Anthropic & Nvidia’s CEOs are Just Plain Wrong
Recently I have watched this interview with Dario Amodei from Anthropic and this interview with Nvidia CEO — Jensen Huang and both struck a chord with me. I strongly disagree and think they are way off the mark and I want to outline my reasons in this article. I am a Software Developer so of course their opinions irk me but I feel I am justified in my feelings.
Most People Don’t Want to Program
In Jensen Huang’s interview he states — “Everybody in the world is now a programmer”. Really? Everyone? Even my gran? Ok, ok I am being facetious but this statement is so ludicrous you have to allow me some leeway.
But seriously, this remark is filled with such ignorance to the current state of society and people in general that it really incenses me. Newsflash for Jensen — most people don’t want to program and would do anything to avoid it. Most people don’t want to build something to solve a problem they have, most people either just want a solution or rather just forget about the problem in the first place.
The reason for this… modern life is HARD! You have bills to pay, mouths to feed, ever increasing costs of living, health issues, sick relatives, disputes to navigate, houses to clean… the list goes on and on.
Do most people have time to sit down and talk to yet another chat app to build some half baked software to solve some random problem. Is this app going to help their elderly mother stop complaining incessantly about the pain in their right hip?
No its not! People just don’t have the time, inclination nor the energy to sit down and build something that might address one particular aspect of their life.
Programmers Are a Special Breed
Like any industry in the world, programming is attractive to a certain type of person. Generally someone who likes to solve problems, enjoys abstract thinking, likes to spend time alone and revels in the details. People that try programming and stick to it generally really enjoy it and it ends up being more pleasure than work.
However, it really isn’t for everyone. Many people don’t have these traits and the thought of spending hours by themselves trying to build something would feel them with utter dread.
That’s why we have many people in many professions. Some people like to be around other people, some people like to care for people, some people like to work in laboratories, some people like to work with cars… the list is endless. Programming is a very small subset of this and it attracts a very small subset of society. It really isn’t for everyone.
Software Doesn’t Solve Everything
Most people’s problems will not be solved by software. It’s something I have realised more and more the longer I have been a Software developer. Software can be great and it can solve problems but its not the be all and end all by a long way.
I have problems being a good parent. I thought of ways maybe software could help with this and quickly realised that software is the wrong tool for this particular job. Maybe just spending more time with my kids would do much more that any software could do?
My friend has problems with his partner. Is software going to help? Nope! Working on the relationship is where the solution lies.
Software is great but its not the be all and end all.
AI Will Not be Writing 100% of the Code in 1 Year
Mark my words, this will not be happening. I have a great deal of time for Dario and what his company has done at Anthropic with Claude is fantastic. He’s a visionary and he is trying to build this future so massive kudos to him.
However, I think this vision of AI writing 100% of the Code within 1 year is severely misplaced. Don’t get me wrong, Claude Sonnet 3.7 is great and it can do great things but it’s a hell of a long way from writing all the code.
I use it daily for boilerplate stuff, writing tests, line completion but does it write 100% of the code? Not even close.
I work in a team of 15 developers and I can see how it is used (or rather not used). There is a whole bunch of reasons why:
- Devs don’t trust it — it hallucinates enough and regularly enough to be dangerous.
- Devs forget to use it.
- Devs don’t want to use it. They find it interrupts their thinking and flow.
- It introduces subtle bugs that are very hard to find later on.
- It spits out wrong logic.
- It takes too long to explain the context that it’s just quicker to do it yourself.
At the end of the day, this vision of AI writing 100% of the code requires humans to want it to write 100% of the code. I can guarantee that where humans are concerned nothing is predictable or reliable. Humans are difficult, unpredictable, wonderful, incredible, dangerous, loving all at the same time. How can you ever predict anything when they are involved?
Developers Actually Like Writing Code
One major thing that I don’t think it spoken about much is the fact that Software Developers actually enjoy writing code. The very process of clicking keyboard keys with your fingertips to lay down your thoughts on a screen is almost therapeutic.
Hands are intimately connected to the brain: the left hand to the right brain and the right hand to the left brain. The physical sensation of typing and seeing your ideas appear on the screen should not be underestimated. Speaking to the screen just isn’t the same.
Recently there has been so much press about Dopamine and how it controls us. Humans follow their feelings and when something feels good they tend to repeat.
Coding feels good to Developers. The hormonal releases and feel good feelings one experiences when developing stay with that person. They then crave more and will do illogical things to repeat that experience. Even turning off AI (which could do the job quicker albeit with mistakes) in order to get that coding high again and again.
Conclusion
Having thought about this for a while now, maybe I am guilty of taking the opinions of certain people in the AI industry a little too literally. Maybe they are just really saying that the world of Software is now open to many more people and with AI its now really easy to write Software.
I will admit that in someways this is true but I think it does a major disservice to all existing Software developers out there. It’s a very reductive argument they are using and I think it misses many subtle details of a Software developers job.
I will leave you with this one question: Would you board an aeroplane where 100% of the code for all the software on board was produced by AI? Yeah, I thought so…
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