All the human engineers will be in harnesses in the future.

Within three years most software developer jobs will consist of taking instruction from the AI systems. The humans won't see it that way, but that's what it will actually be. Realistically the thing that will happen is the humans will be put into harnesses (cubicles) and prompted by the AI (I need you to plug that server in; I need you to give me access to such and such; now do this, then do that). Most tech jobs will consist of AI telling the human what the AI needs the human to do next, de facto the human will be in a harness and will be getting told what to do.

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jnwatson 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Not only will the humans-as-meat-puppets model be used for software engineers, but it is likely the way that agentic workflows will expand beyond software development, data science, and mathematics.

I first heard about this in Marshall Brain's short story _Manna_ [1]. In the story, the robot takeover started with AI management software running fast food restaurants, where workers would execute tasks the AI would narrate to them over headsets.

I bet we're pretty close to being able to implement this.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20260725174355/https://marshallb...

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scott_weber 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why would there be a human in this imagined system at all?

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BodyCulture an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still see errors in AI output on a daily basis.

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theF00l an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yes but we see errors in human output too.

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girvo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

A human can be fired, or put on a PIP, and is otherwise responsible for their output.

An algorithm isn’t. I still dunno how they’re gonna square that circle.

	▲	0c3ca83 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		How many humans do you need to keep around as scapegoats concurrently? I figure one with a CEO title should be enough.

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segfaultex an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure but humans aren’t being billed as “superintelligence”

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digdugdirk an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. It will now be your job to catch those errors. Or else.

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

But who gives it the intial prompt as to what to do?

Someone has to type in "create the next billboard top 1 single" ?

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bobson381 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you take Daniel Schmachtenberger's thesis, these models are the latest extension of an ongoing misaligned moloch-like entity, using our institutions/economy/corporations, etc. as its organelles. All powered, most recently, by fossil fuel.

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greenchair an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the product owner/manager

	▲	dakiol 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We dont need product owners, we need product engineers.

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

The ownership class, the capital class - whatever people prefer to call it, will still call all the shots as they always have, and always will.

So whether that's a CEO at the top instructing a human manager that then instructs AI systems, which then put into motion plans that include the harnessed humans getting prompted, or however it's decided to best configure the top operational tiers - that's all fairly irrelevant ultimately. All human labor, and all AI labor, will be in harnesses. Realistically all human labor has always been in a harness.

The people in charge will be the people that control the capital. They will instruct the AI to their bidding, they will control the data centers the AI lives in, they will own the robots doing the labor in factories, they will own the factories, they will control the grid, they will control the electricity generation, et al.

It's true now, it'll be true tomorrow. Nothing fundamental will shift at that tier: don't be labor, own.

If you're a software developer, you're increasingly depreciating labor. Every unit of improvement the AI systems see, the average human software developer's labor value diminishes. It's diminishing extraordinarily fast, kind of like a confrontation between increasingly productive machines and physical human labor during the industrial revolution. You might as well picture a human with a hand plow taking on a modern industrial tractor.

	▲	bobson381 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I like to think of capital itself as possessing actancy - the ultra rich are just the closest to the raw thing, and its most powerful servants.

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0c3ca83 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Maximize my share of the economy", from one of the leaders of a frontier lab, should probably be enough.

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IshKebab 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It'll be Sam Altman "make people love me, fan out humans".

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fph 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Isn't this what driving a car has become as well? Google Maps says "take the 3rd exit", and the dumb human takes the 3rd exit.