The way I see it is that we are in Year 1/2 of the AI era. We can already see the issues too.

* Github can't keep up with the commits

* AI data centers build out being increasingly challenged

* Electricity grids unable to keep up the pace

Now all of this doesn't mean AI is not revolutionary. It absolutely is. It is to say that the pace of change will be slower

Also, I believe learning new CS concepts and side projects are still going to matter. Because as much as today is about anyone can code the long term challenge is going to be running and maintaining it the said code.

If a President is so corrupt that he is selling access for what is loose change for him - I mean what is $100k when he is getting $400million jet - their local offices will also feel comfortable nickel and diming them for small access. A trip to DMV will turn into "You want your driving license? That'll be $50 extra for me on top of the administrative fees". This is the reality of life in some low trust third world countries. Now coming to America!

But in the meantime lets celebrate equivocating and whataboutism.

After all not everyone has Trump as President who thinks the only way to work with allies is to bully them. Will this particular thing going to define US for next 50 years? Probably not. Will countries say fuck it and stop working with US? Definitely not.

But will they ever have same amount of fear or trust or reverence for the US? Absolutely no.

That is now lost. While Iraq and Afghan war wasn't exactly a win for the US, the Iranians have shown that Americans can be had if cards(hands) are right. They now know Americans are completely blind to a president who would sell his mother for the right price and still defend him because they feel invincible and instead of offering a seemingly innocuous job to President's son like Burisma they can now blatantly bribe a jet, pay for access openly and no one in America will care because they believe they are infallible.

I knew the post screamed "trust me bro" vibes and now I know for sure. Government does Labor force surveys. Here's one for last year. Point me out how the participation is changing through AI paying for itself. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2246009&re...

> Averaging across the whole of India gives you a useless number. In the richer regions, 21k is less than what a full time food delivery/quick commerce driver makes.

See the above survey for the figures. But then this is like someone using California to say how well America is doing.

> it pays for itself in literally a day

Most comments in the thread say this but don't explain the how. How does it pay for itself "literally" in a day? Through productivity/time savings? How exactly?

I can only assume people are talking about productivity gains. Have their been reports of increased productivity or layoffs in tiny town, small non-tech companies in India that I am unaware of? What is the source here? Without a concrete source this is mostly anecdotal evidence and not backed by data.

Today there is novelty factor of AI. Questions or tasks which required people to really plan out now can be tested through AI quickly. To many people that seems like progress and that AI is paying itself. But most of it is busy work and isn't adding value to the companies. Given that everyone is on the AI hype train they might not be looking at the expenses closely. With time they will start poring it over and cancelling contracts en-masse.

Both cannot be true at the same time.

If you look back in the early days there were premium ISP providers with better up times and stable speeds. In the long run none have survived because everyone has caught on.

If AI is important then there is always going to be incentive to try something cheaper even if it is not the best - especially on enterprise budgets and the costs can be offloaded to the customer somehow - if the uptime and service stability is guaranteed by a third party provider.

I think the lesson here is just because someone is anti-something doesn't exactly mean they stand for something. Just because someone is anti-corruption it doesn't mean they are pro corruption etc. Because people always find it easy to run their mouths and be arm chair experts.

I had a chance to see the full 10 year cycle of an anti corruption candidate. He got elected into power and did nothing. Nada. Because all he knew was to fight and find someone to blame. He was just a weasel. 10 years later the place was worse off and corruption was even higher. When I pointed this out to some MAGA folks - they were like but how do you know until we try. Its like Americans want to tempt fate and want to see for themselves how institutions which took multi decades to get destroyed in few years.

RFK is similar case. He has a stance - whether right or wrong. But under pressure he just abandons them to save his own skin. He has never owned up to the issues his anti vax crusade causing the Samoa measles epidemic. And just like that Americans wanted to tempt fate with - "he is making good points about food". He is not. He demand accountability from others but owns up to nothing. He will weasel out of every issue is causing.

> Think about it another way. Consider how much money Microsoft spends on maintaining Excel. There are open source alternatives that have >90% of the functionality, they'll even work w/ Excel files and generate them.

Sure but were these open source alternative as pervasive and widespread and talked about when Microsoft was bundling Excel with the OS? Or were there millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars being spent by these competitors? The answer is No. It is not the same scenario.

While I understand the logic of harnesses - those are not full proof. It is trivial to setup K3 or Qwen to work with Claude Code/Codex by intercepting requests and routing to K3/Qwen. You have tools like CCSwitch which can do that for you.

The only thing remains is - people willing to pay a lot for slightly better model. That is true but price sensitivity is also a thing. The mania case for Anthropic/OpenAI/SpaceX/Google is that they will capture large part of the enterprise market. But in many cases outside coding AI capabilities will be resold.

That is instead of buying AI for lets say HR functions you pay for embedded AI in your HR software. And the HR software company will have incentives to raise their own margins. If their provide similar looking experience using Qwen/K3 why will they buy Anthropic/OpenAI. That is the real risk here. While as an individual you can continue to pay top dollar.

More likely he is going to make something like Landman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landman_(TV_series)#Renewable_...

story about a salt of the earth datacenter operator who manages the datacenter and people while spreading misinformation about the impact of datacenters on people.

Is it different? because then:

> you can even be vague, and they'll probably do an ok job if it's not something super complicated

That's lot of qualifiers to say maybe, should be possible - how does someone who is not a software engineer know what is complex, vague or ok. There are lot of assumptions to say - This time it is different.

It is entirely possible it is different but I am yet to find a convincing argument.

The sell was - Creating your apps was easier than before. You don't need to know any programming language. You don't need IT. You have a GUI and just drag and drop and visual your apps. Just fill the fields and voila your app is ready.

The criticism of the approach was that low codes apps might not be secure, unsuitable for large scale and critical apps, and lead to increase in unsupported apps by "shadow IT".

The same reasoning exists today for AI coding. Anyone can create apps, its not great for complex and mission critical apps, might not be secure etc. And lots of discussion like your post parsing the future too closely.

Low/no code apps have continue to grow. But many of the low/no code tool users are developers who use it to make their jobs easier.

While some might say - this time it is different. I believe we are currently we are the beginning of the cycle so everyone is excited to use their PowerApps shaped Claude Code/Codex to make their 100th budget tracking app but as time passes and edge cases are figured out the biggest users for AI are going to be software developers (and I believe they currently are the biggest users).

As for software engineering jobs just like before engineers will be expected to output more and faster. This has happened with every innovation from assembly compiler to IDE to low/no code ways of building.

The different levels of expertise exists even today and it will remain so.

Lets agree that these folks are wrong and ideally they should have petitioned 12 years ago. The question to ask is - for an admin which loudly claims to make America healthy again and talk about making everything chemical free etc - why can't they pass this? Is it because they can't score brownie points with base or they are overtly corrupt and do the same thing they accuse others of doing? Or that they know their supporters will not look at the validity of the claim and instead discredit people by asking whataboutism and party line questions?

Even if your case is that two companies in the AI group are going to survive and those will have healthy margins, others are going to suffer and compete on price. So saying “AI margins are going to suffer” is a fair industry wide statement. Maybe it’s not Anthropic or OpenAI or whoever you are thinking of but surely for Gemini or xAI etc?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48805438

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Amara’s law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

This continues to be applied to AI where people think is going to be next 12 to 18 months. Changes are coming but certainly not at the rate Zuckerberg and most people are thinking.

It will also be interesting to see 2019 through 2021. There was a glut of hiring post COVID and companies have to think about every dollar they spend post ZIRP.