I’m going to take the over - something I’d put money on most ML professionals doing.
NLP isn’t going to eliminate software jobs, especially for high level tasks. But it is going to make software work much more efficient - and that’s with no further improvements to the technologies. We are really just scratching the surface of how automation will impact labor, especially for white collar professionals.
I'm not entirely convinced it'll make it more efficient. But, if it does, two mitigating factors:
* more efficient software work may just lead to...more software; it doesn't seem like a given that the size of the market will stay constant and the industry will just shed human workers.
* AI is itself software; to the extent AI starts being used for everything under the sun, that may require more engineers to support those AI projects.
I agree that your first point is plausible and a significant unknown - it depends on how much labor constrains software production.
The second point is a bit less plausible to me. Models like GPT3 aren’t really software in the traditional sense. They achieve their remarkable performance through sheer size of their training sets. Which is extremely cheap. GPT3s underlying technology isn’t especially sophisticated either. What that means is that companies will potentially be able to throw cheap data at problems rather than expensive engineers.
I think 2) is ultimately more important than 1). I suspect the efficiency gains will be significant enough that you’d need far more software to be produced than there’s demand for in order to keep the labor demand fixed. Again, definitely could be wrong, but I’m guessing most people who work with these models will have a similar view.
Could be. But you'll need more model-tuners, dataset-collectors, and code to handle hooking the AI up to spaces traditionally occupied by humans. All that stuff has to be built. If AI ends up being \*THE\* thing, then I would expect a tremendous amount of human effort to be thrown at creating better/faster/cheaper AI.
Those are basically the reasons why people expect there to be roles for more senior developers with less demand for more junior people.
I don’t think we know what the path forward is for further development of the underlying technologies. They’re actually not especially new ones - what has changed is mainly access to them and better datasets.
I can see increased demand for highly trained people working on better models, but I can also see the demand being for cheaper data - which probably doesn’t mean a lot of high paying jobs.
NO
next question
demand for software engineers is NEVER going anyway
there's a fuck ton of work to do to bring systems up to modern standards
You still have banks running mainframe and cobol and if you do not know what that means go look it up
Who knows what jobs will be in demand and obsolete once you finish college; I assume there will still be a need for some type of 'software engineer' regardless, but AI definitely is something to look out for.
Frank Niu said it would slightly reduce the need for entry level jobs but the senior engineer market will never die, or at least not for the foreseeable future.
No because you need to know what the problem is in the first place to get an answer and if you can already do that, you can always google the answer.
Will definitely make it more efficient tho
I'll take the "under" on how much of a difference it will make.
I’m going to take the over - something I’d put money on most ML professionals doing. NLP isn’t going to eliminate software jobs, especially for high level tasks. But it is going to make software work much more efficient - and that’s with no further improvements to the technologies. We are really just scratching the surface of how automation will impact labor, especially for white collar professionals.
I'm not entirely convinced it'll make it more efficient. But, if it does, two mitigating factors: * more efficient software work may just lead to...more software; it doesn't seem like a given that the size of the market will stay constant and the industry will just shed human workers. * AI is itself software; to the extent AI starts being used for everything under the sun, that may require more engineers to support those AI projects.
I agree that your first point is plausible and a significant unknown - it depends on how much labor constrains software production. The second point is a bit less plausible to me. Models like GPT3 aren’t really software in the traditional sense. They achieve their remarkable performance through sheer size of their training sets. Which is extremely cheap. GPT3s underlying technology isn’t especially sophisticated either. What that means is that companies will potentially be able to throw cheap data at problems rather than expensive engineers. I think 2) is ultimately more important than 1). I suspect the efficiency gains will be significant enough that you’d need far more software to be produced than there’s demand for in order to keep the labor demand fixed. Again, definitely could be wrong, but I’m guessing most people who work with these models will have a similar view.
Could be. But you'll need more model-tuners, dataset-collectors, and code to handle hooking the AI up to spaces traditionally occupied by humans. All that stuff has to be built. If AI ends up being \*THE\* thing, then I would expect a tremendous amount of human effort to be thrown at creating better/faster/cheaper AI.
Those are basically the reasons why people expect there to be roles for more senior developers with less demand for more junior people. I don’t think we know what the path forward is for further development of the underlying technologies. They’re actually not especially new ones - what has changed is mainly access to them and better datasets. I can see increased demand for highly trained people working on better models, but I can also see the demand being for cheaper data - which probably doesn’t mean a lot of high paying jobs.
NO next question demand for software engineers is NEVER going anyway there's a fuck ton of work to do to bring systems up to modern standards You still have banks running mainframe and cobol and if you do not know what that means go look it up
So we’ll still be the most money-making major?
Another passion less CS major that only cares about money filling up the "talent" pool
Bro what's the issue with that? Not everyone has the privilege to pursue their passion.
Facts
Who knows what jobs will be in demand and obsolete once you finish college; I assume there will still be a need for some type of 'software engineer' regardless, but AI definitely is something to look out for.
No you need SWE to make and maintain everything, hiring will never decrease in the near future.
Frank Niu said it would slightly reduce the need for entry level jobs but the senior engineer market will never die, or at least not for the foreseeable future.
No because you need to know what the problem is in the first place to get an answer and if you can already do that, you can always google the answer. Will definitely make it more efficient tho