The entire problem with "AI" is that it's easy to do without. The AI companies know it, the users know it - even the most pro AI agent manager knows it. Thought experiment: remove AI from the world right now, all of it - what do you have? Business as usual. This article doesn't do enough to underscore that - dreaded be the day I need to get an actual engineer to review a PR, right?

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MostlyStable 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't that always the case in the early stages of new technology adoption? It becomes less and less true as the new technology becomes more and more integrated.

In the first few years after electric motors became a thing, one could have said the same thing. We would have just gone back to steam. If you tried to "do without them" now, society would collapse.

So the question is not if we can do without them now, it's if we can do without them in 5 to 10 years (or however long it takes for them to be fully integrated)

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48terry an hour ago | parent [-]

The current LLM hype started, what, 5 years ago? It's an industry throwing billions of dollars (and teasing at the word trillions) around. It's had super bowl ads. It's a technology that's being mandated in corporate offices. It's basically the only thing the tech world ever talks about anymore. It's sucked all the air out of the room and occupies the whole stage.

Just how "early stage" is that, and how much more integration does this "new technology" need to be?

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MostlyStable an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The first electric motors in factories just replaced the previously existing steam engine. Power was still distributed throughout the factory through a central shaft and pullies to all the places that needed it. It took decades for the possibilities to get figured out and, more importantly, entirely new factories designed from the ground up around the idea that every machine could have it's own motor and power could be distributed via wires.

AI won't be "integrated" until something similar happens, and new businesses etc. are formed that take advantage of it in a way that can't simply be reversed to the old, pre-AI paradigm. I don't know what that will look like, but someone is going to figure it out and make successful companies with entirely new paradigms that are only made possible by AI.

At some point, every single factory was designed for electric motors, and going back became unthinkable.

-edit- also, the idea that a 5 year old tech that is still rapidly changing and developing deserves quotation marks around "new technology" is hilarious to me.

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new_account_100 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Just how "early stage" is that, and how much more integration does this "new technology" need to be?

Based on the way Claude has felt the last few weeks, I'd say we're about 3-6 months away from full AGI. At that point we can start truly replacing white collar workers in earnest and begin deep integration.

	▲	nozzlegear 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		AGI is a myth that these AI companies perpetuate as a convenient marketing tactic. > At that point we can start truly replacing white collar workers in earnest and begin deep integration. This is why AI is so deeply unpopular. Even in the "good" scenario proselytized by true believers, you still paint a bleak near-future where everyone loses their jobs.

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GolfPopper 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my opinion, that's likely a large part of why it's being pushed so hard. Not to drive honest revenue, but to get AI products so deeply embedded that 'just removing AI' won't be seen as an option, even when keeping it has higher and higher costs, up to and beyond airline-style bailouts from the government. An entirely new layer of wealth-extracting intermediary, being sold under false promises.

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skydhash 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's always weird when people are suggesting to use some AI tool for the most mundane and generic kind of task. Like it's some kind of pet that will die if it's not used every once in a while.