HN user
Can you just make a blog post on this explaining your thesis in detail? It's hard for me not to see non-technical "vibe coding" [0] sidelining everyone in the industry except for the most senior of senior devs/PMs.
When I say 10 years I say that I've probably wanted to work in this field since maybe 10. Computing is my autistic hyperfixation. This is why I'm so frustrated.
I think what's missing is that the amount of training data to effectively RL usually decreases over time. AlphaGo needed some initial data on good games of Go to then recursively improve via RL. Fast forward a few years, and AlphaZero doesn't need any data to recursively improve.
This is what I mean by generalization skills. You need trillions of lines of code to RL a model into a good SWE right now, but as the models grow more capable you will probably need less and less. Eventually we may hit the point where a large corporations internal data in any department is enough to RL into competence, and then it frankly doesn't matter for any field once individual conglomerates can start the flywheel.
This isn't an absurdity. Man can "RL" itself into competence in a single semester of material, a laughably small amount of training data compared to an LLM.
I would love to make "side revenue", but frankly I am awful at practical idea generation. I'm not a founder type I think, maybe a technical co-founder I guess.
Not enough resources to get another bachelors, and a masters is probably practically worthless for a pivot. I would have to throw away the past 10 years of my life, start from scratch, with zero ideas for any real skill-developing projects since I'm not interested at all. Probably a completely non-viable candidate in anything I would choose. Maybe only Robotics would work, and that's probably going to be solved quickly because:
You assume nothing LLMs do are actually generalization. Once Field X is eaten the labs will pivot and use the generalization skills developed to blow out Field Y to make the next earnings report. I think at this current 10x/yr capability curve (Read: 2 years -> 100x 4 years -> 10000x) I'll get screwed no matter what is chosen. Especially the ones in proximity to computing, which makes anything in which coding is secondary fruitless. Regulation is a paper wall and oligopolies will want to optimize as much as any firm. Trades are already saturating.
This is why I feel completely numb about this, I seriously think there is nothing I can do now. I just chose wrong because I was interested in the wrong thing.
Serious question: What advice would you give to a Computer Science student in light of these tools?
What do you even do then as a student? I've asked this dozens of times with zero practical answers at all. Frankly I've become entirely numb to it all.
This smells like AI.
Cursor Composer is a game-changer for greenfield projects, it's definitely not 3% change.
So excited to engage the core on our future exciting product developments as a team!
I think the problem is that from our human scale, mass-killings is the "best" method to eliminate the possibility of another organism causing harm for us. Hypothetically, if there was a more optimal (i.e less costly) method like just introducing some cheap catch-all combined vaccination/antiviral into their feed, we would just do that.
We don't have things like that, but that could easily be a consequence of man's limited research capacity, something that an ASI would not necessarily be throttled by. From an ASI's perspective, there might be many methods that are both less brutal and more optimal to fix the "humans creating a competitor" problem. Not that they would be aligned (Think halting human AI research by rewiring our brains to just not be interested in it [0]), but at least not deadly.
The only thing I think that makes my resume as a student appealing is having real-world projects that show I can meaningfully develop. I'd need similar for GenAI, I'd imagine.
As far as I've heard, MBAs have also become completely saturated as well. Out of the frying pan into the fire.
I get you're trying to be "consoling", but frankly the bajillion pivot ideas, hopium arguments, endless counterarguments, and other indirection is why I think there's nothing optimal that can be done. All I can do is go through the motions with my current internship and major and rely on Christ rather than this fickle world. I made the wrong choice. Nothing that can be done.
I'm not trying to express that, it's that I can't find many meaningful projects with them.
I want to build but I don't know what. The ideas don't appear. This is what I've been trying to express.
I guess I'm just confused now. I can't do technical since that's too commodified, but I can't do business since I'm a youngster with no real world experience.
I see now. You mean real business stuff. At that point I may as well do a startup.
Hmm. I maintain a pretty big open-source project, so I guess I'm already kinda that? I honestly love computing moreso than I love coding. I'm not very familiar with business concepts though.
Apparently OpenAI's Deep Research already saturated a quarter of this benchmark, more or less a month in. But I also imagine it makes baffling mistakes anyway.
"Humanity's Laster Exam" coming up when?
a senior developer who operates at a certain level of scope, impact and “dealing with ambiguity” and can deliver business value?
Is there any chance for me (a student) to become like this? I'm fine with coding changing (I just love computing) but I'm scared of the entirety of the field being completely torched.
I agree with you. I just don't know what to do anymore.
So what do you even do then? I'm completely at a loss now.
I want to learn, but I can't display that I learned them. You know the whole thing where real projects are more valuable than simply "I did a tutorial"? I struggle to find ways to apply LLMs practically beyond like one project (which is basically someone else's anyway). That's my struggle.
Honestly I think moving up in a layer of abstraction is not the same as something resembling an intelligent agent.
I guess... I maintain a big open-source project by myself, I assume that kind of points to self-directedness. I guess on a career level it's discouraging since a student isn't seen as self-directed, and to go the startup route requires those unique ideas.
I dunno, a job? I don't think one other person's idea is enough.
ideas are everywhere, they are cheap. the idea plus the execution, timing, marketing, and approach are all factors in something being successful
And water is everywhere but you need a boat to get across it. I don't think I have a boat. I don't know if I can build one. I don't know if anyone will let me on their boat. s/boat/idea generation/g.
But not everyone is "agentic". I am maybe ambitious and self-directed, but not really curious. I can work on other's ideas, perhaps be curious within the bounds of that space, but I myself struggle to get any meaningful interesting practical ideas. Honestly a lot of times I think I'm just going to be ran over since I don't know how and frankly doubt curiosity can be grown in any capacity. I want to be wrong, would like your feedback.
Your logic works for seniors, but honestly I'm unsure how it works for anybody that just wants to break in.
It's not knowledge but applications of knowledge to actually work in the field. I don't know how to meaningfully make the applications to succeed.
So Work=0.1^Ct where C is the development pace. Everything points to the C of AI being large. How quickly does Work become a rounding error?
Sure, C=log(t), but it could also be C=ke^t. Everything to me feels like it's the latter, I really want to be wrong.