I think you’re right here and it’s the same reason I see AI as a tool in the software profession. You can use it to speed up your work, but you have to have someone fully trained who can tell the difference between looks good but is wrong, versus is actually usable.
I’ve been using copilot for half a year now and it’s helpful, but often wrong. I carefully verify anything it gives me before using it. I’ve had one bug that made it to production where I think copilot inserted code that I didn’t notice and which slipped past code review. I’ve had countless garbage suggestions I ignored, and a surprising amount of code that seemed reasonable but was subtly broken.
This will still require a human lawyer (and/or intern, depending on the stakes) to check its output carefully. I am not now, nor have I ever been afraid that AI is coming after my job. When it does, we’re dangerously close to general AI and a paradigm shift of such magnitude and consequence that it’s called The Singularity. At which point we may have bigger worries than jobs.
> I’ve had one bug that made it to production where I think copilot inserted code that I didn’t notice and which slipped past code review
I'm not saying this is good but come on. Humans do that all the time, why aren't we so harsh on humans?
> I am not now, nor have I ever been afraid that AI is coming after my job
I am. This thing amazed me, and even if it won't be able to 100% replace humans (which I doubt), it can make juniors orders of magnitude more productive for example. This will be a complete disruption of the industry and doesn't bode well for salaries.
I'm in the top x% of my profession, after 20 years of grinding. I'm unafraid. I don't see my salary taking a cut anytime soon. When I was searching for a job back in March, I had a 50% offer to response rate (if the company responded to my application.)
People who are just skating by may have cause for concern. But those are the people with the most to gain from it, so maybe not even them.
Demand is so high in the business, I have trouble imagining that any tool could make a meaningful impact on that.
It would need to multiply productivity by a huge number, and nothing has that impact. Copilot is barely, optimistically, above 10%. I don't really think I get that much, but just for arguments sake.
Broken window fallaccy. Software is so bad, that AI making is more productive won't put us out of work, it will make software suck a bit less. It eill5 make bugfixes and tech debt payback more affordable.
> I’ve been using copilot for half a year now and it’s helpful, but often wrong.
I wonder if that is because of the training set, us humans are often wrong or different. If given a room of programmers and asked to implement a Fibonacci algorithm would they all get it right, would they all do it via iteration, recursion, dynamic programming. Co-pilot might not replace you, but it just needs to replace some of those programmers. Then add tools like automated AI reviews or integration tests for example and now you removed another population of tech workers.
I am not sure if that is cause for alarm or the fact that such improvements could be rather beneficial. Some tools will replace people, some will be assistive, and as they improve and other layers are added they will reduce the need for people in areas, improving efficiency and productivity. Robots in manufacturing for example, improve productivity and reduce human labor.
And this leads on to this, these tools are narrow to general and have achieved this in a very short period of time. The cost factors have also massively reduced, if you could pay OpenAI $10 a month to make 1000 mistakes and still deliver code, or a human $120k a year to do the same then which one would you target. AI might not be coming for your job soon but it will be taking away your options to get a job. This is not unique to AI it is the basis for any technological improvement vs labor, yes new ideas and opportunities may come out of this but I don't think they will be equal in volume.
Yes! I think the legal system would and should look differently at a tool like this in the ear of a licensed lawyer, and AI tools will be invaluable for legal research. I just don't think the output of an AI should be fed directly into a non-lawyer's ear, any more than I think a non-programmer should try to build a startup with ChatGPT as technical co-founder.
I’ve been using copilot for half a year now and it’s helpful, but often wrong. I carefully verify anything it gives me before using it. I’ve had one bug that made it to production where I think copilot inserted code that I didn’t notice and which slipped past code review. I’ve had countless garbage suggestions I ignored, and a surprising amount of code that seemed reasonable but was subtly broken.
This will still require a human lawyer (and/or intern, depending on the stakes) to check its output carefully. I am not now, nor have I ever been afraid that AI is coming after my job. When it does, we’re dangerously close to general AI and a paradigm shift of such magnitude and consequence that it’s called The Singularity. At which point we may have bigger worries than jobs.