This is a bit like going back in time to the beginning of the industrial revolution and estimating the impact of a mechanisation based on comparing the speed of early mechanical looms vs. a skilled human.

It takes years or decades for the automation of an artisan process to shake out, because it involves rethinking how everything around the now-automated process happens, and because the benefits involve the automation's ability to continue scaling beyond a level where human capacity was saturated. We're only at the very beginning of that process for coding, and right now we tend to see LLMs somewhat awkwardly inserted into pre-existing software development lifecycles. But it's unlikely that'll be still be the way we're creating software in 10/20 years time.

Exactly this. Grinding away inside various places I've worked for the last 10 years I longed for intense chunks of actually writing code. It was actually a rare treat to get something large and coherent enough to involve code production.

Most times were spent juggling paperwork, bouncing back and forth on code reviews, negotiating ambiguous requirements, and attending pointless meetings.

Granted... the agentic tools can also help with that. I've had them automate JIRA tedium for me before, much to middle management's chagrin.

With hardware, there’s a physical element that the management can appreciate, even when they don’t understand every constraint. With code, it’s that nebulous thing where the only thing visible are pictures on the screen. Trusting engineers is apparently too high a bar to cross.

I always found arguments for or against such technological advancements meaningless, if we don't specify what timeframes we are talking about. Sometimes I have the impression that people who disagree are simply thinking in different timeframes. For me, only short- and sometimes mid-term timeframes are practical in such deabtes. Long-term is interesting, but more in the realm of science fiction.

In the context of AGI, is it inevitable eventually? Sure, I would agree, unless some catastrophic event puts back our technological advancement.

IMO, don't see the path to AGI with the current tech, though. All current SOTA agents are still LLM based with all their flaws (limited reasoning, generalization, incomplete world model, hallucinations, ...). At their core, they are still next token predictors with a limited context.

Most of the advances in AI in the past 2 years are in post-training and harnesses.

I'd expect a different core technology than just an LLM in order to get to AGI.

About as 'inevitable' as fusion power, virtual reality and flying cars I'd say. The actual technological revolutions are usually less 'obvious'.

Well, if progress stops it can be avoided..

AGI isn't necessary to completely change things. The change that's occurred in the last 6 months alone is massive. Another couple of big steps like the end of last year and the world is unrecognisable from even a few years ago.

Give your arguments for it not being inevitable if you question it.