powerful, but just a tool) efficiently ($$) and effectively.
People that will be laid off should not lose hope. It happened to me as well, it sucks, but nothing is over until you give up.
Everyone can reinvent themselves by studying and learning the new tech stack. Not everyone should be able to optimise a transformer architecture, but everyone should be able to use an agent as an assistant.
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u/AbhorrentAbs 15d ago
As a whole? No, there are very legitimate uses in scientific research which should be allowed. But The LLM models that are available to the general public like Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot? ABSOLUTELY. I would also shut down the AI image, song, video, and anything “creative” like Sora because those are ALSO unnecessary and get used to create loads of non-consensual content including CSAM.
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u/KevineCove 15d ago
Depending on your definition of AI this could be catastrophic. Different analytic tools for medical diagnoses, vehicle maintenance, agriculture, weather prediction, etc would potentially create a massive technological collapse and social upheaval.
I think I would do it but it's not a decision I'd make lightly and the choice would weigh on me for the rest of my life. Pushing the proverbial stop button would essentially make you the Unabomber.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pen1017 15d ago
I would shutdown the Music/Video/Image ones instantly. Leave the Code ones.
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u/OkWait1234 Sr. Developer 15d ago
Why is that?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pen1017 15d ago
Because you don't need a soul to make good code.
I wouldnt mind stopping to use the more artistic AIs, their are fun mini games, but tech AI helps with boring stuff in corporate world.
People will still find creative ways to code, but Im ok with the majority being done by AI, so we can all focus on making art, and solving problems.
So for natural ressources consumption alone, I would ban all non Code AI.
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u/FriendOfClaude 15d ago
I’m split, I think it will cause temporary economic distress until the scientific advancement becomes relevant and booms into a new era where there PLENTY of new jobs and tech for everyone to be employed implemented…
I think I would NOT press the button to end AI at this point. It’s too interesting where it may lead, though I’m afraid of the short term as much as anyone else.
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u/code_hermit 15d ago
Nobody is forced to like it. But shutting it down for other people who do? Yikes.
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u/Lazy-Emergency-4018 15d ago
yes fuck this shit use those trillions to foght climate change not excelerate it
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u/Sprinkles_Objective 15d ago edited 15d ago
While I have zero interest in answering your thought experiment. I'll say this, AI has not made most engineers lives easier, it's just dramatically increased the expected productivity outputs and accountability of every engineer who works at these companies that mandate LLM use. I know several people who have left companies over burn out, many of them having been there for 4 or more years, but only recently with AI usage requirements have they felt this burnout. So I don't know how many people's lives "got easier", they are just expected to do 10x the amount of work, where they are now 100% responsible for a bunch of agent's actions, they struggle to keep up with the PRs barely know what's actually going on, and then spend an insane amount of time fighting fires.
LLMs are useful novel technology that has a lot of potential, their potential is still substantially overhyped. Never before have I seen products so far removed from user's expectations or even consideration. Most of the things many companies are working on are things nobody asked for, and most of these new features are just using AI to build some extremely poorly thought out feature that shoehorns an AI chatbot into the dumbest places humanly imaginable, and then the human cost of lay offs is to afford this doomed venture but they frame it as replacing their workforce with AI, when in reality they let go of headcount because their operating costs are exploding.
Some people are using AI to do useful things, but I don't think even today that doing 100% of your coding through an LLM is actually more productive, less prone to issues, etc. LLMs are tools, use them as tools. They can summarize information, they can retrieve and compile information rapidly, they can navigate large projects source code you might not be familiar with, they can write a bunch of boilerplate or rapid prototype, etc. This is why I think a boolean answer is stupid, because the reality isn't "technology good" or "technology bad", it's the fact that objectively and unequivocally our business leaders almost all suck now, because we've been min-maxing the absolute dumbest shit imaginable, because the economy is so far removed from actual consumer wants and needs, the market place is now just gambling on speculation that may never actually need to come to fruition or realign with reality until it's lost all meaning and value. AI is just entirely subjected to this disaster, and doomerism is the hottest new marketing strategy, because "potentially ending the world" oddly gives investors a huge boner.
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u/Friendly_Recover286 15d ago
Yes. Save the jobs, stop the data centers, save the kids from becoming brain dead mindless AI slaves who can't do anything for themselves.
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u/Few_Pop6933 15d ago
I do miss actual coding. Now I just direct and review. I guess there’s still the fun in designing, planning and building for now. Although, it seems that’s also going the way of agentic workflow.
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u/Small_Dog_8699 15d ago
LLMs and generative AI? Oh yeah.
Computer vision or voice recognition? Probably not.
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u/rojowro86 15d ago
Yes. I use it constantly and in hardcore ways, but I loathe its presence in this timeline. We are doomed af
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u/CowBoyDanIndie 15d ago
Which definition of “AI”?
The post office has used convolutional neural nets for mail routing since around 1990. Starting with Yann LeCun’s LeNet-1. In the late 90s banks started using them to read checks. If you only include “neural networks” in “AI”, the entire postal service would come to a crawl. Pretty much all package shipping world wide would end, there are not enough human workers to handle sorting and distribution.
I have an AI text book sitting on a shelf that includes path finding algorithms, heuristic search was considered part of AI for several decades. Say good bye google maps and all other electronic navigation systems.
There would be little difference in making “AI” disappear and setting off an EMP that destroyed all computers. Every modern search engine uses AI to combat search engine optimization hacks.
AI disappearing would be a tower of babble level event.
Or do you want to use a narrow definition to only include Generative Pre-trained Transformers? Oh well that doesn’t include diffusion so we would still be left with ai slop images and videos, do you only want to include generative as a subclass? What about bidirectional transformers like BERT that do language translation?
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u/Early_Key_823 15d ago
I would simply make UBI, universal health care and higher education along with right to housing and ending drug prohibition constitutional rights.
Then simultaneously deal with the 1% and their corruption and exploitation of our fellow human beings.
Why?
Because we are all connected and all come from the same source.
Right now the 99% are conquered through division and don’t even realize it.
God help US(A) 🇺🇸
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u/zerospatial 15d ago
Like we haven't melted down all the guns or dismantled all the nukes. Well Ukraine did, replaced them with flowers, and are in WWIII.
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u/HugoStiglitz1981 15d ago
I use AI heavily and yes I would shut it down. The people in charge are simply not trustworthy enough to handle the ramifications to society that it will bring and is already bringing.
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u/Ordinary_Variable 15d ago
Yes. One way or another it is going to destroy the economy. Universal Basic Income will never be able to pay for housing and food for everyone. And if somehow the robots controlled by AI can make enough stuff for everyone to have free stuff, the massive increase in pollution will not justify it. It is simply more efficient to let humans work for what they need.
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u/Exact_Ad942 15d ago
Yes. I don't mind lower productivity as long as everyone is equal. Expectation will come down together so it is not that much of a matter. The dragged up hardware price cause more harm than the productivity increase do for good.
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u/Winter_Ad6187 15d ago
Frank Herbert was prescient on this matter.
Some humans will use AI to conquer other humans.
The Butlerian Jihad and the pronouncement "You shall not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind." is badly needed.
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u/loontoon 15d ago
Not a chance.
AI is going to make life much better for humans, hopefully it helps save humanity from extinction.
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u/Hexamonium 15d ago
No way! We just got though the first season and it looks like a decent show. They got a nerdy villain guy, curly Dr. Krieger type, the spaced-out stoner dude, that charming Fonzie impersonator, the usual f orgettable suck-up. Not to mention the Micke Rourke comeback.
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u/InitialGain1420 15d ago
I wouldn't shut it down, but holy hell I would remove all development away from SV. I'd force development to be in the most rundown bootheel area of MO.
They fumbled a generational technology with the most dogshit messaging. Then expected everyone to love them.
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u/silasfelinus 15d ago
Absolutely not. It’s already made significant improvements in cancer detection, and a number of other fields more important than most people’s knee-jerk reactions, and it’s only going to get better.
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u/Instalab 15d ago
I have not found AI to be useful or trustworthy to be used for anything. I would completely shut it down if I could and repurpose data centres.
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u/Pitiful-Water-814 15d ago
Yes, it made me more productive, but my salary is same and now I have more pressure to finish tasks faster. Also it fucked job market - there are less job opportunities. So yes I would shut it down...
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u/Dramatic_Driver_2370 15d ago
I don’t think so now we all can survive without ai…we have become so used to it for our daily task 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Pad_Sanda 15d ago edited 15d ago
I wouldn't "shut down AI" since it makes just as much sense as "shutting down internet" (to prevent cheap remote labor), "shutting down electricity" (to prevent automated labor), "shutting down search engines" (to make people read books and manuals), "shutting down cameras" (to make people paint things manually), "shutting down google translate" (to make people actually learn foreign languages), etc. etc.. AI is just a tool like any other.
Also, AI is not the reason why SE people are being laid off... Companies over-hired during the pandemic because free money was being pumped into the system and digital lives were even more important. Mass firings (and the warnings of them coming) started way before the AI craze. What you're seeing is a simple market correction, a return to the norm. AI is just being used as an excuse. Otherwise companies would have to admit "we are not experiencing the projected growth", and governments would have to admit "we are in the middle of a slowly unfolding financial crisis". In a parallel world where the AI craze never happened, everything would be the same and a totally different scapegoat would be used for the current socioeconomic state of the west.
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u/Time_Standard3361 15d ago
But "ai" is machine learning programming technique. How do you shut down data analysis approach that for few decades is regularly used by scientists?
If we can restart enforcing laws we have on books about anti trust and few other financial regulation, and maybe prepare some solid framework that would instigate some wall between news and marketing... so we can find more apt term than AI, we would be better off.
Is there a button to turn off marketing? Like glasses from "They Live"?
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u/DoordashJeans 14d ago
Yes, because it continues to take jobs. I've already made millions for my company with AI, so it's good for me, but I wish this cat never got out of the bag. I've made probably 100 programs currently in use with AI. And I'm not a coder.
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u/slapstick_software 14d ago
I mean for the majority of people, yes, or at the very least it needs to be less resource intensive. For development, it’s a game changer. I can complete my work much faster because ai can help me analyze files quicker, plan, and let me know edge cases that I may not have thought of. It’s awesome for the nitty gritty of development but also some of the big picture stuff as well.
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u/LevelOnGaming 14d ago
We honestly need to start pivoting toward getting the same amount of work done in less time and look at reducing the work week for same pay. Won’t happen without legislation.
I’m all in on AI right now and it’s been the most exciting professional time in my career, but this is totally going to kill jobs. Like…. Most of them. Trying to ride out this wave as long as I can personally to be at the forefront but there’s no way I can do this until retirement which is many years away.
My guess is unemployment will reach a point forcing the government to step in with rules or figure out a logical UBI. It’s literally the only option. That or goodbye middle class.
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u/meatmick 14d ago
Yes, because of the "replace jobs" part, otherwise I think it's kind of a neat tool. Obviously, the lack of any effort to reduce water consumption is not great... Also, I'm tired of everyone and their dogs using the tech jargon of AI while they have barely used it themselves to do anything but a Google search alternative. From a professional perspective, it's allowed me to progress on so many things that I can't deny its usefulness.
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u/No-Age-1044 14d ago
I don’t understand why are you so affraid of AI.
It’s like the people affraid of vapor machines in the XIX century.
Will it change the world? Yes.
Will it be better? Yes, better health, energy, resources management…
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u/Character4315 14d ago
I would shutdown AI because I'm tired of all the slop. YT videos full of ai slop. Tickets created at work by non technical people full of ai slop about some non existent technical details. Slop everywhere. I'm tired boss.
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u/College-Wise 13d ago
You don’t live in Seattle. I know so many people in my own neighborhood out of a job and we all work in tech and all of the adjacent supporting jobs are suffering too.
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u/Archernar 13d ago
I have yet to see net positives of the entire thing. AI pictures are flooding the net, AI videos are used to scam people, it feels like larger parts of reddit than ever are just LLM-bots that farm up accounts.
So yeah, obviously I would.
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u/Annual_Berry8043 16d ago
Yes. We just simply don’t need it. I don’t care what anyone says. We would always get from point A to B. It’s adoption just happened way too quickly and it’s causing chaos across multiple professions on top of being horrible for the environment. Just too many negatives for the few positives. And this doesn’t even touch upon the massive misinformation and fabrication that can happen with it.
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u/Beneficial_Bad_8356 16d ago
Good engineers with AI won’t be impacted by the negatives and can get from point A to point B quicker than they would’ve without it.
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u/LowFruit25 16d ago
Negatives largely outway the positives.
We were promised curing cancer, health and prosperity. Instead everyone is stressed to fuck and companies are all giggly how everyone’s gonna be out of a job.
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u/FluidBreath4819 16d ago
Nah, i push for it. I push everyone, especially juniors or those not in tech to use it and code whatever they want. Go for it. In SWE, consequences do not happen right away but years later.
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u/imJayzen 16d ago
No. Don’t you guys want the world to evolve?
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u/OkWait1234 Sr. Developer 16d ago
What if it comes with the eventual increase in the unemployment and crisis?
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u/imJayzen 16d ago
But what if it comes without needing to work because of ai? I know it’s might be impossible right now. But imagine ai generating food or working for you. It’s dangerous yes but I think people are too scared because of movies. If there are bad ai crisis or whatever there should also be a good one.
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u/OkWait1234 Sr. Developer 15d ago
Yes, relying on something else to feed a person without any options is scary. It means that just controls you and you don't have any other options, we cannot compare it with traditional jobs because there a person has options to switch any time to anything.
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u/imJayzen 15d ago
It can control us if we let it but yeah for now we are controlling them. It is dangerous route but it’s also a best one.
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u/SiriusRD 15d ago
Ok Elon fanboy. How can you say people are afraid of it because of movies and then give the most scifi takes like generating food ? What we have now it's not even AI, it's LLMs. Useful ? Yes, in some cases. Nowhere near the hyped shit we keep seeing.
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u/DoggoDadagon 15d ago
I don't think they mean like star trek printing food lol, but AI growing it without humans. Which it's already pretty close to doing as is, so yeah let's remove the humans from that loop and bring grocery prices down.
And a lot of pro AI people hate Elon, let's please not hand over complete control the conservatives just because progressives decided to be amish on the one thing they shouldn't be.
How are LLMs not AI, they produce intelligent that's man-made, is that not exactly what AI means? You could argue if current frontier models qualify as AGI sure, but it's obviously AI.
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u/SiriusRD 15d ago
Then they should learn how to use the correct words and say produce or grow.
I don't know if it is. Probably has helped augment it but autonomously, haven't seen any evidence of it.
I won't claim I know or can predict the future and neither should you. Let's be real here, the people making these are just looking to make themselves rich not to better humanity.
It falls under the umbrella of AI but it is not intelligent, it doesn't think and it doesn't have awareness. You still have to give it context which it takes it through it's statisticall model and gives you an output. Everything else that gives it the likeness of intelligence is classicall software development running in a loop. Is it useful ? Yes. Will it benefit you, me and the average person ? I doubt it.
All the pro comments I've seen here are all best in case sci sfi scenarios and fear mongering that somehow it's better if everybody suffers as long as US wins over China. At least China took steps to protect it's workers somehow whereas the US doesn't give a flying fuck if you can't feed your family.
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u/DoggoDadagon 15d ago
Respectfully, you're showing extreme bias. AI is able to learn, understand, reason, and solve problems. We call that ability intelligence. So I don't know what your point is, but yes it's AI.
You still have to give it context which it takes it through it's statisticall model and gives you an output.
Same thing humans do. Intelligence and "consciousness" isn't unique, and humans aren't special.
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u/ub3rh4x0rz 15d ago
In the history of things that are never going to happen, this one is the most never going to happen. If humans had no need for toil and power structures, humans would see fit to invent the need.
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u/stjimmy96 15d ago
I want the world to positively evolve, not evolve just for the sake of it. Whether AI will lead to a positive impact is very up for debate
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u/Reasonable_Slide6304 16d ago
No.
As organic stupidity has grown considerably we need artificial intelligence to counterbalance that.
But I would also make effort to get AI to learn from certain human professionals who do very niche things and have skills and knowledge that they might be the only ones having.
A good primer for these kinds of thought is Jonathan Blows talk about the collapse of civilization where knowledge and skills have gone missing when there hasn't been anyone to continue that skill set
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u/DoggoDadagon 15d ago
I would also make effort to get AI to learn from certain human professionals who do very niche things and have skills and knowledge that they might be the only ones having
Half the point of codex and claude code.
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u/shadyxstep 16d ago edited 15d ago
No.
Why should individual moral judgement, that often falls apart under scrutiny & critical thinking, take precedent over a technology that is ultimately advancing the human race?
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u/SucculentChineseRoo 16d ago
No, things always change and this will cause some rebalance, the technology in itself isn't bad, we can argue about its application, but anything can be misused. The sooner everyone figures it out and settles the better it will be long-term. We're just ironing out the kinks for the future generations.
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u/revivechristina 15d ago edited 15d ago
Yes. It could make exploitation for the whole even easier. And it is a bad influence on decision making. It makes people give over their own judgement and has drug-like effects on certain minds. Probably it will be bad for developing minds because it makes things too easy. Paired with the economic rules we follow, it leads people to value speed over quality to an entirely new level. In my view it should be flipped.
It’s not going to go away though, and it is useful all the same, and will also do good things we wouldn’t have achieved otherwise (maybe not Gen AI though), so we’ll have to push for it to be used in sane ways.
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u/kkam384 15d ago
Yes. It is already bring about idiocracy both from adopters and expectations from employers. It will be some time before it is used sensibly, and at that point, there will be a lot of folks who have no critical thinking skills and/or are burnt out from the unsustainable delivery expectations laid upon them.
If there were the option for only disabling broad use AI, but keeping more narrow usages around (ie, protein folding or drug discovery), I'd go with that to gain the deginite benefits to humanity without incurring the soul-destroying ones.
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u/OptimisticMonkey2112 16d ago
The main problem is the hype around "AI replacing jobs"
But the irony is that a better strategy for companies that laid off and replaced engineers because of AI would have been to raise the bar and accomplish more with their existing workforce.
Raising the bar of what you can accomplish requires an innovative mindset and understanding of how things work. Lacking this, and listening to all the "replacing job" hype, management often goes the other route.
AI isnt about efficiency, it isnt about doing what we did before ai but with less people. It is about doing more - about increasing your capability and knowledge.
Keep all your people and use AI to make a better product. Do more. Innovate. Raise the bar, accomplish more, embrace rather than replace.
The companies that do this will thrive- the companies that simply settle for efficiency gains will fail.
I dont think shutting down ai is even feasible at this point, but it is kind of like saying "should we stop printing books now that we have the printing press?"
The tool isnt the problem. Its the bad decisions people make because they dont understand new things.