They said “could potentially”. They’re just making the argument (true IMO) that technology doesn’t have to replace a class of employee to have a huge effect. We still have farmers, but 1% of the population instead of >50%.

Or, it could be like how assemblers didn’t get rid of software engineers but helped fuel the fire. Who knows.

The problem I'm seeing is that "engineers" are not interchangeable. For some folks, the job is all straight coding. For others, it's understanding requirements, talking to stakeholders and figuring out their requirements, figuring out how to make a clean design taking lots of other factors in mind.

It's not that ChatGPT is incapable... it's that it's not inherently going to make me significantly more productive.

Where did you pull 10% from then? That also seems like you're reaching up your ass. As with all of these arguments, context matters. Both of you need to say what you're doing with these tools. I've personally found the combination to range from "utterly useless" (writing Rust for microcontrollers) to "I could see this eliminating jobs" (CRUD API work).

It's just an example to make the point easier to understand

A single engineer with [some near future LLM] could potentially do the work of [X] engineers right now.

Because ChatGPT is not self driven and has no ability to do things. I can quite easily imagine one person doing 10 peoples work with this tool. I can’t imagine them being able to type fast enough to do 100 jobs.

>I've actually used ChatGPT and copilot and I can tell you it's not even 10% more productive

Use your imagination.

Do you think that LLMs have hit their plateau? Not likely I'd say. With all the billions suddenly rushing into the space, you really think that ChatGPT v.X isn't going to replace you? Risky bet.

Indeed, folks making these types of conclusions seem to assume that what there is to be built will remain "constant". No, the more productive the tools the bigger the requirements.

Modern high level languages didn't eliminate engineers. They suddenly meant one engineer could do what it would have taken 10 to do in COBOL or C and so software became more complex and capable.