I hope open weights continue to gain traction for this reason too.
But injecting information into outputs is a little different than Claude keeping tabs internally. The point is that we do not know what information is being shipped with the fingerprint itself.
I've been pondering the question: "What does it mean to live well with AI?"
We are certainly scrambling for productivity with "token maxxing" and scrambling for entertainment with AI companions, but I haven't seen many thoughtful takes on how AI might look in a life well-lived.
Even though I spent the majority of my work day with computers, my fascination with them starts and stops on understanding how they work. Aside from that, they’re only utilitarian. What I really like to do is grab a nice book, put on some nice album to listen too, and enjoy a quiet night with my SO. If not for the fact that it’s easier to get books and music in digital format where I live, I’d spend even less time with computers.
Yeah it's entirely possible the answer is: "You don't." But I haven't even seen people attempting to imagine life well-lived. Like with so much technology it's basically an afterthought.
I think that's a big part of what makes this era so much fun - the interactivity tailored to my capability. I feel like I'm 13 again discovering I can write HTML and feeling that giddy delight when I try something and it just works.
>> I haven’t had great luck with winding it up and setting it loose on a task
Yeah there is real labor involved with trying to set up the right context and explain your goals and ensure it has the right tools, etc. etc. Sometimes the payoff is massive, other times it's like "I could have done this myself faster". It takes time to build an intuition for which is which, and I'm constantly having to tune that heuristic as new models and tools come out.
Yeah in fact I think we are going through some major upheaval in development practices because we haven't yet figured out what constraints to put in our use of AI, and so plastering it everywhere we trip ourselves up. It took a while to figure out that private members were useful and GOTO is harmful despite how tempting it might be.
I think similarly we will find that using AI to take shortcuts around design is mostly harmful, but using it to fulfill interfaces is brilliant. Eventually a set of best practices will evolve.
Reduced costs does not necessarily equal reduced wages, but I see what you're saying. As others have pointed out, making cameras more accessible made photography more competitive.
It may be in the end that software developers make less money even as more jobs become available.
And worrying. LLMs don't fed themselves, we need people to continue sharing solutions. I've contributed some popular answers on SO myself and am happy that an LLM can use that in its training, but rarely go to SO myself anymore.
Regardless of the true number, you're right that no amount of reasoning on paper "why" we should be employed matters if the reality is different; which it clearly is for a lot of people. Reality decides in the end.
A more accurate title might have been "Why AI is a reason to become a software developer" - since the topic I discuss is entirely AI and its effects on the field, and there might be entirely non-AI reasons for not going into software.
But injecting information into outputs is a little different than Claude keeping tabs internally. The point is that we do not know what information is being shipped with the fingerprint itself.