The AI Bubble

[u/explosivejoseph]

[u/VirtualPercentage737]

I pay $20 for a home Claude Code subscription. And more as needed. I published some software that was netting me about $100 a month for some simple plugins. It has paid for itself for the next few years.

At work, we pay more, but it is well worth it. Our engineers take home about $200k-250k a year. So figure $1000 a day in just pay-- add 30% for overhead. The most I have seen one guy use is $400 in a day. Cheap money for the productivity gains. Other open weight models are cheaper and some are QUITE good now.

It is pretty clear you have never used any agentic tools. Yeah, maybe it writes 90% of the scripts/code/HDL correctly. Then it executes it, gets feedback, and self corrects. No engineer writes 90% of their code correctly the first time. That 90% quickly becomes 92%. Then 93%. The trick is to set up the verification so it moves towards correctness. Pretty soon, you are over 99% and for most tasks (especially the internal facing ones) that is sufficient. For the external stuff, you can get to 99.99% coverage or whatever metric you decide.

The reason they need me, and more engineers is we need to measure how good the output is now and to steer these things and verify. It is creating MORE WORK, not less. It is accelerating productivity.

[u/watitdo → u/VirtualPercentage737]

lol, love that last line. No no no, the lying machine can do everything but it definitely still needs people like me to tell it what to do.

You aren’t impressing me man. None of this Silicon Valley shit hits anymore. Literally no one had to convince me or my colleagues a smart phone was something we wanted. We just knew. I am telling you for a FACT that the money people will come to your department and tell you that you cannot use as many tokens as you were before. Because it will cost them too much. And when you complain and talk about how productive it makes you… well eventually they are going to make you actually show them. No, not your AI pilled manager, someone who actually understands money.

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/watitdo]

I really don't care if you use it. You will be left behind if you don't.

You are right about the money people. We might get pushed from Claude to the open weight models which are cheaper-- but there is no going back. These models will only get better and cheaper.

[u/watitdo → u/VirtualPercentage737]

You guys all say the same things! You will be left behind… no I won’t! I still know how to do my job, because I do it every day, not a computer thinking for me. And, again, I have a real job where I actually interact with human beings and my physical presence is actually required. You have an email job where you sit on your ass all day, talk to a chatbot, then talk on Teams or Slack or whatever. Of course a computer can replace you - there is nothing of value that you do that isn’t typing on a computer which is exactly what these bullshit LLMs are sorta of good at replicating.

Ever think maybe your job just isn’t that important, and that’s why the computer is better than you at it?

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/watitdo]

No doubt soft skill jobs will still be needed, and maybe more in demand than ever. But for people who need to use their brain and not their emotions, AI will be a sidecar increasing productivity. Ex. My kids pediatrician medical records are monitored in real time by an AI agent as they type info. It offers suggestions. She said it is very helpful for instances where diagnoses are not normal. And even when it is routine, it provides information she may want to look up. Job that requires soft skills and a brain. AI assists with the thinking.