Anthropic CEO, 5 months ago: In 3 to 6 months, AI will be writing 90% of the code software developers were in charge of
Anthropic's CEO says that in 3 to 6 months, AI will be writing 90% of the code software developers were in charge of
How's that working out for you, dipshit?
The media needs to stop reporting on CEO proclamations, which long ago became glorified PR+marketing, not truth or fact. These are the individuals most incentivized to lie; and when they do nobody holds them to account.
No, they do need to report on it but they should be asking critical questions rather than copy-pasting the PR spin verbatim. They should demand these CEOs quantify their predictions. They won't though, because they can't.
W/r/t AI I’m not sure there’s a lot of room. There’s only so far one can go with “why would a business rely on information that might be faulty?”
I recall them talking about how CEOs have a fiduciary duty to increase the stock price. Shouldn't that apply to them being required to tell the fucking truth?
A fiduciary duty to increase stock price seems like a duty to lie.
Yes, but marketing isn't ever the truth; it's Truth Massaged, an exercise in Public Relations designed to subvert truth by messaging what they consider to be the best "version" of the truth.
I saw a quote from a woodworker the other day: “if you don’t have the time to do it right, do you have the time to do it twice?”
In that context: if you don’t have time to drill pilot holes, so you have time to redo part of your project when your wood splits?
I think this also applies to programming. “Move fast and break things” is just shorthand for “incur massive amounts of technical debt that you’ll have to go back and clean up later.”
I’ve played with vibe coding. It can crank out stuff really fast. Stuff that kinda works, and I have to spend extra time sorting through, understanding, and debugging. Greater total time than it would have take to write it myself.
LLMs are good for boilerplate and for things that used to be stackoverflow questions. And for bootstrapping in a new framework or language. But beyond that, no, not great, not replacing people.
Y’all, be aware of the goal of all this: capital wants to discipline labor with threats of layoffs and replacements. That’s it. They want you working longer hours for less compensation.
Like Napoleon said (paraphrased) to his tailor "Take your time, I'm in a hurry "
This is technically accurate for me.
I was asked to use Claude Code more at work, but the project is on a tight timeline and I was concerned it would just slow me down… so I set it up with a different git worktree (basically the same git repo, but a different directory, and I can access its commits without needing to push its changes to a remote branch) running in a Docker container with the volume mounted to minimize possible system impact, and instructed it to make commits as it goes.
I did a few things to largely automate this and allow me to focus on my own work. I use conventional commits and have a post commit git hook that shares tests and specs I’ve written with it (basically branching off its latest commit, cherry picking from my own branch, then sending Claude a message telling it to merge my changes in). When all the tests are working, I do something similar but with my committed to-do file. I normally wouldn’t commit that file but I would be updating it anyway, so it’s not much extra work to add an extra commit now and then.
Otherwise I basically let it do its own thing. I think it’s up to 15 sub-agents, nearly a thousand commits, and tens of thousands of lines of code changed.
Compared to what I’ve written, that’s definitely 90% of the total code, in terms of lines changed, number of commits, etc..
To be fair, I’m not using any of the code that it writes, but my metrics are fantastic.
They might be too good, honestly. I gave a talk internally last week about my Claude Code workflow (it went well, but I did have to repeatedly mute one guy who noticed that my branch visualization only had merges into the Claude branches and they never made their way back into main) and I got a bonus (nothing huge, just some RSUs worth low six figures that vest in two years), plus my boss’s boss’s boss was impressed and suggested I be promoted to CAO. That stands for “Chief AI Officer,” and yes, it apparently is a real thing - or will be, once the board approves my requested eight figure annual compensation package.
(If you’ve gotten this far and are upset that I’m wasting tons of energy and water, you should be aware that 1. The statistics about water and energy usage on an individual level, even in cases like this one, are largely speculative and over-inflated; the most reliable statistics I’ve seen suggest that my usage is on par with driving to a restaurant once per month and eating a single cheeseburger, so to compensate I’ve cut one cheeseburger and one trip per month out, and 2. This is satire.)
Not gonna lie, he had me in the first half :)
Sure... they wrote the first 90%, and then I have to dig into their mediocre code and write the second 90%.
Nah, it’s pissing away 90% of your investment with no return.
CEOs are the only "class" of experts people are willing to listen to nowadays it seems. Unlike those other experts that might be able to back up claims with receipts.
Well, it is writing a lot of code. Some of it actually gets used, and some of that even works!
Back in the day, those "rich people saying bullshit" articles were only in TV magazine. I used to read it while taking a dump. Now this shit is everywhere and I have a constipation.
Tell me you've never written a program beyond "Hello World" without telling me.
Unlikely
Claude is now writing probably 20% at least of code in many orgs.
I don’t think he was meaningfully wrong.
The gap between his prediction of 90% and your guess of 20% is meaningful.
How did you quantify that?
That's rich coming from the CEO of the company who brought us the psychotic vending machine manager. Guess he's overpromising to cash out the last pennies before the bubble bursts.
Yes, and the media is printing and retelling that shit, without questioning it....