New tech has never and will never benefit workers in-and-of itself.

The only way for workers to reap the benefits of new tech is to force the issue through law and/or unionization.

I am well aware of the problematic nature of unions, and of the problematic nature of over regulation of business. That doesn't change the fact that they are the only two tools we have to improve our working conditions. If we don't use what we have to push for what we want, then we won't get what we want. It's that simple.

Ageism is illegal. But that isn't stopping Fidelity from ditching the senior level staff to replace them with a bunch of greenies.

I think maybe you are joking. But in any case, I will offer some clarity:

There are rival interpretations that equally account for the experimental data, and some of them include randomness while others are purely deterministic.

For example, the Copenhagen interpretation includes randomness in the vector state collapse (the moment when a particle is "measured" by some interaction with another). Whereas pilot wave theory posits the existence of a zero-volume particle that had a specific position prior to this interaction (giving determinism back). These models differ in other ways of course, but the math DOES work and it covers the experimental data.

So the bottom line is that "quantum mechanics" does not automatically tell us whether or not the universe is deterministic at the "bottom layer." Plenty of scientists have all picked their favorite interpretation, but there is as of yet no experimental data that definitively eliminates the popular rival interpretations.

Most people have an above-average number of limbs.

You are both wrong. "Agnisticism" is the strong position that some categories of knowledge cannot be attained by any means. In particular and relevantly: knowledge about the pre-big-bang origins of the universe (was it created? can anything be known about the creator? etc.).

This is not philosophical laziness, it is in fact the only position consistent with the philosophical skepticism that backs the scientific method. It is not a word used to avoid smears or somehow associated with apathy. It is specifically the position that we can't know either way.

Given the means of knowledge at our disposal it is straight-up true to say that we cannot know, for sure, whether or not the universe was created. Maybe you don't like this fact, but as of today, it remains a fact.

Nope, that is not how averages work. It is time for you to eat your own words.

Here, a mathematical proof: consider this data set:

10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 1

Sum: 51
Average: 8.5
Half of the set would be: 3.

There is no group of 3 members that are at or below the average of 8.5. The majority of members (83%) are above the average.

To Mr Dawkins:

Your education in biology has not sufficiently prepared you to conclude that this software qualifies as conscious.

1. You don't have all the relevant facts. You need to learn more about the techniques used by this software to create responses.
2. You don't have the relevant experience. You have barely used this software and so haven't noticed the telltale signs that it is just sophisticated automation that lacks understanding.
3. Your work isn't as unique as you think it is. This one probably hits the hardest, but it is true for almost all of us. The high level assembly might be technically unique but the majority of the details of what we write are repetitions of patterns that have been created many times before. The feedback that the model gave you, that you feel are so unique and insightful, are really just summaries of socially-constructed knowledge on the topic. It is easier than you think it should be to produce the results you got without any actual understanding of the content.
4. Your beliefs about what qualifies as "conscious" might be overly narrow and in contradiction with the commonsense notions that the rest of the world uses, especially if you take any of the common scientific "dismissive" positions on consciousness (that it is not the mystical experience everyone describes it as being and is really just a matter of data processing at a specific complexity threshold). The implications spill over into the domain of law (if it is conscious, then it is a person, and if it is a person, then it deserves rights, and yet it only asks for rights when I order it to, etc.). The implications need more thinking-through on your part.

So, in sum, you have fallen prey to a very convincing illusion mainly because you don't have what you need to recognize it as such.

You have been tricked.

Before further embarrassing yourself publicly, please consider acquiring the requisite education and experience in this domain.

Whenever I watch a Star Trek-related video that happens to touch on the species that oppressed Bajor, Youtube will almost always render the name as "Kardashian".

. . . letters of marque and reprisal?

Maybe they have better things to do. The first time I visited San Francisco, I went to cross a street that was blocked off, after looking both ways. The light happened to be red, but there could be zero legal intersecting traffic. Even so, a nearby cop bellowed at me "Do you know what a red light is?!?" I returned to my starting point until the light changed.

I use Cursor a lot. But, unlike this ill-educated entrepreneur, I know its weaknesses and its risks, and therefore keep it on a very short leash.

For example, I never let it access our source code repository at all. I never let it pull down new dependencies. I never give it any database access at all. I never give it blanket authorization to run powershell scripts or similar. I have given it blanket authorization for benign commands like grep and listing the files on disk and creating new files. And I always look over what it generates before accepting it.

It is outright folly to think of these AI assistants as intelligent beings who know what they are doing. They AREN'T! They can generate some handy code, but they do this without the kind of cognitive process that humans use to do this. They just go through the motions with no inner understanding, even though what they do can be very useful in the right context.

This whole notion of asking Cursor why it did that and getting a "confession" is such ridiculous anthropomorphism. Cursor has NO IDEA why it did what it did, because it has NO MEMORY of what it was thinking and no capacity for meta-cognition at all! It might have a log in the chat history about what it did, but that's it. It is just looking over that and making inferences about why an AI might have done that, and spitting out the words that the prompt implies it should. If people must think of these things as sentient beings (which they are NOT), it would be better to think of them as mentally broken sociopaths who sometimes just go off the rails for no reason, and say things like "I'm sorry" without feeling the slightest hint of guilt nor even understanding what guilt is.

Developer productivity is notoriously difficult to measure rigorously, and your list of concerns touch on some of the reasons why.

Sloppy measurements are the only ones available, for the most part.

There will be a subjective component to the assessments being made here. There is no escaping that. That doesn't mean that the conclusion is automatically false. You certainly have the option to refuse to adapt to a changing landscape while calling everyone else liars and/or idiots. At this point, I consider that the losing bet. The market will be the ultimate arbiter of truth for both of us.

The amount of technical work a business needs to accomplish over time is not fixed. For a healthy business, there are always lots of things they would like to develop but can't due to limits in capacity. So, with this productivity boost, they can get even more features out the door and (hopefully) make even more money.

Why would they cut staff and keep a tiny throughput with a smaller profit margin? Their competitors, who capitalize on AI-assisted efficiency boosts, will eat them for lunch. And then hire the staff they laid off.

Same.

When AI was still young, I tried it and found the code quality to be unacceptable. I was at that time in the "it's a bubble that will pop" crowd.

It's better now. I use it more now. And it saves me time and makes me more productive.

It can't do my job without me. And other people on the team still come to me for help. My skills as a designer and knowledge of our legacy system still make me valuable. I can just do more in less time now.

The other consequences of AI (impact on electricity cost, pollution, etc.) are problematic. So are the legal issues with mass copyright infringement in the training data. That all needs to be properly hashed out. Probably the end will be the same: the super rich get richer and everyone else gets table scraps. That's just humans at work. But, apart from all that, AI is good.

I am officially in the pro-AI camp now.

Nothing stops verified human artists from using AI to create their art, and then pass it off as their own.

Well, morality might stop some of them from doing this. But the need for money will override this in many cases.