that can increase the price tenfold at will

That will have to increase the price ten fold to stop bleeding billions of dollars every month.

and also the calculator is actively destroying the planet.

I dont think so. If(here is where my argument fails for most people cause i got really good education) your teacher thought you math properly tho point isnt the calculations but that you understand the logic. With ai the problem is the same with as a calculator that just spits out derivatives, graphs, etc by just typing in a formula. The reason you have to understand those is to be able to build upon it.

The pilots absolutely can just fuck around for most of the flight, and even during the critical moments of takeoff and landing, the plane can do a lot of it automatically these days.

Pilots need to actively practice flying without autopilot to keep those skills up in case the autopilot fails.

I feel like their point was that the gains of technology were not distributed fairly, which is largely the concern today. It’s not “technology is bad”, or “technology make bad thing”; rather, “the owners of the machine undercut our labor, and we lose our jobs”, which I think was true. In the modern world, there are likely less tailors, as a percentage of the working population, certainly in first world countries. Sweatshops still exist, and it’s people’s labor competing against a production line, in terms of ROI for a business.

I get the sense we all know AI isn’t going to bring about a uptopia for all people, because the economic systems don’t incentivize that. There’s some hypothetical world where this sort of technological advance could benefit all people, but it’s not the one we live in. That’s a reality & major problem for the technology (among other issues).

I certainly think the cost of labor for tech development is going to drop significantly due to the market pressures; look at all the tech layoffs. At the same time, the upside is these tools make certain projects accessible & possible, because prior, would have needed significant funding, amazing solo skills, etc. There’s new opportunities available, but it’ll come at the cost of cratering tech position compensation & job security.

I don’t know anyone in my field right now who feels safe (game dev), and I have many talented friends out of work.

The vilification of the Luddites as cantankerous tech haters is a really good example of how malicious falsehoods can succeed, I think. I'd guess that most English speakers who know the word would define Luddite as "someone who hates technology", and I think it resonates on some level because we all hate technology some of the time. The fact that Luddites didn't indiscriminately hate technology, they just destroyed the means by which their oppressors oppressed them, is handily swept aside. And I never even questioned that narrative on Luddites until I happened to read up on them.

It's sneaky, because before then "Luddite" didn't feel like an important or politically charged term at all. It was simply a slang word for people who grump about technology. Calling people haters just short-circuits any examination of the so-called haters' reasons. It's exactly what people say about terrorists, except instead of technology its freedom. They just hate freedom. I wonder how many people have "terrorist = freedom hater" embedded so deeply they don't even think about it.

I try vibe coding from time to time and it’s a mixed bag. When it works it works but then there’s suddenly just code there. It’s like when a colleague implements a feature in a project with multiple devs but since it’s just your personal project you suddenly got put in the code reviewer chair.

When I write code I reason about all the small decisions but when the agent takes over I have to figure out step by step why decisions were made.

I’m still not sold on coding agents and vibecoding but it’s getting better and more usable.
The only downside is that a agent doing its thing is now seen as downtime where you could just prompt another agent and work on several projects simultaneously. If anyone ever tells you vibecoding is good because you can work in parallel RUN

I only use it to solve specific problems when I can't find the solution elsewhere. Then I spend the time to understand and rewrite the code myself.

It's the same workflow as using Stack Overflow, etc. You can't just copy/paste solutions.

yeah, but it's great for those that hated busywork and were good at exams

They assume the AI will be able to get there with enough tokens/time with the help of the human at the other end. They have done this and decided it was good enough.

Or if it does break, just hit it with the AI stick until it works again.

ive personally found LLM coding to be pretty effective if i adhere to very strict "engineering best practices" like TDD, good documentation, thorough API design, systems design, etc.

im very afraid that the next generation of software engineers will never develop the skills needed to make the most out of it because they skipped the rudiments of good software engineering.

to me it feels like playing jazz without learning scales. it's possible to be an incredible jazz musician without formal training if you're a savant... but you're probably not.