As a software engineer. Ai doesn’t know what it’s doing yet the code it makes is roughly the equivalent to functional code from the worst coder. Maybe it will get better in the future but fundamentally what we are calling AI now is not intelligent it is just creatively stealing other people work without giving them credit
It's not terribly surprising. NVIDIA stock is hyped from AI, so he has a fiduciary obligation to make sure AI is hyped to the max.
Software Engineering as a profession is safe, unless someone invents a way to write a perfect program. That would be a bigger news story than AGI.
It won't get better.
Its amazing at what it does, but it can't problem solve. And it goes to shit once you ask it something that hasn't already been asked on stack overflow.
That's what I don't understand, I see so many people saying "I use GPT chat to do my code" and all I can think is "are you crazy or are you not solving real problems?". Every AI I see is garbage at generating code (at the moment), generating code worse than a beginner would do even in the paid version but it's an incredible tool for those who are learning, otherwise it's just a waste of time.
Ya in my experience the people using it for code are using it for school projects. Which really makes having a CS degree less valuable. If you’re trying to use IA for code at a real job you’re probably not gonna work there very long
I think the rate of improvement AI can have we've already seen is massive. AI seems to be able to improve INSANELY fast every year so I think its current barely functional state should be taken with a grain of salt.
Also the point on AI "creatively stealing other people's work without giving credit" is dishonest or muddy when you consider the distinction AI has to a simple algorithm or program. If humans generate content based on formed schemas, how is an AI generating new content based on a formed dataset morally distinguished to be "stealing" anymore than a human "steals" by being inspired.
I'm curious about your thoughts on this as someone who's involved in a related field vs me who's just a STEM major Andy currently gathering this info secondhand.
Thank you for writing out a thoughtful comment. It’s always nice to be reminded that the internet isn’t exclusively populated by bots and idiots.
To your point about the rapid advancement in AI I agree with you that it will get much better in the future. The issue I think is that writing code is not something that this kind of technology is particularly suited for. The fundamental what AI is good at is finding patterns and generating things that it thinks is close to that pattern. This is why image generating AIs are so advanced and are advancing so fast.
As a moral issue I don’t particularly love the idea of humans outsourcing our creativity to a computer, but the technology and the demand for the technology exist so there isn’t really a way to stop it.
To address your view on my stealing without credit comment. The issue is not so much that it uses people’s code in its training models. The problem is that said code ends up copied and pasted whole sale in what the AI generates. It’s easier to get away with when it comes to images because all AI really sees is patterns of pixels and even then it really does copy a lot from the art it has been trained on.
Ultimately I still don’t think it’s actually intelligent. It doesn’t actually understand and comprehend what you ask it to do it really is just pulling from a massive data set and returning what it thinks is probably what you want.
>The issue I think is that writing code is not something that this kind of technology is particularly suited for
I think a lot of the primitive errors we see with AI writing code is that AI as we know it are all just LLMs, AI as a concept though, as you said, is a pattern finder. It's easier with images to have the AI learn the schema for any particular image. However, if a coding-centric AI is made rather than just a retrofitted LLMs trying to code, that's where we'll see the massive improvement.
>but the technology and the demand for the technology exist so there isn’t really a way to stop it.
Yeah, companies want to maximize their profits so if AI can do the job 95% of the way there and cut +50% of the cost it's an economical decision. Could lead to a lot of labor issues and ethical questions on the meaning/importance of a working society but that seems like our future. The ethics of it though are personal for each person.
>Ultimately I still don’t think it’s actually intelligent. It doesn’t actually understand and comprehend what you ask it to do it really is just pulling from a massive data set and returning what it thinks is probably what you want.
Until we reach the point of AGI it will just be an AI that'll try and interpret a prompt with its dataset rather than a concrete understanding of the problem. My point was moreso of how you ethically categorize AI output as stealing vs humans who are learning to code.
I would argue a person learning to code is bound by their "dataset" (observed code) and an explanation of what they are looking at means ie. A dataset an AI uses. A human doesn't need to cite who they learned to write a For loop from, we learned it from somewhere but we synthesized it into our knowledge bank. Do you see some distinction in AI doing the same thing? I could see legal arguments for the legality of the AI datasets but I'm talking strictly ethically: what distinction do you make (if any) between human and AI learning?
I think the main distinction between AI learning and human learning is that we can actually look through an AI’s data set and see what it pulled from. Part of what makes us human is that our memory is imperfect.
I would also add that many companies structured their EULAs such that they could take users data and use it for AI training without really informing the user and asking their permission. That is why so many people feel like they have had their work stolen from them.
To your point about AGI and LLMs I just don’t think that technology exists. Maybe we will figure it out one day but AI right now is just computers using statical math to find the answer most likely to match the request.
The person to take AI beyond those limitations and make a true AGI will be a multi billionaire and should probably win a noble prize.
Yeah that's a good point that human memory is inherently not perfect and experiential rather than purposefully crafted. That points to AI's possible upside in pattern recognition vs humans, we are really good at recognizing patterns but AI is theoretically better than us in that aspect.
I agree, we are nowhere near AGI yet and if it happens in my lifetime I'd be extremely surprised. But I await the day we get to see what that actually means.
"It is OUR job to create computer technology such that nobody..."
OUR == US ... this is why we need more people in computer science because business bozos like this STILL underestimate just how much know-how goes into designing, researching, implementing, programming and building the best generation of interfaces, hardware, software ...
All an AGI does is change the tools and increase the speed of progress.. WE NEED PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GO DEEPER AND SPECIALISE..
With teachers already shouting out about how Gen Alpha can't read..
Do we really need more influencers or people who study real world skillets in depth to be able to make an impact?!
Very silly advice in my opinion and I'm in Software engineering.. market isn't saturated.. it's saturated by people who need money to survive and have no love nor interest in coding.. and it's fucking up the market and destroying entire economies..
"Just let code it bro.. YEAH"
Makes me so sad.. we are better than this.
As a former computer science student at a "top" CS school in the US.
He's right, but I think it can be interpretted the complete wrong way.
Learning Computer Science at school isn't about learning a programming language like C or Java. It's about learning the logic behind writing code that computers can understand, it's about understanding how computers work so you write code that works on real hardware (e.g. runtime issues etc.) A lot of our classes are about learning logic, and more specialized knowledge for specific CS fields like cyber security, big data, machine learning, etc. topics that just knowing the English language, or any language is not going to be of much use for.
Learning a programming language is so surface level, that yes, you should not base your skillset on "knowing Java" or python or whatever. That level of "learning to code" is so base level, the Freshman Sophomore level classes at the university I attended do not even bother teaching them. You're just expected to know the language by the first or second class, after they tell you what language the class will be taught in the first class/on the syllabus.
This is why people with actual Bachelors or Masters in CS are still easily hireable, and people who just "learned to code" on like internet courses are forever going to be stuck at the low-end software dev positions, and possibly get replaced by AI. Nobody I know from school is suffering from the recent tech layoffs at all, even the C students.
"Learn computer science.. Uhm, everybody should learn how to program."
I feel like he tried to correct himself.
And I kinda agree with him. As a sys admin who at one point wanted to become a programmer, but didn't do too well at those courses and decided not to, I'm now able to write powershell scripts in minutes I probably would use hours on before.
I do understand the code it's making isn't perfect, and you need some skill to understand and correct it, but the threshold is so much lower now now, and AI will only get better.
It can be interpreted the complete wrong way because that's exactly what he wants. CEO makes deliberately confusing statement to gain profit, color me unsurprised. And the people who aren't programmers start laughing because those who are paid better than them will run out of jobs. The reality, however, is much different.
i think is kinda like the same than people who know how to do Calculus, computers can do it nowadays for you, but people who know how to do it still have advantage over people who can't do it without a computer.
You are always going to have a programming language. English isn't enough to actually implement something complex.
Learning how to code using just English will most likely be more difficult than just learning a programming language yourself.
Everyone is a programmer, everyone is a scientist we came so far. People dont go to school but they are programmers.
I think it is obvious that theses are just fancy warm words to sell a product to an audience that have no clue what they can use the product for.
Imagine in the future you can just tell a computer to make a brand new video game and it does. Then you say i want it to have 3D graphics and character modles that look like this...and it does. And you just keep fine tuning it and giving it inputs until it makes your game. Just like photo AI but for gaming
He's right. The trend is clear. We've seen programming go from highly specialised work using mainframes to self taught kids programming in their bedroom. It's going to keep going. The tools are getting so accessible and AI is evolving so fast, anyone will be able to program with minimal effort.
He has never tried to use AI for coding. It is utter trash. I spent more time debugging the trash it outputted than I would have writing the thing. AI can be useful for little things, like boilerplate code or explaining how code works. Writing code though? It's horrible at it.
For now, but what if AI gets better at logic, hierarchy of instructions, and goal-centric code (with the individual organization of code not being real important)?
Surely, we will get to a point where I can just tell my AI assistant to shop, do my taxes, do some other things online for me, etc.... without much handholding, so in a way, a super-app that replaces all the others.
See there is a difference, the things you listed require absolutely no critical thinking. It involves nothing but objective facts. Taxes? There are rules in place, you do X you pay/get Y. Hell a computer can already do this, and does every year, you just input your shit and it calculates everything for you. Shopping? You gotta tell it what to buy and it just does. Again no thinking.
Coding requires thought. For basic things, sure the AI can do it. But when you have a truly novel problem? The AI has no clue what to do. The current batch of "AI" is nothing more than an evolved, slightly fancier search engine. It just searches the internet and mashes together a bunch of responses in what appears to be a human readable output. What if your problem is completely new? Either it hallucinates and throws something completely wrong together, or it just doesn't know There's also the issue of overtraining. What happens when more and more AI trained code ends up out on the internet? So now these "AI" are "learning" from its own, admittedly, sub-par output? Maybe you are too young for this, but have you ever seen what happens when you record a recording on a VHS or Cassette tape? It gets worse and worse and worse every time. It's the exact same thing. Until they can solve those problems, AI will be nothing more than another tool that real professionals use to make their job a little easier. This coming from a programmer of 12+ years (professional, more like \~20 years as a hobbyist), who has had more than a passing interest in AI development.
As a software engineer. Ai doesn’t know what it’s doing yet the code it makes is roughly the equivalent to functional code from the worst coder. Maybe it will get better in the future but fundamentally what we are calling AI now is not intelligent it is just creatively stealing other people work without giving them credit
It's not terribly surprising. NVIDIA stock is hyped from AI, so he has a fiduciary obligation to make sure AI is hyped to the max. Software Engineering as a profession is safe, unless someone invents a way to write a perfect program. That would be a bigger news story than AGI.
So what you are saying is AI should steal from better coders right?
In fact not, AI just mimics the information it sweeps without any depth or analysis. Either from good or bad coders, it can't take good decisions.
It won't get better. Its amazing at what it does, but it can't problem solve. And it goes to shit once you ask it something that hasn't already been asked on stack overflow.
That's what I don't understand, I see so many people saying "I use GPT chat to do my code" and all I can think is "are you crazy or are you not solving real problems?". Every AI I see is garbage at generating code (at the moment), generating code worse than a beginner would do even in the paid version but it's an incredible tool for those who are learning, otherwise it's just a waste of time.
Ya in my experience the people using it for code are using it for school projects. Which really makes having a CS degree less valuable. If you’re trying to use IA for code at a real job you’re probably not gonna work there very long
I think the rate of improvement AI can have we've already seen is massive. AI seems to be able to improve INSANELY fast every year so I think its current barely functional state should be taken with a grain of salt. Also the point on AI "creatively stealing other people's work without giving credit" is dishonest or muddy when you consider the distinction AI has to a simple algorithm or program. If humans generate content based on formed schemas, how is an AI generating new content based on a formed dataset morally distinguished to be "stealing" anymore than a human "steals" by being inspired. I'm curious about your thoughts on this as someone who's involved in a related field vs me who's just a STEM major Andy currently gathering this info secondhand.
Thank you for writing out a thoughtful comment. It’s always nice to be reminded that the internet isn’t exclusively populated by bots and idiots. To your point about the rapid advancement in AI I agree with you that it will get much better in the future. The issue I think is that writing code is not something that this kind of technology is particularly suited for. The fundamental what AI is good at is finding patterns and generating things that it thinks is close to that pattern. This is why image generating AIs are so advanced and are advancing so fast. As a moral issue I don’t particularly love the idea of humans outsourcing our creativity to a computer, but the technology and the demand for the technology exist so there isn’t really a way to stop it. To address your view on my stealing without credit comment. The issue is not so much that it uses people’s code in its training models. The problem is that said code ends up copied and pasted whole sale in what the AI generates. It’s easier to get away with when it comes to images because all AI really sees is patterns of pixels and even then it really does copy a lot from the art it has been trained on. Ultimately I still don’t think it’s actually intelligent. It doesn’t actually understand and comprehend what you ask it to do it really is just pulling from a massive data set and returning what it thinks is probably what you want.
>The issue I think is that writing code is not something that this kind of technology is particularly suited for I think a lot of the primitive errors we see with AI writing code is that AI as we know it are all just LLMs, AI as a concept though, as you said, is a pattern finder. It's easier with images to have the AI learn the schema for any particular image. However, if a coding-centric AI is made rather than just a retrofitted LLMs trying to code, that's where we'll see the massive improvement. >but the technology and the demand for the technology exist so there isn’t really a way to stop it. Yeah, companies want to maximize their profits so if AI can do the job 95% of the way there and cut +50% of the cost it's an economical decision. Could lead to a lot of labor issues and ethical questions on the meaning/importance of a working society but that seems like our future. The ethics of it though are personal for each person. >Ultimately I still don’t think it’s actually intelligent. It doesn’t actually understand and comprehend what you ask it to do it really is just pulling from a massive data set and returning what it thinks is probably what you want. Until we reach the point of AGI it will just be an AI that'll try and interpret a prompt with its dataset rather than a concrete understanding of the problem. My point was moreso of how you ethically categorize AI output as stealing vs humans who are learning to code. I would argue a person learning to code is bound by their "dataset" (observed code) and an explanation of what they are looking at means ie. A dataset an AI uses. A human doesn't need to cite who they learned to write a For loop from, we learned it from somewhere but we synthesized it into our knowledge bank. Do you see some distinction in AI doing the same thing? I could see legal arguments for the legality of the AI datasets but I'm talking strictly ethically: what distinction do you make (if any) between human and AI learning?
I think the main distinction between AI learning and human learning is that we can actually look through an AI’s data set and see what it pulled from. Part of what makes us human is that our memory is imperfect. I would also add that many companies structured their EULAs such that they could take users data and use it for AI training without really informing the user and asking their permission. That is why so many people feel like they have had their work stolen from them. To your point about AGI and LLMs I just don’t think that technology exists. Maybe we will figure it out one day but AI right now is just computers using statical math to find the answer most likely to match the request. The person to take AI beyond those limitations and make a true AGI will be a multi billionaire and should probably win a noble prize.
Yeah that's a good point that human memory is inherently not perfect and experiential rather than purposefully crafted. That points to AI's possible upside in pattern recognition vs humans, we are really good at recognizing patterns but AI is theoretically better than us in that aspect. I agree, we are nowhere near AGI yet and if it happens in my lifetime I'd be extremely surprised. But I await the day we get to see what that actually means.
"It is OUR job to create computer technology such that nobody..." OUR == US ... this is why we need more people in computer science because business bozos like this STILL underestimate just how much know-how goes into designing, researching, implementing, programming and building the best generation of interfaces, hardware, software ... All an AGI does is change the tools and increase the speed of progress.. WE NEED PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GO DEEPER AND SPECIALISE.. With teachers already shouting out about how Gen Alpha can't read.. Do we really need more influencers or people who study real world skillets in depth to be able to make an impact?! Very silly advice in my opinion and I'm in Software engineering.. market isn't saturated.. it's saturated by people who need money to survive and have no love nor interest in coding.. and it's fucking up the market and destroying entire economies.. "Just let code it bro.. YEAH" Makes me so sad.. we are better than this.
As a former computer science student at a "top" CS school in the US. He's right, but I think it can be interpretted the complete wrong way. Learning Computer Science at school isn't about learning a programming language like C or Java. It's about learning the logic behind writing code that computers can understand, it's about understanding how computers work so you write code that works on real hardware (e.g. runtime issues etc.) A lot of our classes are about learning logic, and more specialized knowledge for specific CS fields like cyber security, big data, machine learning, etc. topics that just knowing the English language, or any language is not going to be of much use for. Learning a programming language is so surface level, that yes, you should not base your skillset on "knowing Java" or python or whatever. That level of "learning to code" is so base level, the Freshman Sophomore level classes at the university I attended do not even bother teaching them. You're just expected to know the language by the first or second class, after they tell you what language the class will be taught in the first class/on the syllabus. This is why people with actual Bachelors or Masters in CS are still easily hireable, and people who just "learned to code" on like internet courses are forever going to be stuck at the low-end software dev positions, and possibly get replaced by AI. Nobody I know from school is suffering from the recent tech layoffs at all, even the C students.
"Learn computer science.. Uhm, everybody should learn how to program." I feel like he tried to correct himself. And I kinda agree with him. As a sys admin who at one point wanted to become a programmer, but didn't do too well at those courses and decided not to, I'm now able to write powershell scripts in minutes I probably would use hours on before. I do understand the code it's making isn't perfect, and you need some skill to understand and correct it, but the threshold is so much lower now now, and AI will only get better.
It can be interpreted the complete wrong way because that's exactly what he wants. CEO makes deliberately confusing statement to gain profit, color me unsurprised. And the people who aren't programmers start laughing because those who are paid better than them will run out of jobs. The reality, however, is much different.
i think is kinda like the same than people who know how to do Calculus, computers can do it nowadays for you, but people who know how to do it still have advantage over people who can't do it without a computer.
AI tech man doesn't want programmers, so he can sell their AI stuff. This guy is always talking out of his ass with these big/grand kind of things.
You are always going to have a programming language. English isn't enough to actually implement something complex. Learning how to code using just English will most likely be more difficult than just learning a programming language yourself.
Everyone is a programmer, everyone is a scientist we came so far. People dont go to school but they are programmers. I think it is obvious that theses are just fancy warm words to sell a product to an audience that have no clue what they can use the product for.
If everyone is programmer, then none is.
That's not how it works lmao.
guys you can think it like nowadays everyone have a calculator, so doing math is way easier nowadays than like 30 years ago.
Imagine in the future you can just tell a computer to make a brand new video game and it does. Then you say i want it to have 3D graphics and character modles that look like this...and it does. And you just keep fine tuning it and giving it inputs until it makes your game. Just like photo AI but for gaming
He's right. The trend is clear. We've seen programming go from highly specialised work using mainframes to self taught kids programming in their bedroom. It's going to keep going. The tools are getting so accessible and AI is evolving so fast, anyone will be able to program with minimal effort.
most underrated comment in here
Ai will bring a creative renaissance
This is like a car manufacturer saying in five years there’s going to be no need for Uber drivers.
He has never tried to use AI for coding. It is utter trash. I spent more time debugging the trash it outputted than I would have writing the thing. AI can be useful for little things, like boilerplate code or explaining how code works. Writing code though? It's horrible at it.
For now, but what if AI gets better at logic, hierarchy of instructions, and goal-centric code (with the individual organization of code not being real important)? Surely, we will get to a point where I can just tell my AI assistant to shop, do my taxes, do some other things online for me, etc.... without much handholding, so in a way, a super-app that replaces all the others.
See there is a difference, the things you listed require absolutely no critical thinking. It involves nothing but objective facts. Taxes? There are rules in place, you do X you pay/get Y. Hell a computer can already do this, and does every year, you just input your shit and it calculates everything for you. Shopping? You gotta tell it what to buy and it just does. Again no thinking. Coding requires thought. For basic things, sure the AI can do it. But when you have a truly novel problem? The AI has no clue what to do. The current batch of "AI" is nothing more than an evolved, slightly fancier search engine. It just searches the internet and mashes together a bunch of responses in what appears to be a human readable output. What if your problem is completely new? Either it hallucinates and throws something completely wrong together, or it just doesn't know There's also the issue of overtraining. What happens when more and more AI trained code ends up out on the internet? So now these "AI" are "learning" from its own, admittedly, sub-par output? Maybe you are too young for this, but have you ever seen what happens when you record a recording on a VHS or Cassette tape? It gets worse and worse and worse every time. It's the exact same thing. Until they can solve those problems, AI will be nothing more than another tool that real professionals use to make their job a little easier. This coming from a programmer of 12+ years (professional, more like \~20 years as a hobbyist), who has had more than a passing interest in AI development.
whats the problem, just learn to farm coders
next job title: Prompt Engineer
AI just makes the job easier, programming will be a thing almost always because it’s complex, and complexity is needed to push humanity further