Daniel Jalkut

I’m really trying to pretend this is true so RC doesn’t get steamrolled, but the more I think about it, the less I buy it. 1. Historically, the production of many types of goods have decreased dramatically in complexity and it didn’t transition to everyone just building it themselves. When electric tools were invented, did everyone transition to making their own furniture? Did the word processor end the book industry? Did the camera end the art industry? None of these quite match what we’re seeing but I haven’t found a case where humans have de-specialized. 2. Most consumers are exactly that, consumers. They are much lower agency than your average software person, probably lower creativity, and aren’t going to start building their own novel solutions to problems all of a sudden. Perhaps the models get so good they can do it somewhat transparently, but that would still require dictating requirements to the models, which itself is not something most consumers will be great at. And part of making “good” software is being opinionated. Models, due to the efforts of alignment, are limited in what they can say no to. The user asks for something that makes the software worse? “You’re absolutely right!” I’m not sure that taste and alignment are fully compatible. 3. Nothing ever happens. I think software will evolve, and what was a successful app three years ago will be very different three years from now, but it just doesn’t seem likely that after 10,000 years of increasing specialization and craftsmanship, humans will just resort to self reliance all of sudden. We want the expert opinion of other humans. We are interested in novel tools and experiences. Software products often bring with them community and identity that won’t go away. I just think an amplified version of the current trajectory more plausible than a complete reversal. Tell me why I’m wrong!

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