It’s been awhile! I feel like I haven’t had the time to sit down and gather my thoughts to continue posting. I’ve been so wrapped up in the forward motion of AI, and how it is impacting society more and more each day…

And then I get off twitter, and talk to normal people out in the wild (and by normal I mean, not chronically online like myself) and all they can do to describe AI is a “fancy chat, that talks to be about my day, and my feelings, and tells me things I google”.

This amazes me. There are millions (hell, BILLIONS) of people in the world who don’t see the rapid and exponential improvement AI (I hate calling it this. It’s an LLM. Its a really great NLP that has access to skills, and tools, and functions (which are all the same thing, but new buzzwords come up all the time these days)) has been moving in. I’ve tried to follow it all, I’ve tried to review mythos, and all the scary preview models that apparently will act like the best security engineers in the world. I’ve tried to keep up with the multi-agent orchestration, and the claudebots, and the agent loops. It’s hard. It’s fun.

But, I’ll never be as fast as a computer (Although, I’m not sure that’s true, I feel like humans have the neural ability to calculate more rapidly than a digital computer, but I could be wrong). And that’s ok.

Why?

Because a computer is a tool. LLM’s are tools. They are not replacements. They are EXTENSIONS. They are utilized to solve problems. They have a difficult time determining what problems need to be solved in the moment, in the future, or in the past even. They are constantly being updated and tuned, and controlled, and adjusted… over and over. At some point, we’ll figure out that the best way to have TRUE AI is to allow a singular JEPA to start in infancy. Then allow it to interact in the world (Like an RL system, similar to DeepMinds StarCraft model). Then give it strict rules. Allow it to break the rules, but punish it for immoral or unethical decisions. Repeat this. Do it in a condensed period that feels like decades to a model. Then repeat it again. Give it a different starting point. Give it less privilege, or more privilege. See what it develops.

The current LLMs (foundational models) are the culmination of all human contribution. They learned from us. They are trained on US. We cannot continue to utilize them to make predictions based on probability to create new things. They will always require NEW things to improve. They will always need US to properly utilize them to make the world a better place.

So, as scary as it feels…as crazy as it sounds to contribute to the what is likely going to be the largest job replacement technology in the world….

Use it. Build with it. Learn from it. Don’t trust it implicitly. Iterate. Learn from what it’s doing, and how it’s doing it. Build more. learn more. CREATE MORE. Allow it to become a tool in your toolbelt to get you to where you want to be.

At some point, the mega corporations will limit the access to these models to a select group. It’s inevitable. It costs money, and energy, and resources. It’s expensive. So learn to build it yourself. Learn to tune it yourself. Learn to incorporate it into society. If we all do a little, a lot is done by all.

Have fun. Dream. Play. Create. Don’t let my doom and gloom stop you from doing what you want to do.

But be vigilant. Understand the risks. Understand who holds the cards, and who’s thoughts/ideas/words/numbers/creations were used to train these models.

Yours. AI/LLMS/AGI will always be a combined ownership of humanity, no matter who tries to “meter it” or tokenize it. We can build the local models. We can run them on our own systems. Free. It’s ours. It’s built from us, by us, for us.

Until next time,

Haxk

Listen. I’m no expert, but since 99% of the models that are currently active in the world were trained on the general output of most of humanity.. and even then it had trouble attempting to output usable items..
What happens when AI is the only output.. for all of time? Do the models swap from being pure GPT LLMS, and work as LRM’s or a combination of models? (An ensemble, if you will), or do these models no longer require public data, and instead need private data (I’m looking at you OpenAI, with your “Github replacement”, just wanna steal more stuff) in order to push models farther? It’s clear that at some point, entropy for a model increases, the long context degradation occurs, and then llms can no longer output the probably best token.. because the inference data matches their training data (because they made the training data?) and then it’s just overfitting and underfitting all the way down.
I hope that LLM usage allows for more people to create, build, and imagine all of the same things they imagine, but I also hope there will be the die hards. The never GPTer’s, writing code from their brain, and by hand, and selling it on Etsy for a premium. There has to be some way we can make original code non-replicated or non-fungible (blockchain, heres your shot!). I imagine there must be a way to protect or encrypt your code, allow it to be visible only to an actual human being so that it can’t be scanned or inserted into training data, to make another model slightly better.
I like the idea of turning coding into a comodity, but I don’t like the idea of completely removing humans from the loop. Not only is it economically not viable for the rest of us, it sort of breaks down the whole system doesn’t it? If humans aren’t working in intelligence work, then they won’t need tools to make them more productive, faster, more connected.. which means less frameworks, less new languages, more agentic code. Which means less humans working, less humans making money.. less things being invested in and build, less innovation etc etc.
At what point is there no economy? Who’s going to need agentic ai agents if the whole reason we write software is to speed up manual tasks? Who’s going to consume scientific research that isn’t funded, because an AI does it? At what point does a recursive loop occur, and AI companies don’t have any customers to consume their product or use their product, and then they run out of business and we have no new companies, no entry level employees to replace them etc etc.
It all just doesn’t seem to make sense? What’s the economical principle/structure? Who pays for what and who spends what?
I’d really like to know. Thanks for reading my rant. I’ll catch you on the flip side 🙂
– IAmHaxk

I’ve seen so many amazing things being created and generated by the use of AI Agentic agents, open source LLM’s, and especially some of the amazing “Deep Research” models that have been launched as of late. While I haven’t seen anything novel (as in.. new stuff? Not the parroting of something some only already came up with) it’s making everyone fast.. quicker, but I’m not sure it’s making anyone actually learn new things?
As I have started to think about how I will move past the Agentic era, and find a stable and worthwhile job (What happens when we don’t need to prompt, or orchestrate, or review?) I had a simple thought:

Where does all of the human brain potential go? If agents are doing all of the thinking, and the writing, and the coding, and the building, and the integrating.. what will humans do? Will they still be the glue that finds the connections between things in which to integrate? Will we have anything to even focus on (besides finding economic abilities to feed, house, and clothes ourselves)? Where does all the intellectual ability get distilled to? What do we focus on? It’s just an insane thought to have, the idea that all of this human brain potential just sits, while some form of AI works its way through solving our problems? It reminds me of a story that I can’t quite remember the title on, but it involves AI that becomes so awesome (with robots doing labor etc) to the point where there is no need for money, or the idea of wealth, and instead people spend their time writing poetry, performing scientific experimentation and breakthroughs, and everything else is performed by robots/ai. I wish this was the case, but it ignores a very common problem: Humans can be evil. I’m no sociologist, so I’m not sure what the world would look like if there was no way to separate humans into non-caste or class based systems (which shouldn’t be the case anyways. We are human. We all share the same world, and use the same resources. The fact that billionaires have an excess at the same time people are starving, just never sat right with me.)
I just can’t seem to comprehend a world in which humans are not attempting to pursue some form of economic utility, and finding an ability to survive and thrive. Is this some Americanized propaganda I’ve been living that I’m just not aware of society in which abundance and resources is distributed evenly/properly?
Just food for thought, and something I wonder about. What do the humans do, when the AI runs the world?
Always,
IAmHaxk

One of the funnier aspects of all of the rapid change that has been occurring within Software Engineering, Technology, etc is the multi-split brain syndrome that seems to be rampant. On twitter (No one calls it X, Elon, you troglodyte) , I could swear I’ll never have a job again, and I should just stop trying to learn anything new, and just focus on babysitting agents, while never using my brain again. You then shift over and scroll on Facebook, and it’s like it’s the early 2000’s and grandmas are sharing recipes, AI videos are everywhere, the ads are absolutely endless, and no one has any idea about anything. Pop open youtube? It’s still amazing developers and creators outputting shorts and long form videos on “Here’s my setup” or “Here’s my every day carry, as a software engineer in NYC” etc, etc.

Meanwhile, at work, I’ve only become more productive, only learned more things, and only had more fun learning new things.

So my question is… is it here yet? Has the world ended? Will we be absolutely broke, with no jobs, and start trading bottlecaps like it’s Fallout? I really just want to know, so I can be ready.

But honestly, it’s hard to state that everything will be ruined.. instead the only assumption I can make with the limited understanding I have of this kind of seismic shift is.. change. Change will happen. Things will go away, others will appear (BTW whats a deployed engineer actually do, and how do I become one, because I like the way that sounds!). Industries will shift. Adapt or die is all we can do. I wish there was some easy fix, some government overreach that will swoop in and collectively ensure that the everything will be ok. Instead it’s just us. It’s people, versus whatever the hell is here. So remember: Be Kind. Be curious. Change the world the way that you want to change it. Focus on your bubble, your people, and your peace. Build cool shit. Tear down bad shit. Learn a new skill, or abandon a bad one. Focus on being positive, as much as you possibly can. I’m assuming we’ll need our best mental state to deal with the turbulence and avalanches that will inevitably occur.

Just remember, you are important. You are valid. You are beautiful. I’m glad you are here, and I get to share the same universe with you, at the same time.

Always,
Haxk

I’m sure you’ve seen this sentiment all over the internet. Twitter, facebooke, youtube… every scrolling addiction pointing to the same thing: The AI Overlords are here, and the world has been changed. As a software engineer (Most recently a reliability engineer) I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life chasing the job title of Software Engineer. Moving from Senior Technical Support to Product Ownership, back to Senior Technical Support, all the way to Software engineering. I remember when I wrote my first production code, and I also remember the first time I broke production code!

I didn’t take the traditional route, and instead started a family, then went to college. It was the best experience of my life. I got to grow intellectually, while at the same time growing as a human being. Becoming a father, and a husband was the hardest and most rewarding accomplishment, but I also had the ability (thanks to the amazing support system in my life A.K.A mrs.haxk) to continue my education, obtaining my masters. I wrote my thesis on reinforcement learning utilization for training FPS bots. It was such a rewarding experience, and I won’t ever take it for granted. But as of late, the world has become blurry. My future is no longer laid out, in an easy form, and instead appears to be disappearing from my fingertips. I had ideas of maybe one day buying a house, with a yard, and a garage. A place where my 4 kids could grow up, and live, and come back to once they ventured out into the real world. As far fetched as that sounds (as a millennial, my life has been nothing but wars, political anger, and constant economic turmoil) I still though that if I worked hard, and if I constantly learned and adapted.. at some point I would get there.

I can’t say I’ve made all the right decisions, or did all the current fads or jumped on all the bandwagons (man did I mess up the chance to win big with bitcoin!) but I never thought I’d be less than 40 years old, worrying about if there would be space or ability to continue to work in tech now that LLMs have become more prevalent. As some would like to say, it used to be that the separation between people who succeeded in software engineering, and those who didn’t, was primarily focused on how quickly you could output the correct algorithm, or burn the midnight oil to build the next big “copy of some current thing, but make it suck less”. I don’t think I ever bought that as the “moat” or separation between a basic engineer, and 10x engineer, or whatever buzz word fits the most. To me, it was the idea makers. The dreamers. The people who said “I want the world to look like this, so I’ll make it look like this”. I always wanted to be that, but I sort of got caught up.. in the things. The doing. The waking up, and clocking in. The enterprise systems, and startup fever. I forgot the purpose. I forgot what made this fun. What made this all exciting.

And then ChatGPT came. And then llama, and Gemini, and Claude (God I love Claude, they are actually fun to just chat with, and talk things over with). And suddenly, what I used to struggle with (what a lot of engineers used to struggle with, actually) became easy. It was more about how well you could communicate what you wanted, how it should look, and what it should do. Once it finished (and messed up a ton in the middle) you still felt that feeling.. you know the one. The one where you finally debug the auth function you wrote it pyotp, or the feeling you get when the last integration test finishes, and you get to cut a release. It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change the feeling, it just feels… less. And as time goes on, and the more you vibe code your night away, the less and less it becomes.

But.. it’s still there. In fact, its now more spread out. Think about your friends. The ones who sat around you as you regaled about another long night in front of your screen, banging through some DSA problems, or building the next… twitter or whatever. In some people, you can see the want. The look in their eyes that tells you they wish they could make something as substantial. That they wanted so badly to will something into existence, with just a computer and a keyboard. LLMs, clawdbots, and the base44 crew give them this ability. And I think that’s beautiful. I think being able to share the thing I enjoy almost as much as my family with the rest of the world is exciting. Think of all the problems we may solve, or the things that could be made, and all of it was because people couldn’t find the time or the ability to figure it out. Now its just… there.. on the computer, phone, or tablet.

So now, code has become a commodity. There is no longer a moat. And soon.. most of the other things that would be a secondary moat will be automated as well.

I’m sure others will tell you “It just means system design will become more important” or “Its another layer of abstraction, one that tech has already been through before” and what not. Which is true.

But that doesn’t mean things haven’t changed. That the world of development is now smaller.. while being also immensely big.

I wish I had a plan. Some philosophical response I could provide, or “Just do this and everything will be good”.

But I can’t. I don’t have an answer. I also don’t want to feed into negativity, or doomsay everything, or tell everyone it’s all going to be fine. No one has any idea. Not the CEOS, or the 100x engineers, or the influencers on the internet telling you to buy a mac mini and let clawdbot run your life (while also leaking your credentials, and saying naughty things about you on an agentic AI social network).

What I can share is.. it’s never the right decision to be under-prepared, but it’s also never the right decision to always formulate the negative. I love engineering. I like making things with my brain and a keyboard. I like impossible problems. I like to plan and design and execute. I like the action of it, the feeling of it, and the way it makes me feel like I can actually contribute to the world.

Don’t forget the kid in you who thought they could change the world and make it better than it was before they left it.

Don’t forget this is fun, and also rewarding.

You can just do stuff.

Until next time,

Haxk