News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by GoatInGrey on Friday January 31, 2025 @03:37PM (#42891662)
> a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them.

This is a pessimistic interpretation of Mark's words that has been trumpeted in the media. Which I am appalled to admit.

He said that they anticipate the majority of new code to come from AI models rather than human engineers. He then adds that they expect developers to be augmented by these tools. Which tracks as you still need somebody to drive the AI and validate or correct their outputs.

https://youtu.be/7k1ehaE0bdU?t=2h8m6s

Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by m_ke on Friday January 31, 2025 @03:42PM (#42891722)
I'm talking about this: https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/DFNf73PJxOQ

> "...we'll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts".

What do you think will happen when these models are good enough to do 90% of engineering work? He's already putting a squeeze on his employees now (https://africa.businessinsider.com/news/meta-ceo-mark-zucker...)

> "I think whoever gets there first is going to have a long-term, durable advantage towards building one of the most important products in history," Zuckerberg said, according to the recording.

> Zuckerberg also reiterated his belief that this would be the year Meta started seeing AI agents take on work, including writing software. Asked whether this would lead to job cuts, Zuckerberg said it was "hard to know" and that while it may lead to some roles becoming redundant, it could lead to hiring more engineers who can harness artificial intelligence to be more productive.

Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by Teever on Friday January 31, 2025 @09:23PM (#42895042)
> What do you think will happen when these models are good enough to do 90% of engineering work?

Honestly? I think we'll see a lot of vengeful and technically capable people who are out of work and who are looking to get revenge on the people that laid them off.

Some of those people who feel they have nothing to lose will build swarms of small drones that will use machine vision to track down Zuckerberg whoever they feel wronged them and kill them.

The future is going to be very, very spicy.

Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by insane_dreamer on Friday January 31, 2025 @03:55PM (#42891855)
> He said that they anticipate the majority of new code to come from AI models rather than human engineers. He then adds that they expect developers to be augmented by these tools.

only 2 ways this can work:

1) Meta collectively generates 5x more code than it presently is capable of generating

2) Meta generates the same amount of code than it presently does, with fewer engineers since each engineer can (supposedly) generate 5x code

Unless Zuck announced some initiative that will require 5x more code than they currently can generate, you can be pretty sure the goal is #2.

Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by matwood on Friday January 31, 2025 @04:18PM (#42892149)
The problem with #2 is Meta doesn't operate in a vacuum. Assuming there are problems to be solved, if Meta doesn't do #1 then someone else will. The someone else will eventually surpass Meta.
Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by insane_dreamer on Friday January 31, 2025 @10:11PM (#42895288)
Surpass Meta in what? Meta’s revenue comes from social networks. Revenue doesn’t not increase with LOC. Writing 5x more code does not get you X billion users.
Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by matwood on Saturday February 01, 2025 @08:39AM (#42898198)
No company can rest on its laurels, even one the size of Meta. No one said LoC increases users or revenue, implementing ideas does though. If Meta decides to use the benefits of AI to keep the current productivity and cut staff instead of increasing productivity, they will eventually be displaced by a group that went the other way.
Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by rcpt on Friday January 31, 2025 @04:19PM (#42892167)
Competition means everyone is now 5X faster. So you can't get by with the previous output level.
Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by ok_dad on Friday January 31, 2025 @04:28PM (#42892298)
> you still need somebody to drive the AI and validate or correct their outputs

100% visual inspection catches only about 80% of the defects.

The following is a classic example from QC circles (I used to run incoming QC at a medical device factory). Count the number of F’s in the paragraph below:

> THE NECESSITY OF TRAINING HANDS FOR FIRST-CLASS FARMS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FRIENDLY FARM LIVESTOCK IS FOREMOST IN THE MINDS OF FARM OWNERS. SINCE THE FOREFATHERS OF THE FARM OWNERS TRAINED THE FARM HANDS FOR THE FIRST-CLASS FARMS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FARM LIVESTOCK, THE OWNERS OF THE FARMS FEEL THEY SHOULD CARRY ON WITH THE FAMILY TRADITION OF TRAINING FARM HANDS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FARM STOCK BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE BASIS OF GOOD FUTURE FARMING.

How many did you get?

The correct answer is four dozen (I wanted to make the number harder to calculate before you count them).

Having software devs become some sort of QC inspectors for AI code sounds like a fucking nightmare to me, and I know how much of a nightmare QC in a factory is and how many defects escape both the design and the manufacturing process even with very strict QC.

Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by murderfs on Friday January 31, 2025 @04:49PM (#42892554)
> The correct answer is four dozen (I wanted to make the number harder to calculate before you count them).

No it isn't? I counted 34, and a python oneliner agrees.

Re:Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state,... by ok_dad on Friday January 31, 2025 @05:07PM (#42892792)
Good job, I guess, I was doing that for the comment-bait to get people to count it, not with Python though (is a Python one-liner visual?). In any case, go read stuff from Deming and Juran and others in manufacturing quality, and you will still see that 100% inspection is not enough.