When code writes
code, what do developers do?
As we head further into a future where things are automated,
people’s last refuge will be curation in a bright future or serving others in a
dark future. Curation devolves into saying what you want and iterating through
a few rounds of “not that.”
As a programmer, I always found automated programming tools
laughable. We are still mostly there, but ML/AI is changing that. At one point,
many people sagely nodded their heads and said computers would *never* beat a
human at chess. Never. I disagreed. I thought that it was ***inevitable*** that
they ***would*** beat humans ‘hands down.’ That is well behind us now.
It is only a matter of time until all human ‘jobs’ will be
doable by machines. Each one, including being a companion. As of now, the bottleneck
is energy and knowledge. I think we will crack fusion, but if we do not, we can
still harvest billions of times what we use now from the sun in space. The knowledge
is increasing rapidly. Fifty years ago, my iPhone with too many functions to
list was not even imaginable. The next fifty years is going to be astonishing.
So… developers will do as others and pursue their interests.
That might include hand-coding stuff, but only as a hobby.
Once it gets good enough, the metaverse will be where many
spend their time. I have addressed it elsewhere, but our notion of ‘reality’ is
not based on all that many inputs. The metaverse will become ‘realer than real’
for some who are reading this.
The propaganda apparatus that we all grew up with has
convinced us that others ‘own’ the rights to everything imaginable, including
the right to copy things or the right to even use ideas. The United States does
not officially even recognize that people have a right to food. Smart people
like developers must try to throw off their conditioning in this regard and
take measures to ensure that everyone gets a share of the pie. If we all have a
share and the freedom to use it, the bright future will come. If we continue to
accept that the wealthy legitimately control the resources under their command,
and that they can tell us what to think, we are looking at a dark future where
most of us are slaves. History tells us that as these people gain power over
others, things can get very unpleasant.
Hopefully, developers will look around and decide to become
politically active to ensure we take the fork in the road where all humans are
masters rather than the one where most humans are slaves.
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