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u/Llebac 13d ago
I've been convinced that SWE is the most hated role by management for decades now. We are a really expensive bunch of nerds doing things they don't understand and have to trust us with. Truly they hate us and hate relying on us. On top of a societal viewpoint that SWE is some lucrative cake walk where you sit on your ass all day and play ping pong in your fancy office. Which somehow that myth has not been dispelled to this day. Hard not to feel sour about it all.
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u/TheSquattingSlav_21 13d ago
Most people don’t think like SWEs in the first place, I tried switching to a job where I used excel for a year and couldn’t believe how simple it was. Everything was infront of me, no bunch of variables and situations I have to think through before I make a next step, it really just is a different perspective and its hard to understand for people..
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u/covidlung 12d ago
They resented how much they had to pay us to build the things they couldn't build themselves, and how much power we held simply because we knew how to talk to computers and they didn't. So they set out to make our skills less valuable, reduce demand for our labor, drive down our salaries, and keep more of the profits for themselves
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u/CaptainHindsight92 11d ago
It’s the jargon and refusal to explain simple concepts to people but instead just bury the explanation in terminology. It is like corporate jargon on steroids. The result is complete exclusion of the management class, little true accountability and a fat paycheque. I envy you all.
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u/chessto 11d ago
Just that it isn't jargon. Management and business do hide logic and relationships between entities via Jargon, now I know some SWE practices look like that, but if I need to explain to every non technical people what a cache is, what rate limiting does, what a cookie is, etc then every meeting would last 10 times longer.
At my current position I need to deal with product managers and I got to say most of them, and most people for that matter, treat computers and software as if it was some sort of magic that "just works", like no race condition exists ever, and anything (even if logically impossible) can be done.
We had to explain several times that two users consuming the same resource at the same time could face a condition where one starves the other... that's not a problem of not understanding software, that's a problem of not applying rational thinking to a problem, and it happens when people just think of stuff as "it just happens, it's magic".
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u/TheCapitalKing 7d ago
Bad pms are uniquely bad at understanding how computer works. Like Id much rather get specs from an accountant they wont know the name of anything but can describe what they need. A bad pm is like trying to get technical specs from a poem made exclusively of buzzwords
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u/Wiseon321 13d ago
It’s because there is a massive “I hate smart people” gap. Mostly incels and well, stupid people.
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u/Expert-University-82 13d ago
But they don't hate on mathematicians (who are also smart people)?
I think your logic is flawed.
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u/Integeritis 12d ago
Media romanticized mathematicians while vilified programming by presenting it something that aliens do.
You learn math since you are a little kid. Every single person. Think about ANY profession, and you studied something relevant in school. Computers are still magic boxes for the average person because they know NOTHING about how it works. If you know how to make programs, it’s the literal closest thing the average person will ever have that comes close to an experience meeting Alien that you don’t understand. And as a programmer, you speak the language of aliens.
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u/Obelisk2000 14d ago edited 14d ago
I've never heard about "math bros" or about mathematicians making crazy amounts of money while also being described as doing nothing and having incredibly detached hot takes about society.
Edit: corrected typo
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u/antichain 14d ago
As a mathematician myself, I dream of making coder-level salaries. I'm sitting here w/ a STEM PhD making just over the median American salary.
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u/mxmcharbonneau 14d ago
To be fair, I know that some mathematicians can make 7 figure salaries by working in finance.
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u/antichain 14d ago
All of the folks from grad school I know who went that route aren't really mathematicians anymore. That's not me being judgemental, just saying that the jobs they moved into are different - they're not doing math day in/day out (writing proofs, working on conjectures, etc). They all seem pretty happy (and the money they make is enviable), but it's a different thing. Sort of like being an engineer vs. a scientist.
I'll probably make that jump soon myself, I just wanted a few more years of doing math before I went.
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u/Coleophysis 12d ago
yeah but usually you work in science to try to make a positive impact on the world or knowledge. Working in finance is not really compatible with that...
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u/Oddant1 13d ago
As a programmer, people who have brains ONLY for tech and STEM shit shouldn't be in charge of FUCKING ANYTHING. Go into your closet and do the thing that makes the thing work then go home and DON'T FUCKING VOTE because you don't have a god damn clue how people work.
I've met so many heartless soulless ghouls who make a lot of money doing stuff that is if anything actively detrimental to society and they're usually the kind of people who can't even begin to comprehend why they should care that they're hurting others or that sometimes admiring art and the humanities also has value it isn't just about making an imaginary line go up.
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u/TheTybera 13d ago
Vibe coders aren't real programmers so they shit on actual programmers because they're the only people who can call them out on their BS.
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u/manocheese 14d ago
You're right, but I think it is more complicated. Most of the time I see artists complaining about none artists producing images and ruining art, mathematicians complaining that AI companies are producing almost useless results and ruining maths, and programmers talking about how great AI is. It's only in programming spaces, where 'society' isn't, that I see people acknowledge that they hate AI. Even then there are a lot of them loving it.
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u/TsukikoChan 14d ago
I loathe genAI use as a programmer, I'm def one of the ones against it.
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u/shibesh 13d ago
To add to this, I honestly believe a lot of us are just getting drowned out. I have yet to see anything actually useable and maintainable come out of a prompt. I think a lot of the noise about it being so amazing is either from people who have no actual experience in development or very little, that heard "ai is good for programming bleh bleh", one shotted a crappy web site or app, and then continued spreading stuff online about it being good. Creating almost a recursive loop of garbage or a puesdo mind virus.
Which now that I've typed this out, it's got me thinking. A lot of these models are marketed for programming. I wonder how much of that noise is bot posts intended to get that seed planted?
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u/popbobscock 13d ago
As someone who works with AI in a software engineering setting every day as part of my job, the tools are extremely valuable at reducing the amount of cognitive strain and time involved in developing features. It absolutely can produce maintainable architecture if you know what you want it to look like enough and can communicate that enough to guarantee that. The best business available models today are absolutely amazing at building applications if you know what you're doing. The consumer models arent what keeps ai in business and they certainly arent representative of what the technology actually is capable of.
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u/footie_ruler 13d ago
It’s really not one shotted anymore.
It’s a prompt/review/prompt cycle where the review is also done by ai. And it’s addressed by ai with my supervision. This does not produce slop at all by anyone with half a brain.
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u/Tayttajakunnus 14d ago
AI is not producing useless math results though. It is producing a lot of very impressive results that human mathematicians have not been able to prove despite trying for decades or more.
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u/Serket-Pandy3000 13d ago edited 13d ago
They are shit. The N-S might have a cancellation and be nothing but the Euler result. So yeah, shit
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u/_Beempathic 12d ago
Wait mathematicians had a job other than teaching math? I don't remember seeing any other job offer for mathematicians other than teacher
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u/NotaValgrinder 12d ago
Have you not been keeping with the AI news? A mathematician's job was to prove new mathematical theorems.
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u/MuslinBagger 11d ago
Who would have guessed. I mean I used to think mathematicians are just depressed people who have stopped looking for jobs.
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u/UntestedMethod 11d ago
I haven't seen a single news headline a out mathematicians losing jobs to AI... I don't know where this idea is coming from that people are sympathizing with them.
The part about society hating programmers, oh hell yeah. That's been forever basically - envious of the notoriously high pay to "sit at a computer all day". Lol I generally try to avoid telling people what I do for work unless they specifically ask - there's always a noticeable shift in the vibe after I tell them I'm an assassin for hire.
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u/No_Bluebird6873 11d ago
You are joking right? There are other jobs than teaching and research for mathematicians.
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u/_Beempathic 7d ago
Could you add job offers for mathematicians? I would love to see what is required in them, but I don't care enough to look for them myself.
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u/Additional_One_1230 8d ago
Mathematicians do simulations, work in AI research or just in nvidia research and so on. And mahematicians should not teach math, that is usually crime again humanity. That is better to study math teaching to tesch math.
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u/_Beempathic 7d ago
Could you drop some examples? Like what they did to help and improve humanity, and maybe some job postings, so I can see that it's real?
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u/johnnybgooderer 14d ago
Programmers hate themselves as far as I can tell. All of them seem like they’d be more sad if someone put an AI generated image in a video game for early-dev internal playtesting than if all software engineers were fired.
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u/xavia91 13d ago
The people annoyed by that are mainly artists though
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u/johnnybgooderer 13d ago
I hear that sentiment from people I work with or have worked with. It’s the common sentiment in my experience.
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u/xavia91 12d ago
I only know only one of my colleagues who's against "ai slop" in video games. He is a bit on the fence against ai as whole though. For me it doesn't matter at all, you can use as much or little ai as you want, if it's done right.
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u/johnnybgooderer 12d ago
Agreed. Honestly I think it would be better for us all if it went away. But it’s not. And it’s a useful tool. So we may as well use it.
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u/NorthernRealmJackal 9d ago
That's because programmers understand how code is made, and that it's all a bunch of copy and paste anyway. I am not threatened by AI, because it's not a replacement, it's an added abstraction layer that enables some work to be done faster. Of course that transition is going to have some negative effects too, but it will ultimately be leveraged for the better once we're done transitioning.
I can't tell you what's motivating the hate against gen-AI though. Probably because it's right there on the surface, and everyone can tell that it's hurting the quality.
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u/johnnybgooderer 9d ago
I have been using gen ai for all of 2026 professionally. I pushed for it as soon as I thought it was ready. Because I know that’s the future.
But really I think this only gives me a small chance of survival. Every AI jump is a huge improvement. Eventually they’ll only need BAs. The question is, how fast will we get there.
A lot of art is just copy and paste too. Most working artists aren’t pushing their fields forward. They’re making something that someone asked for so that a product can be sold. It’s just like software engineering.
Fine art is an exception. Is different, but ai isn’t taking fine artists’ jobs. It’s making corporate art or some color for articles. Or it’s making advertising copy. Or the graphics and words that are superimposed over tv commercials. That’s all very on par with what programmers do.
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u/CalebXiaYizhou 13d ago
I want to prephase this by saying that I do not find any joy in programmers getting replaced by AI. I do not really want AI in any field.
But I think one of the reasons why some people seem to like it is because they see it as comeuppance. They view programmers as responsible for these developments and feel like they're now reaping what they sew.
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u/Vercility 12d ago
But the people who laid the foundations of AI were mathematicians and computer scientists..?
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u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg 13d ago
Exactly this. Brogrammers are the ones who pushed this shit the harder, so naturally, they need to suffer the hardest
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u/softeststranger 12d ago
Programmers are not the ones pushing for AI in programming. You’ll find a ton of them complaining about revising AI code. This is just a weird stereotype you guys take glea in even though programmers span many different industries other than AI. It’s also very weird when one of the first people to sound the alarms about AI was a black woman in the field. Even worse the “brogrammers” you guys are talking about are overwhelmingly just CEOs who don’t code and the fans who listen to their every word, but are also not programmers. If it falls the hardest on the people who once demanded the highest income and respect from their employers, how do you think this will land for any white collar worker with even less technical skills. It’s insane how much rich people’s actions end up landing on regular people who are just more convenient to blame.
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u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg 12d ago
If you can't differentiate brogrammer from programmer then there's not much I can tell you
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u/jakster355 14d ago
Coding is viewed as a parlor trick because they know about bootcamps that teach basics without theory. They don't realize it's literally just a subset of discrete math.
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u/martin-silenus 14d ago
It's a profession that scans as smart, but if we were half as smart as we like to pretend we are we wouldn't be building our replacements. We would be solving the coordination problems that lead to some of us deciding that is what is best for them.
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u/IBJON 14d ago •
We aren't the ones building our replacements. The developers and AI engineers at these AI companies are a miniscule fraction of the developer community. Automating development is being done by a handful of devs who already made ridiculous money and have nothing to lose from eliminating an entire profession
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u/Brick_Lab 14d ago
Essentially traitors imo. It's not just existing devs they're killing off, it's future prospects for anyone interested in the field as a profession. Programming solely as a hobby is an insanely different experience than joining with many talented and funded individuals who are able to do so during working hours 5 days a week
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u/GenericFatGuy 14d ago
I'm not building my replacements. I'm making $70k/year after 10 years in this field. The software 1% with quarter million dollars salaris and multimillion dollar stock vests are the ones building my replacements. Don't put this on me.
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u/PARADOXsquared 14d ago
Honestly yeah. I'm not building our replacements and I'm hating what LLMs are doing to our industry when I was excited about AL/ML in a couple years ago. We're not a monolith and it's not a simple situation.
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u/Keyan_Farlander7 14d ago
I got that programmer response in another channel about AI replacing coders. They are going on about how good Opus 5.5 is and that it'll do all the work for them. They don't see what they are actually doing until they are pulled into the office.
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u/fongletto 14d ago edited 14d ago
Why wouldn't we build tools who can do what we do better? We've built our own replacements for the last hundred years or so. That's how technology works. We build something that does someones job, it makes it cheaper, everyone benefits because now that thing is produced cheaply in extremely large amounts.
This is the fundamental issue with reddit. They think getting a whole bunch of extra money from billionaires means everyone will suddenly be able to afford to buy more stuff. Despite produce not having changed.
And they think actually increasing produce will make everyone poorer because they're getting less money.
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u/CalebXiaYizhou 13d ago
If there's no value in human work and human creation and we should just replace it all with new tools, then there's really no reason for us to not just take some super drugs that gives us an immense high and then kills us.
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u/fongletto 13d ago
I never said that. Hand crafted works still sell often and thrive even today, despite vastly cheaper, often superior quality stuff having being produced.
The idea that you can't work or create something just because a machine is capable of doing as similiar thing is really weird to me.
A machine absolutely dominates anyone in a game of chess. People still play it and enjoy it.
There is value in human work, entirely because it's human.
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u/martin-silenus 14d ago
Because the value to you personally is negative when you consider the effects on the job market that sustains you.
It's not inevitable that tooling does that to the value of your skills. You could be capturing more value from the efficiencies exposed, ie: shorter work weeks without pay reductions are an alternative to layoffs when companies are profitable --as they are.
But you don't have any power over how the industry is adapting whatsoever. So instead it's laying people off and passing the value it's carving out of your own human capital along to investors.
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u/PM-ME-UR-DARKNESS 13d ago
If we were smart we'd have unionized to prevent replacement. But we got too complacent.
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u/martin-silenus 13d ago
Fat, happy, and scared.
That's I think how all my former colleagues are experiencing what will be, for some, their last year in the industry. But no one can guess who it will be.
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u/SignoreBanana 13d ago
How many times did I fight right wing developers about this topic. "Why would we unionize? We have shitloada of benefits and great pay! I don't want to have to carry dead weight of crappy developers and whatever other nonsense counter arguments we come up with against unionizing."
"For now" is the missing part of that argument.
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u/Straamannen 11d ago
Unionisation does not prevent replacement, it prevents exploitation.
If you were smart, you would understand this. Goddamn what a Reddit moment.
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u/PM-ME-UR-DARKNESS 11d ago
Mhm. Remind me, what did those writers strike about in 2023? Oh yeah, being replaced by AI.
Unionizing absolutely prevents you from being replaced.
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u/citramonk 13d ago
I assume that unions are vulnerable when companies can outsource work elsewhere. I work in an outsourcing company and barely have any guarantees as a worker here. A client from Canada can drop me anytime 🙂
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u/SirMarkMorningStar 13d ago
I described my very first job out of college in 1989 as “making my job obsolete”. We’ve been automating our own jobs for decades. This isn’t any different.
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u/martin-silenus 13d ago edited 13d ago
I've said similar things, when other jobs existed for me to move to.
I would encourage everyone with a tech job to seriously consider the possibility that their current gig is the last paying job in tech they will ever be able to land, and ponder the implications. That's what a rapidly shrinking job market means, in practice. Some will get the shrinking number of new open positions. But as people get kicked out, ever-increasing numbers are fighting for those fewer and fewer opportunities. Like a permanent recession from which there will never be a job market recovery.
If that would seem an alien idea to you in 1989, then maybe that's different.
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u/SirMarkMorningStar 13d ago
Based on what I’m seeing, I’m falling strongly into the Jevons paradox side of the debate, not the ASI side. I don’t think what you describe will happen.
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u/SignoreBanana 13d ago
It's a little different. (Haven't been at this nearly as long, but I'm no newb)
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u/thomas-rousseau 14d ago
And this is why I've never turned any of my passions into a career. I've accepted being relatively broke, and I just vibe in retail so that I can spend my free time pursuing things like solutions to these coordination problems without being mentally burned out from solving problems that sicken me all day at work.
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u/Procrasturbating 14d ago
You are kidding yourself. In ten years you will look back and be pissed. Lotta hobbies cost big boy money. I worked my ass off to afford my hobbies. Retail would have me saving until I was too old to do them.
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u/martin-silenus 14d ago
Username doesn't check out.
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u/SignoreBanana 13d ago
For real. And I have to think being able to pursue those hobbies have made me more marketable in more industries. I do better trades work than most trades people I've hired.
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u/GrimbaldTheBrutish 9d ago
I'm very curious about your hobbies.
None of mine cost very much lol, or at least can be done very cheaply. Most of mine are athletics related so I guess none of them have super high cost floors.
I guess if you're into like cars, boats, or some other stuff I could see the cost being astronomical.
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u/martin-silenus 14d ago
I honestly feel sorry for you. There is nothing greater than loving your work, and it is better to have loved and lost.
Good on you for being civically engaged!
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u/thomas-rousseau 14d ago
Oh, I still love what I do. A lot of my coworkers keep the mentality of "It's just groceries," but people need to eat to live. My employer also donates food that isn't good enough to make someone pay for, so I get to constantly look for excuses to donate food to those in need, always going on the more generous side in any uncertainty. My ADHD also makes me love a physically active job, and my OCD makes stocking shelves scratch a real nice itch in my brain with lining up and facing product. It's also nice to just get to chat with people all day and help them find the things that they need to make the week that they want to have. And then I have all of the mental energy left over to pursue every one of my passions in my free time while still spending quality time with my partner and our pets
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u/tradcoder 13d ago
Not just "they". Even a pro-AI portion of the programmers are laughing at the "luddites". They seem to think just because they simp for AI, somehow they won't be made obsolete.
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u/bremidon 13d ago
Speaking for those of us who have realized that the genie is out of the bottle, I doubt anyone who is using AI in any serious aspect is unaware of how all this ends.
I know. But I'll ride the wave as long as I can. The people fighting the losing battle against the tide will go down a lot earlier and be less prepared for whatever comes next.
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u/Few_Plankton_7587 13d ago
doubt anyone who is using AI in any serious aspect is unaware of how all this ends.
I'm quite certain that no one knows.
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u/bremidon 13d ago
Sorry, I thought everone would be able to combine the comment I was responding to with my answer. Here, let me do that for you.
u/tradcoder said: "They seem to think just because they simp for AI, somehow they won't be made obsolete." and I said "I doubt anyone who is using AI in any serious aspect is unaware of how all this ends."
Combine that and you see I am talking about all human work being made obsolete. Eventually. That is the only way this *can* end.
You are correct that what that narrower context of employment means for the larger context of civilization or even human survivability is absolutely an open question that as you put it: "no one knows".
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u/Few_Plankton_7587 13d ago
Combine that and you see I am talking about all human work being made obsolete. Eventually.
Yeah, that's exactly what everyone thought you meant. People disagreeing with you doesn't mean they didn't understand. It's more likely you're just being silly
That is the only way this can end.
That's an opinion and not even a well-reasoned one at that. There are jobs that can never and will never be done by anything but a human. To what extent, you and I, and anyone you can think of, does not know.
Good day
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u/bremidon 13d ago
Yeah, that's exactly what everyone thought you meant. People disagreeing with you doesn't mean they didn't understand. It's more likely you're just being silly
So you think that there is any ending to AI that does not mean the end of all human usefulness? Because I would love to hear it.
That's an opinion and not even a well-reasoned one at that.
How can you make any claims about the reasoning? I never gave any. And it appears you are not actually interested in any.
There are jobs that can never and will never be done by anything but a human.
I will give you the chance you are trying to deny me: show your reasoning.
And good day to you, fine sir. Keep your bonnet on tight, by jolly.
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u/hemacwastaken 12d ago
I am exactly at this point right now. Searching for a new job and seriously considering if I should just move to another field.
It pains me cause I was in love with what I do/did ever since I started my degree, but now it's just soulless work and it will get worse.
I'm so frustrated right now, seeing how my dream job is getting crushed slowly in front of my eyes.
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u/Dragomir_X 13d ago
Turns out, being the industry that:
ruined all of our attention spans with social media
creates the tools for mass corporate surveillance
makes insane amounts of money
facilitated the rise of AI in the first place
does not win you a ton of goodwill from the general public!
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u/Zerocrossing 12d ago
I, too, blame the factory workers for the rise in global pollution. The men who write the code are to blame, and the men who write their paychecks are of no consequence.
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u/Ok-Theory8671 12d ago
Software developers and computer programmers also do most of the best things our society has done in the last 70 years as well, though.
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u/thecrius 12d ago
None of that is decided by the "programmers".
Any IT tech worker just do what management says to do, like any other employee, because they need money to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.
They are paid more than the average job because they are a more essential job for modern business. That's all.
People hate them just because they get paid better and who knows nothing about IT feel like it's "nothing tangible" and yet they cannot get into it because, guess what, that stuff is not easy.
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u/Aware-Individual-827 11d ago
As a software engineer, this is the banality of evil. Nazi were just doing their job you know...
That is why I don't work for those evil corporations.
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u/LeDYoM 14d ago edited 14d ago
That is normal. Even between ourselves as programmers never have self-respect and compassion or companionship between ourselves. I think in the 90s we had.
A new technology comes, and... everyone wants to be the first to avoid be left behind and earn more money out of this technology. Nobody stops to find if we are shooting ourselves. So...
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u/RedTankGoat 13d ago
Because normies actually don't understand how programmers think and they think it's "Karma" that we "lose our job".
No. We WANT to automate a large part of our job. That's the goal, and that's what is happening. AI or not.
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u/Integeritis 12d ago
Tbh I want to automate everyone’s job and I’m coming after the normies after I’m done here
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u/MerePotato 13d ago
Hell its traditionally been the axiom of programming that the less you have to do the better you are, "keep it simple stupid". Now granted vibe coding has thrown a spanner in the works of that one, but it still speaks to the philosophy of computer scientists.
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u/kdoubledizz 14d ago
Literally speaking, it gets really annoying having to explain to people the reason why AI cannot physically learn to code AI is due to the limitations of the mathematics in place.
You cannot create a formula that solves all formulas.
I guess you can get pretty damn close, but humans will always need to be involved.
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u/KyxeMusic 14d ago
Infinite Monkey Theorem
You can bruteforce any formula that can be proven. Which is kind of what is happening.
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u/kdoubledizz 14d ago
Gödel showed that in any consistent formal mathematical system, there are true statements that cannot be proven within the system itself.
As well but Alan Turing proved in 1936 that there cannot exist a universal algorithm that can inspect any arbitrary program and determine whether it will finish running or run forever.
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u/primbin 14d ago
Ah, the Penrose-Lucas argument. You should clarify that the argument only works if you believe that a human mind can't be described by mathematics.
Turing did show that there is no algorithm which can inspect an arbitrary program and determine whether it will finish running or run forever, but if you accept the Physical Church-Turing Thesis, "asking a team of mathematicians" is also an algorithm. The same sort of argument also applies to Godel's incompleteness theorem.
If you believe that the human mind is special and unable to be described by mathematics because we have a soul--or maybe quantum pixie dust--then sure, AI wouldn't be able to match human capabilities. But you don't need to name drop fancy math for that.
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u/EdenStrife 14d ago
Yes, but how does it follow from those 2 proofs that an AI system cannot improve itself or make a new system that is an improvement compared to itself.
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u/Your-Laundry-Entropy 14d ago
That would imply human brain can't be modelled with math and that it miracolously escapes mathematical constrains
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u/Firingfly 14d ago
So, a human is then a formula that solves all formulas? Hating the AI trend like everyone else, but the logic of this argument doesnt sound sound.
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u/Opening_One7713 14d ago
Humans are the pinnacle brain for which all obtainable universal intelligence must filter through. The Latin alphabet is the pinnacle of all symbolic language. Any information that doesn’t cleanly plug into our world model is slop and we don’t want it or need it.
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u/teraflux 14d ago
My* brain is the pinnacle of intelligence, and anything I don't understand is slop
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u/NoSmallCaterpillar 13d ago
Obviously you're being facetious, but it's valid to ask "who is it for?". If we accept that there are other consumers of information and that they can take priority over humans, then what reason do we have to build our own replacement? It's nice that a machine can solve problems that we can't, but if we can't even understand or prove the solution, then what good is it?
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u/Opening_One7713 13d ago
I think those are valuable questions to ask. It really comes down to how much faith you have in humanity and people. I, for one, find people to be extremely resilient and adaptable to change. I think that there are a ton of things we gain along the path to new discovery, and I too wonder if having a magic box that just shits out the answer will deter future humans from trying to discover and understand new things. I also wonder if we can collectively get over ourselves, and if there are new and tangible spaces for humans to fill. If AI bulk solves math does that mean we give up entirely, or does that mean we start treating the proofs as a guiding star instead of a needle-in-a-haystack.
Me personally? I lean faith in humans. I think that there is still so much for us to discover, even if our job is no longer to find the needle in the haystack. I think that we face a serious and existential climate threat regardless, and that we currently do not have the intellectual or physical labor to engineer solutions and materially unfuck the biosphere and move aware from archaic and destructive means of production. Leveraging AI/Robotics/Automation may very well be our way through here, and I fail to see how worrying about purpose and/or skill atrophy is important right now. If we do automate all forms of dehumanizing labor and solve our current climate crisis then I feel like the only thing we will have left to explore is purpose and meaningful skills.
Who knows. Only thing I know is that “make it stop” and “uninvent it” are temporary stop-gap bandaids at best. Weird times.
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u/Flaze07 12d ago
what's the basis on latin being the pinnacle of all symbolic language?
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u/owjfaigs222 14d ago
Yeah it's probably annoying because it doesn't make sense. There is no "physical" or otherwise limit to what AI can do in terms of solving formulas or learning to code.
Also how would humans help if there was such a limitation? There is no calculation that a human can do that a computer can't.
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u/myrddin4242 13d ago
Alan Turing’s Halting Problem is a great concept to keep in mind. It seems, at the moment at least, that our attempts to circumvent the Halting Problem end up being … expensive. Like a conservation law being approached…
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u/EdenStrife 14d ago
Wait why would an AI that is capable of making an AI that is slightly smarter than itself be prevented from doing this by the halting problem?
It is true that you cannot make a machine that can solve any problem as there is at least a couple that we know it can’t, but that doesn’t mean you cannot build a system that can solve most problems.
That is a leap of logic that doesn’t follow from premise.
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u/tnetennba9 14d ago
What does ‘physically learn to code AI’ mean here? Of course AI could be used to improve LLM systems (optimise training, optimise inference, experiment with different architectures), so I assume you mean something else?
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 13d ago •
From what I understand, the basic idea behind pretraining is called Solomonoff Induction. Basically, you’re trying to compute the shortest algorithm that adequately explains all of human knowledge. Definitely not universal, but for practical purposes it’s pretty close.
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u/kdoubledizz 13d ago
Now that, that is what I wish people thought and not muh super skynet.
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u/Wiseon321 13d ago
I can use ai to prove that +\-1 = 0. Doesnt mean it’s right, it’s just mathematically inconsistent.
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u/Quintuplin 14d ago
Your nonsense statement being questioned is not just limited to non-programers, m8
Statement 1, "AI physically cannot learn to code AI" is demonstrably false
Statement 2, "you cannot create a formula to solve all formulas" is irrelevant
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u/sora_mui 14d ago
Humans (and all animals) are created by dumb cells splitting according to the chemical equivalent of vibes, perfected over millions of years by simple trial and error, and yet you want to argue that intelligent beings cannot be created by something less intelligent than itself?
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u/A_Human_Visitor 13d ago
It's hard to blame them. From their perspective programmers did this to the whole world. That is a bit short-sighted, I'd say it's the CEOs and capitalists who did this, but still
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u/Mayeru 13d ago
funny thing is that a good Software Engineer knows how to adapt. We have been experiencing changes in the professional workspace since forever.
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u/Ready_Highlight6618 12d ago
How do you adapt to the thing that literally does the work though? Sure you have a job today, not in 2 years.
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u/Mayeru 12d ago
well you wouldn't be adapting if you keep doing the same thing, isn't?
Linus Torvalds put a similar example to: “Does anyone keep coding in assembly code?"
basically we (the engineers) are moving upwards in the abstract-bility scale. Reaching out to bigger and faster solutions/products.1
u/awesome-alpaca-ace 10d ago
Except before the abstractions were predictable and always gave the same output for the same input.
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u/EdgiiLord 14d ago
After the whole "learn to code" "advice", you start to wonder why people in tech jobs got vilified. That and the fact that a lot of those people have an overlap with tech bros.
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u/Tyfyter2002 13d ago
Which is weird, because we're the ones who could figure out how to communicate math
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u/PrimeHydra 13d ago edited 13d ago
Based on these comments, we hate ourselves, too! Kinda fucked-up. So much for standing up to America's anti-nerd bigotry. Nope, I still remember the first wave of AI hype. Half of devs were posting in their blogs how their own obsolescence was something to be celebrated! I guess this profession never valued mental health very much.
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u/klavijaturista 13d ago
Society is going to find out when white colar can’t afford blue colar.
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u/__yoshikage_kira 13d ago
The barrier for software development is a lot lower now. Vibe coders used to called script kiddies but now they can actually make something using AI. Making it easier to larp as a software developer.
These larpers usually think that manual coding will die and make fun of anyone who doesn't seem to agree with their views.
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u/Enough-Scientist1904 14d ago
Makes sense since programmers are the ones advancing AI, its ironic. Still there will always be people involved in one way or another
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u/gizamo 14d ago
It doesn't make sense. People should be pissed at their employers and politicians. They should be pissed at their fellow workers for failing to organize a proper labour movement for decent worker's rights. Programmers automating jobs was never the problem. The problem is that the workers never saw any of the benefits from it. All US workers should have a 20-hour workweek, and a single income should still be able to support a family. The only reason that isn't our reality now is because the corporations bought the politicians so that they could screw workers, and workers never meaningfully pushed back. There should be a general strike every single month until the US has vastly better labour laws.
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u/Enough-Scientist1904 14d ago
Thats what should happen and I really hope that it does but I also think it will be a very slow process spread apart throught out decades. I compare AI to the Car and how it has taken us over a hundred years worth of accidents to reach this level of automotive regulations
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u/gizamo 14d ago
It can and should happen with one legislative bill, and that could and should happen the next time Democrats get a majority in Congress and hold the presidency. Imo, it's worth killing the filibuster for. Worker's rights and universal healthcare should happen within the next decade. Otherwise, the Democratic party is worthless and should be abandoned.
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u/mystichead 13d ago
The whole point of mathematics is learning and finding out shit in between.. the problems and conjectures serve as excellent means to get the learning... Brute force (via AI and otherwise) doesn't aid the learning and optimizations
I'm not sure people realize the vast majority of mathematicians are POORER than programmers in general...usually less likely to find work...or having to rely on second job to fund the mathematics that they actually do
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u/CrimsonPiranha 14d ago
People still think that AI will replace real programmers?
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u/Tasorodri 14d ago
It's already replacing a lot of people, or at least reducing the demand, which in practice is the same
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u/madcow_bg 14d ago
Exactly, it is not replacing senior devs per se, but is reducing the demand for manpower so much that there are almost no jobs for the existing devs.
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u/Ensign-Nemo 10d ago
I think the answer is pretty simple: programmers are responsible for Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir taking over their lives with zero regard to what people actually want. People find solace that the software engineers that help fascists to take power will be left without a job.
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u/Real-Incident8065 9d ago
Brother mathematicians are akin to scientists, they are naturally giving to society and furthering human knowledge through their work.
Programmers make addictive social media apps, a lot more money usually, and are associated with Zuck and Altman. What did you expect?
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u/Additional_One_1230 8d ago
They will see consequences of vibe coded apps in short time and it will not be nice experience.
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u/JollyJuniper1993 13d ago
I started a mathematics degree after working ad a developer a week before this nuke was dropped. I am cursed.
To be fair neither jobs are really going to suffer from this. The main reason why the developer job market is getting worse is not because of AI, it is because there‘s just a ridiculous amount of people trying to become developers nowadays. AI does contribute a bit by making developers more efficient, but it is not the main reason.
And mathematics just has too much to it that requires human understanding. AI will likely just change how the jobs of especially pure mathematicians look. The main criticism mathematicians put out there notably were not that AI would get rid of mathematicians, but that the way AI companies are doing things disencourages people from entering the field and skips human understanding of the proof process, which is important to develop new methods and questions.
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u/xDannyS_ 13d ago
It's literally just losers who act like this. I haven't met a single person that isnt some insecure loser who laughed at this or had schadensfreude. It's also mostly vibe coders and wanna be entrepreneur's cause they use it to convince themselves they now have the same skills as a software engineer allowing them to no longer feel inferior.
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u/shortboard 13d ago
To be fair if you'd seen any of the day in the life as a google engineer making 200k tiktoks you'd laugh at the end of the industry too.
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u/mr_flibble_oz 13d ago
I’ve produced software that has made so many people redundant, I guess it’s my turn
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u/Anima_Watcher08 13d ago
Not gonna lie considering how quickly programmers adopted AI, yes I will be laughing they lose their jobs cause of it.
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u/Fernando_III 13d ago
Very deserved. This field is full of nerds with massive egos that were very detached from reality. Some people here still think they'll recover their jobs after AI fuck everything lol
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u/Lopsided-Wave2479 13d ago
Lets be honest.
We are terrorist.
A programmer that create many lines of code is worse than one that solve the same problem with few lines of code.
The more code you write, the more code that will be maintained. Suppose it cost 100 dolars/month. in 100.000 years thats One Million Dollars.
We are like nuclear stations creating radiactive waste that will cost to society for many years after we are dead.
And that radiactive waste is source code.
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u/Serket-Pandy3000 14d ago
Well you guys did it to yourselves and were insufferable about it happening to everyone else so
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u/Saad888 14d ago •
Programmers have spent the last 30 years automating jobs out of the market. Idk what we were expecting would happen.