lnkdinsuxs

> Similarly, I don't get why anyone would even use them today. Auth0 has had better alternatives in a long time, and Salesforce, well, Salesforce is just trash

Could it be that Marc Benioff knows a few things that you don't know? If so, any guesses what those could be?

Here are 6 reasons off my head where "AI" helped me a lot and made my life better:

- File taxes and find issues that "accredited", "certified" entities missed. In one instance, my federal refund increased by nearly $5k. At $20/mo, just the refund is two decades worth of value.

- Appeal health, home and car insurance claims successfully

- Find out details of interesting plants without forking out tens of dollars for an app that claims to do the same but fails to do so most of the time

- Summarize never ending email threads with 20 disinterested parties who would rather not be on the email but have to respond to show they are "engaged"

- Write a convincing email to my mother in law why I cannot meet her this weekend and hold her hand through the tough times she's having with her ethnic neighbor who annoys her with their "ethnic" music and "smell of fish" BBQ

- Locate the user manual for my microwave and what that rapid 3 beeps every 1s for 2 minutes that starts at 10AM since the last 2 days mean

You might very well find these useless, trivial or even make your blood boil but my everyday life is vastly better due to "AI"

> It's going to enable me to do less software development and more marketing? Goodie, I'm so happy I could puke.

If you hate marketing, don't do it. If you enjoy software development, have fun doing it.

However, you will remain an employee and you have to appreciate the pros and cons of being an employee. The other thing you have to appreciate is that the number of employees writing code who are AI, are cheaper than any human on the planet and works 24x7 without complaining or asking for a raise is going to go up. Likely exponentially.

This doesn't mean demand for good software developers is going to go down, but increasingly, software development is likely going to look like how one human Amazon warehouse worker wears special harnesses that allow them to lift far more weight, walk longer distances and interact with dozens of robots in the warehouse.

As I said in the parent it's not for everyone but a lot more people who were struggling to start their own venture will now be more capable of and have more freedom.

It might very well turn out that in a few years, the only way to enjoy software development the way you like it, is to establish your own boutique software development company.

> We should instead cap how much processing power these companies can accumulate per year, so the rest of us can have affordable devices and opportunities.

An alternative, specially because AI isn't regulated to oblivion yet: just don't use OpenAI. Vote with your wallet. That's it. There's no need to "cap how much processing power these companies can accumulate".

If you are right in your hypothesis, more people will agree with you simply because people in general are smart, and OpenAI will die a natural death.

Posts like these aren't wrong but they miss the forest for the trees.

A lot of software engineers don't write code at their place of employment because they enjoy spinning up pods to serve their Django apps - it gets them paid so they can then do what they actually enjoy.

What AI will allow these software engineers to do, is bypass their employers and serve customer niches directly, capturing more of the revenue themselves.

This isn't for everyone, specially those software engineers who do write code at their place of employment because of the pleasure of it, but its an unlock for those who couldn't just make the leap before.

And that's precisely where AI provides tremendous leverage and why the economy will expand rather than contract.

Find a section of customers your employer isn't particularly excited about serving, find out if they will be your ideal customers and serve them directly.

> even as I'm unemployed due to AI.

I can't convince you that AI is good for you just like I can't convince a recently divorced person that love exists or marriage is good or their spouse can be a fantastic person for someone else even if they were a horrible fit for them.

I am really sorry you're unemployed due to AI and the only thing I can really do for you is pray you find a good, stable source of income soon.

> am not aware of any economically feasible way to run my 5+ ton HVAC system full-time on batteries after a hurricane just reset all the infrastructure, and you do need to run it full time because of the insane humidity and latent heat that follows a tropical system.

Which region is this?

Are hurricanes that reset all the infrastructure a recent phenomena in this region? How did people manage in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s etc before these rather large (5+ ton HVAC) were even an option?

Is there any information or evidence that the opposition and the people at these meetings clearly understood how they would stand to benefit?

> If there’s really trillions of dollars of market cap to be had, why not just build in the middle of nowhere northern Québec and Ontario and build your own damn dams and infrastructure?

If nothing works out domestically, this might very well be where the industry ends up.

The current attempt is to have domestic (in the continental US) AI - because owning the infrastructure is way more valuable than renting it.

> They should invest money into improving electric and community infrastructure

The problem with electric and community infrastructure is that very few electric infrastructure is owned by the community, but that's not the core issue because the other infrastructure that is indeed owned by community has people in the community split on what's useful and what not.

Imagine how difficult it is to decide where to go out to lunch in a group of people. Now up the stakes to getting people to agree on whose backyard and where holes and trenches and dug and electric poles and power stations are put up.

Data centers and power plants to power them are the new oil.

Also, just like oil is dirty, bad for the environment and kills people, so will the data centers. And the power plants to power them.

Our options are not to not have Data centers and their power plants but whether to have them built elsewhere (even outside the US) and pay rent or own them and get paid the rent.

Arguments about having more efficient or green Data centers and power plants miss the point. Engineering is a process of iterative improvement - you don't begin with the perfect product, you begin with one that crashes, burns and breaks some bones.

It's understandable though that no one one wants to be "it".

> but the tax forms and rules change significantly every year

but so does React, Vue and Kubernetes and coding agents are crushing it.

I think if you started your company today, you would have a very different take.

> Because they have the resources to keep it up to date. And even they get it wrong sometimes

are these resources that require intelligence or something else?

Yes and then? Sue them in federal court? Refuse to pay the taxes? Write them a letter pointing out inconsistencies?

Inconsistencies already are known and well studied - this is one of the domains of corporate tax lawyers - how to interpret the inconsistencies into a strategy to benefit the company, so that even if the company is sued by the IRS, a well formed argument would be made and case dismissed or fines significantly reduced.

| Country | Estimated full-time employees | Broad working range |

|----------------|------------------------------:|--------------------:|

| United States | 850,000 | 750,000–950,000 |

| India | 115,000 | 100,000–125,000 |

| United Kingdom | 68,000 | 55,000–75,000 |

| Canada | 40,000 | 30,000–45,000 |

| Germany | 36,000 | 30,000–40,000 |

| Spain | 27,000 | 23,000–30,000 |

| France | 23,000 | 19,000–25,000 |

| Italy | 17,000 | 14,000–19,000 |

| Poland | 17,000 | 14,000–19,000 |

| Japan | 13,000 | 11,000–16,000 |

| Mexico | 13,000 | 10,000–15,000 |

| Australia | 6,000 | 4,500–8,500 |

| Ireland | 6,000 | 5,500–6,500 |

| Singapore | 2,400 | 2,000–2,500 |

That's a lot of "nobody"

Not an employee, just have a "shit ton" of Amazon stock that has been beating inflation very well. The last few quarters of volatility has allowed me to buy and sell, often fully covering my monthly expenses. I'm very greatful for that. Far from a company "nobody" wants to work for. You have a better performing company than Amazon to recommend that I can use instead? I'm all ears and I'll even give you a kickback for your time!

How about 6:

- File taxes and find issues that "accredited", "certified" entities missed. In one instance, my federal refund increased by nearly $5k. At $20/mo, just the refund is two decades worth of value.

- Appeal health, home and car insurance claims successfully

- Find out details of interesting plants without forking out tens of dollars for an app that claims to do the same but fails to do so most of the time

- Summarize never ending email threads with 20 disinterested parties who would rather not be on the email but have to respond to show they are "engaged"

- Write a convincing email to my mother in law why I cannot meet her this weekend and hold her hand through the tough times she's having with her ethnic neighbor who annoys her with their "ethnic" music and "smell of fish" BBQ

- Locate the user manual for my microwave and what that rapid 3 beeps every 1s for 2 minutes that starts at 10AM since the last 2 days mean