@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io2025-08-01 14:16:28
As for “but it's great for coding!“…
…world-wide there's about 3.6 billion jobs or so, of which ~25 million are in software development; this means maybe about 0.7% of all jobs world-wide can use "great for coding".
Writing actual code amounts to maybe, if you're lucky, 10% of the work a software developer does.
The rest is meetings, high-level specifications, email and chat, more meetings, learning new things, updating stuff, lots of testing and debugging, etc.
The gist is, the supposed gains from "AI" are completely irrelevant (and indeed there's signs and studies that show it doesn't do anything for programmer productivity either).
tl;dr: This is the worst economic bubble in history, pushing a dream of a magical technology that unfortunately doesn't work, by appealing to investor greed.
@arXiv_csSE_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-06-03 07:47:01
Challenges in designing research infrastructure software in multi-stakeholder contexts
Stephan Druskat, Sabine Theis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01492 https…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-07-30 17:56:35
Just read this post by @… on an optimistic AGI future, and while it had some interesting and worthwhile ideas, it's also in my opinion dangerously misguided, and plays into the current AGI hype in a harmful way.
https://social.coop/@eloquence/114940607434005478
My criticisms include:
- Current LLM technology has many layers, but the biggest most capable models are all tied to corporate datacenters and require inordinate amounts of every and water use to run. Trying to use these tools to bring about a post-scarcity economy will burn up the planet. We urgently need more-capable but also vastly more efficient AI technologies if we want to use AI for a post-scarcity economy, and we are *not* nearly on the verge of this despite what the big companies pushing LLMs want us to think.
- I can see that permacommons.org claims a small level of expenses on AI equates to low climate impact. However, given current deep subsidies on place by the big companies to attract users, that isn't a great assumption. The fact that their FAQ dodges the question about which AI systems they use isn't a great look.
- These systems are not free in the same way that Wikipedia or open-source software is. To run your own model you need a data harvesting & cleaning operation that costs millions of dollars minimum, and then you need millions of dollars worth of storage & compute to train & host the models. Right now, big corporations are trying to compete for market share by heavily subsidizing these things, but it you go along with that, you become dependent on them, and you'll be screwed when they jack up the price to a profitable level later. I'd love to see open dataset initiatives SBD the like, and there are some of these things, but not enough yet, and many of the initiatives focus on one problem while ignoring others (fine for research but not the basis for a society yet).
- Between the environmental impacts, the horrible labor conditions and undercompensation of data workers who filter the big datasets, and the impacts of both AI scrapers and AI commons pollution, the developers of the most popular & effective LLMs have a lot of answer for. This project only really mentions environmental impacts, which makes me think that they're not serious about ethics, which in turn makes me distrustful of the whole enterprise.
- Their language also ends up encouraging AI use broadly while totally ignoring several entire classes of harm, so they're effectively contributing to AI hype, especially with such casual talk of AGI and robotics as if embodied AGI were just around the corner. To be clear about this point: we are several breakthroughs away from AGI under the most optimistic assumptions, and giving the impression that those will happen soon plays directly into the hands of the Sam Altmans of the world who are trying to make money off the impression of impending huge advances in AI capabilities. Adding to the AI hype is irresponsible.
- I've got a more philosophical criticism that I'll post about separately.
I do think that the idea of using AI & other software tools, possibly along with robotics and funded by many local cooperatives, in order to make businesses obsolete before they can do the same to all workers, is a good one. Get your local library to buy a knitting machine alongside their 3D printer.
Lately I've felt too busy criticizing AI to really sit down and think about what I do want the future to look like, even though I'm a big proponent of positive visions for the future as a force multiplier for criticism, and this article is inspiring to me in that regard, even if the specific project doesn't seem like a good one.
@arXiv_econEM_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-07-03 08:18:30
rdhte: Conditional Average Treatment Effects in RD Designs
Sebastian Calonico, Matias D. Cattaneo, Max H. Farrell, Filippo Palomba, Rocio Titiunik
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01128
@arXiv_condmatmtrlsci_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-06-02 07:31:45
Magnetoimpedance properties of CoNbZr, multilayer CoNbZr/Au and multilayer NiFe/Au thin films
Indujan Sivanesarajah, Leon Abelmann, Uwe Hartmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24659
@aredridel@kolektiva.social2025-06-27 21:54:18
The popular meaning of "luddite" is a straw-man. It's a sloppy word with a sloppy meaning now, and it's one we'd do well to watch out for.
The actual reality of who the Luddites were is far more interesting, the center of the hard-fought struggles against owners of factories disrupting entire towns and cities economies with massively terrible results, centralizing power and money and leaving a great number of people without any control of their work, formerly artisans who'd had a hand in their own work, and many automated out of jobs. Luddites destroyed automated looms not because they hated technology. They destroyed automated looms because they were taking the livelihood they depended on, with no recourse, and it was a disaster for a good while, and then millwork has gone from those places probably forever.
The problem now with LLMs and automated research systems is there's very little way for workers and creators to stick their shoes in the machinery. They've tried (https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12281) but mostly failed, since unlike a factory full of textile workers, the equipment is remote, the automation virtual, an intangible software object that few can access in any meaningful way.
@arXiv_econGN_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-07-02 13:12:13
Replaced article(s) found for econ.GN. https://arxiv.org/list/econ.GN/new
[1/1]:
- Beyond Code: The Multidimensional Impacts of Large Language Models in Software Development
Sardar Bonabi, Sarah Bana, Vijay Gurbaxani, Tingting Nian
@arXiv_csCR_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-07-01 10:53:53
Not quite a piece of CHERI-cake: Are new digital security by design architectures usable?
Maysara Alhindi, Joseph Hallett
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23682 …
@arXiv_csSE_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-08-01 09:22:01
An Empirical Study on the Amount of Changes Required for Merge Request Acceptance
Samah Kansab, Mohammed Sayagh, Francis Bordeleau, Ali Tizghadam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23640
@arXiv_econGN_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-08-01 08:06:11
Will Compute Bottlenecks Prevent an Intelligence Explosion?
Parker Whitfill, Cheryl Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23181 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.23181
