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Getting AI to write good SQL

(cloud.google.com)
478 points richards | 5 comments | 16 May 25 21:10 UTC | HN request time: 1.078s | source
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mykowebhn ◴[17 May 25 11:10 UTC] No.44013449[source]▶
I understand from a technical POV how this could be considered great news.

But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV.

The last 15 or so years has seen an unprecedented rise in salaries for engineers, especially software engineers. This has brought an interest in the profession from people who would normally not have considered SW as a profession. I think this is both good and bad. It has brought new found wealth to more people, but it may have also diluted the quality of the talent pool. That said, I think it was mostly good.

Now with this game-changing efficiency from these AI tools, I'm sure we've seen an end to the glory days in terms of salaries for the SW profession.

With this gone, where else could relatively normal people achieve financial independence? Definitely not in the service industry.

Very sad.

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1. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[17 May 25 15:21 UTC] No.44014967[source]▶
It's better for society to get much wealthier, much faster, by opening up the possibility for anyone to do advanced programming, than for a small class of anointed and studied elites to get rich via this exclusion. It's the opposite of sad. It's the best thing that ever happened for the productive use of a computer by a layperson since the invention of the search engine.
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2. eqvinox ◴[17 May 25 15:41 UTC] No.44015080[source]▶
Sure, but this isn't "anyone" doing advanced programming, it's the LLM doing it. The humans get skill in using LLM, not programming, and whether this new skill will make anyone wealthy is an open question.

(Also, just by market logic, rare skills in demand are always paid more; I'm not sure why you're calling it an "exclusion". The education system in a lot of places might have that function, but that's a separate issue not helped by LLMs writing SQL?)

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3. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[17 May 25 16:25 UTC] No.44015354[source]▶
I contest that. A human using an LLM to program, is a human programming. Gaining skill with the LLM is gaining skill in programming. And the things most people are both able and willing to now create with LLMs are of vastly greater complexity than whatever they were doing before - so yes, it's advanced programming.

I also contest your definition of wealth. Society absolutely and obviously becomes wealthier when many more people are able to use computers for more advanced things. Just because that wealth doesn't directly appear as zeros in your financial statements doesn't mean the wealth hasn't been created.

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4. prmph ◴[17 May 25 16:29 UTC] No.44015390[source]▶
LLMs are not going to allow you to do advanced programming if you couldn't already do it by hand. The thing about LLMs is, they are a force multiplier, imperfectly, but I guess they are getting there. The overall vision (unless trivial), architecture, functionality-gaps-filling, revisions, etc. of an advanced project is not going to come from an LLM.

I personally don't think we are ever going to get to that point where I can give a simple propnmt and have an LLM generate a complex app ready to run. Think about what that would require:

1. The LLM would have to read my mind and extrapolate all the minute decisions I would make to implement the app based on the prompt.

2. Assuming the LLM can get past (1), it would have to basically be AGI to be able to implement pretty much whatever I can dream up.

3. If 2 & 3 above is somehow achieved, it would be economically very valuable, and you can bet that functionality is not going to be casually enabled in LLMs, for just anyone to use.

5. eqvinox ◴[17 May 25 16:54 UTC] No.44015540{3}[source]▶
I'm happy to accept your contest, but you should be aware that both of our opinions are only beliefs at this point and science will have an answer at some point in the future when the effects of LLMs on humans are understood better.

I do have to ask though, who do you think will pay the electricity bill for disenfranchised groups lacking wealth the most strongly to use LLMs? Some things might be free right now, but what do you think will happen when some of e.g. OpenAI's $300bn valuation is being collected?