Phone menu trees

I assume you mean IVR? It's okay to be not familiar with the term. I wasn't either until I worked in the industry. And people that are in charge of them are usually the dumbest people ever.

Yeah but these pesky workers cut into profits because you have to pay them.

It is important to understand that most of the job of software development is not making the code work. That's the easy part.

There are two hard parts::

-Making code that is easy to understand, modify as necessary, and repair when problems are found.

-Interpreting what customers are asking for. Customers usually don't have the vocabulary and knowledge of the inside of a program that they would need to have to articulate exactly what they want.

In order for AI to replace programmers, customers will have to start accurately describing what they want the software to do, and AI will have to start making code that is easy for humans to read and modify.

This means that good programmers' jobs are generally safe from AI, and probably will be for a long time. Bad programmers and people who are around just to fill in boilerplates are probably not going to stick around, but the people who actually have skill in those tougher parts will be AOK.

My current conspiracy theory is that the people at the top are just as intelligent as everyday people we see in public.

Not that everyone is dumb but more like the George Carlin joke "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

That applies to politicians, CEOs, etc. Just cuz they got the job, doesn't mean they're good at it and most of them probably aren't.

There's awesome AI out there too. AlphaFold completely revolutionized research on proteins, and the medical innovations it will lead to are astounding.

Determining the 3d structure of a protein took yearsuntil very recently. Folding at Home was a worldwide project linking millions of computers to work on it.

Alphafold does it in under a second, and has revealed the structure of 200 million proteins. It's one of the most significant medial achievements in history. Since it essentially dates back to 2022, we're still a few years from feeling the direct impact, but it will be massive.

That's part of the problem isn't it? "AI" is a blanket term that has recently been used to cover everything from LLMs to machine learning to RPA (robotic process automation). An algorithm isn't AI, even if it was written by another algorithm.

And at the end of the day none of it is artificial intelligence. Not to the original meaning of the word. Now we have had to rebrand AI as AGI to avoid the association with this new trend.

Defining contextual relationship between words sounds like predicting the next word in a set, mate.

Defining contextual relationship between words sounds like predicting the next word in a set, mate.

There's awesome AI out there too. AlphaFold completely revolutionized research on proteins, and the medical innovations it will lead to are astounding.

Determining the 3d structure of a protein took yearsuntil very recently. Folding at Home was a worldwide project linking millions of computers to work on it.

Alphafold does it in under a second, and has revealed the structure of 200 million proteins. It's one of the most significant medial achievements in history. Since it essentially dates back to 2022, we're still a few years from feeling the direct impact, but it will be massive.

Man, if only someone could have predicted that this AI craze was just another load of marketing BS.

/s

This experience has taught me more about CEO competence than anything else.

I was thinking about this the other day and don't think it would happen any time soon. The people who put the CEO in charge (usually the board members) want someone who will make decisions (that the board has a say in) but also someone to hold accountable for when those decisions don't realize profits.

AI is unaccountable in any real sense of the word.

AI is unaccountable in any real sense of the word.

Doesn't stop companies from trying to deflect accountability onto AI. Citations Needed recently did an episode all about this: https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-217-a-i-mysticism-as-responsibility-evasion-pr-tactic-7bd7f56eeaaa

A good systems analyst can effectively translate user requirements into accurate statements, does not need to be a programmer. Good systems analysts are generally more adept in asking clarifying questions, challenging assumptions and sussing out needs. Good programmers will still be needed but their time is wasted gathering requirements.

And a lot of burnt carbon to get there

A good systems analyst can effectively translate user requirements into accurate statements, does not need to be a programmer. Good systems analysts are generally more adept in asking clarifying questions, challenging assumptions and sussing out needs. Good programmers will still be needed but their time is wasted gathering requirements.

What is a systems analyst?

I never worked in a big enough software team to have any distinction other than "works on code" and "does sales work".

The field I was in was all small places that were very specialized in what they worked on.

When I ran my own company, it was just me. I did everything that the company needed to take are of.

That can be accomplished with basic if-else decision tree. You don't need the massive resource sink that is AI

Whenever I call in to a service because it's not working, when I get stuck talking to a computer, I'm fucking furious. Every single AI implementation I've worked with has been absolute trash. I spam click zero and yell "operator" when it says it didn't hear me or asks for my problem, and I've 100% of the time made it through to a person. People also suck, but they at least understand what I'm saying and aren't as patronizing.