Ask HN: Why won't you be replaced by AI?

No. The only defense is societal.

... because I'm not defined solely by "intelligence".

a single LLM isn't the threat, a thousand coordinated ones are

"AI models are rapidly getting better." How many times are we going to keep hearing this? Give the horse the dang carrot!

I'm so tired of hearing about AI.

Even if we assume extreme case where coding is only done by 99% LLMs in the future

Who is the best possible person you could hire to operate the LLM?

Who has a good mental model of what its doing underneath and has the best expertise to direct/guide it?

IMO no one is better positioned to use these tools than software engineers

LLMs will probably get to a point where anyone who provides a well explained, fully detailed account of what they want can get it.

My job is safe.

Stepping back from LLMs, look at other jobs that could have been fully automated using technology, but haven't. Some jobs, like a grocery cashier could be automated with self check, or waiters could be replaced with phone ordering. We still have humans in these roles, decades after they could have been replaced.

Interesting how we’re using passive language here.

LLMs do not replace jobs, managers constantly try to increase profit. Managers and business owners try to replace people’s jobs via automation.

LLM companies actively try to convince managers and business owners that LLMs are capable of replacing humans in white collar jobs.

An LLM/AI will not replace you, or me.

A business owner or manager might. They also might use an LLM to make decisions.

But let’s not use language which anctively obscures the decision makers in this process.

programming is the side car to a professional license which is domain knowledge + active ethically required professional license.

I write guides for immigrants moving to Germany. I focus on the undocumented and unpredictable parts of German bureaucracy.

The stuff I document is happening offline behind closed doors. I create tools and leverage my contacts and audience to surface that information.

Then LLMs suck up that information and serves it to users without attribution or consent, and that is destroying the economics of doing my job.

But the job still needs to be done.

Depends a lot on how expensive they are to run

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Let me ask you this: would people accept a nuclear power plant whose safety control software is vibe coded? Would a CFO of a public company sign off on financial statements created entirely by AI?

I'm fully into agentic coding, and I'm actively studying agent reliability. I can make all kinds of deterministic guarantees about agentically produced code, but no, I would not accept either of these, or many other examples.

We write code (or we used to, before AI), so we naturally value that. But the code is one small part of a deployed system, and this has always been the case. Numerous studies have shown that writing the code is actually the cheapest part.

All the most important things that you need to know about what makes the code correct, both before it is written and after it is deployed, are not in the specs. They come from walking around and talking to people. Looking them in the eye, sussing out what their real requirements are, and figuring out how to address their concerns with empathy.

Until LLMs can do that, I'm not worried. Let them write the code, that's the least important part.

Because I am a human and I have motivation, incentive to not mess up.

im a bug bounty hunter and ai is taking over my job i think within 5 years there will be no manual hacking and i will meet you gyz at a bar or at a masjid

Hi! I'm a mammal. I am very complex, and contain multitudes of cells, bacteria etc. Honed to very a very robust system over hundreds of millions of years. Anthropic's Mythos is a token. A pair of words which is scattered through threads on Hacker news.

Please report back when your God can fart.