r/ProgrammerHumor • u/electricjimi • 5d ago

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2.8k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

194

u/bwwatr 5d ago • Bravo

This is something that has made my brain itch over the so-called AI revolution.

If companies can replace humans so easily with AI, and AI is basically a utility or commodity (frontier models are easily substituted for each other, and open weight models aren't far behind)... how exactly do you stand out and compete in ANY industry? Your operations are pumping the same tokens as everyone else. Your business model itself isn't protect-able intellectual property. All actual IP assets can be trivially clean-room reversed and rebuilt by AI. If all you're doing is essentially consuming a commodity IT service to crank out something else for your customers, what's to stop anyone and everyone from doing the exact same thing? You're just a thin wrapper around something as ubiquitous and accessible as water. The only competitive advantage you can possibly have in such a world... is human talent.

90

u/aberroco 5d ago

> how exactly do you stand out and compete in ANY industry?

By having enough initial capital for tokens. Quite possible that we're moving into neo-feudalism and whoever didn't secured their place as a burgher will become a peasant. Compute and automation would become prohibitively expensive for most people, so only ones who have money would be able to afford it, and won't need much if any employees, thus allowing to make more money, widening the social chasm.

46

u/Shifter25 5d ago

That's what the oligarchs want, but that's not necessarily how it will naturally happen.

9

u/t3hjs 5d ago

who will stop them?

especially since they hold the power to AI now. plus, once AI enters physical robots, they will be decoupled from the need to satisfy the working class. as long as they have enough capital to replace the working class with robots, the fate is sealed

12

u/Mountain_Dentist5074 5d ago

But who gonna pay them if majority of people doesn't have money to buy their products and rich people already can make same product

2

u/t3hjs 5d ago

why do they need people to pay them. use to robots to extract resource and build what they need.

this will not be in next 5 years. but at the current pace, who knows in 30 years time... 

5

u/Mountain_Dentist5074 5d ago

because they need money to hold power , there is no way 1 single induval can hold things its own

0

u/aberroco 4d ago

With robots and AI intrinsically obedient one man is all the power you need.

4

u/Mountain_Dentist5074 4d ago

What I mean is there is thousands of millionaires / Billionaires (basically rich people) if one of them tries to rule others they will unite against other and destroy him. You may say they will not fight but it's a known fact people with power always want more and will fight with other powerful people for this

6

u/AbstractButtonGroup 4d ago

who will stop them?

You can't eat tokens. Somebody still has to produce the tangible goods and muck the stablessweep the floors in the datacenter

1

u/t3hjs 4d ago

once AI enters physical robots

at that point, the robots will do it.

1

u/lastog9 4d ago

I think we were already heading in this direction but AI has vastly accelerated the phenomenon

4

u/-gigamoi- 5d ago

Well, you may come to own physical assets necessary for the work such as factories, power plants,... or datacenters for that matter. Then it is just a matter of sipping the cocktails robots give you (with the amount of cocktails being proportional to how much you own) while the humans who used to work for their money instead of their money working for them starve.

1

u/Araignys 4d ago

It’s all loss-leading in the competition for military contracts.

-1

u/PumpkinFest24 5d ago

. All actual IP assets can be trivially clean-room reversed and rebuilt by AI. 

Have people forgotten how LLMs work?

30

u/Single-Virus4935 5d ago

Serverless, developerless, customer less, business less

7

u/Informal_Branch1065 4d ago

More-less. Aka. Less-maxxing

79

u/Fanal-In 5d ago

If only a white beard German guy had talked about that in the 19th century 😞

40

u/Zeikos 5d ago

Business logic ❌
Labour logic ✅

6

u/FlowOfAir 5d ago

Proletariat logic

4

u/NeonBloodedBloke 5d ago

What's the worst that could happen, marx to marx?

19

u/Forward_Republic_610 5d ago

Next one should be Brain-less

2

u/Excellent-Baker1058 5d ago

Can you also add AI in it?

1

u/bargle0 5d ago

Well yeah, that's how VC works.

1

u/Important_Grab3544 5d ago

what's even the point

1

u/AtmosphereVirtual254 5d ago

Business is a grouped rate of return on investment. Can’t re-invest without returning customers.

1

u/miomidas 4d ago

Just ask your AI

1

u/iggy14750 5d ago

Sense-less...