10 Years of Generative AI Slop

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2025-01-07 13:00:03

Hot takes on the death of software engineering are legion. Boy, are Venture Capitalists hopped up on hopium over this. Imagine if AI could replace their biggest cost! No more profit sharing with expensive, uppity laborers coders. And the “idea guys”? The idea guys can focus on what they do best, think amazing thoughts while a machine makes it all real. No more 50/50 splits with technical co-founders. Oh joyous day!

But what happens to the software engineering industry after 10 years of the AI productivity that was promised? Are we working four hour weeks from private islands or are we in homeless tent camps in California? Is Sam Altman or Elon Musk emperor of Earth?

To answer these, we need to estimate the expected speedup on development from generative AI and come to terms with the nature of software development itself. Merrily, our likeliest future is mere generative AI system collapse — dull human programmers, minds muted by AI-assistants, generating code at record rates right up until we bury ourselves in the complexity avalanche.

To estimate the speedup potential from generative AI, we need to guess how much of the software development process can be automated. If you think the answer is “most of it”, please know you are very smart and you should spend more time on Xitter and NFT investing. Go on now, off with ya.