AI looks set to be transformative for us all, but it also brings a real risk of job losses and widening social and economic divides. UN experts are focusing on how to manage that transition, to ensure the benefits of the technology outweigh the threats.
At my current job, I use AI frequently.
But it’s nowhere near replacing me. It’s like having a 12 year old intern that’s an inexperienced genius.
It’s great for saving me 10 minutes to write out some simple HTML or structured data. But it’s definitely not perfect and tends to add unnecessary changes, I constantly have to review and add new rules.
So I don’t think it’s replacing any humans any time soon, but it has gotten exponentially better over just a few months. So maybe in a few years, I’ll start to worry.
This is the bit that bugs me. I spend a bit of time to create a relatively simple application in C# with it, and it’s constantly tacking on new features and four extra command line arguments and it’s frothing at the mouth to add Cool Feature X, “just say the word and I’ll do it”.
Just do what I asked. No more. That’s enough. There’s enough mangled code and logic errors lurking in there already, I don’t need any more “features” clouding the water.
The first time I used Claude, I asked for a simple one page calculator. It made an entire website, complete with navigation and an about us page, and a css style sheet.
I mostly agree. It won’t replace people directly, but it might let companies do more with fewer developers.
Not to say they don’t need anyone, but maybe they get by with 75 instead of 100 developers? Hard to say where that falls because the outcomes if ai usage are so variable based on skill of operator and the target codebase.